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So Much For The Information Age Analysis

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So Much For The Information Age Analysis
The Internet: Connection or Disconnection? The Internet is an incredible invention. It brings a whole world of information to our fingertips. It can literally connect us with people across the globe; people who we otherwise would never have the opportunity to connect with. However, as Dr. Alex Lickerman shares in an article on Psychology Today.com, “even as the Internet has shrunk the world and brought us closer together, it is threatening to push us further apart”. The threat, the danger, is that Internet connection with whole world will ultimately disconnect us from the most important and vital relationships in our lives. Human beings are created for relationship and have a deep drive and need to be connected with others. Cheryl …show more content…
Everyone does it, which gives the illusion that it is effective for learning. However, Ted Gup in his article, “So Much for the Information Age,” sheds light and bears out proof that multitasking is a façade. As he shares some of his experiences as a college professor of students who were unaware of important current and historical events, he expresses his disbelief that these students are part of the celebrated information age (499). He even states that “they disprove the notion that technology fosters engagement” (500). From Gup’s perspective, though his students have more information and technology at their fingertips than any other generation before them, they are not utilizing it. In fact he expresses that not only is this generation not using the information afforded them, but that they are more disengaged than the generations before them that did not have these technological luxuries. Perhaps the answer to this quandary lies in the lack of parental guidelines and continued Internet multitasking while in class or while doing homework. Perhaps this multitasking trend has caused the students of the information age to store the material viewed, taught and studied in the area of the brain that is not for recalling that …show more content…
21 Sept. 2012.
“Demographics.” New Media Trend Watch. 8 Oct. 2012. Web. 13 Oct. 2012.
Greenfield, Patricia and Kaveri Subrahmanyam. “Online Communication and
Adolescent Relationships.” The Future of Children 18.1 (2008): 119. General
OneFile. Web. 15 Sept. 2012.
Gup, Ted. “So Much for the Information Age.” Read, Reason, Write: an Argumetn Text and Reader. 10th ed. Ed. Dorothy U. Seyler. New York: McGraw Hill, 2012. 498-
501. Print.
Gup, Ted. “So Much for the Information Age.” Read, Reason, Write: an Argumetn Text and Reader. 10th ed. Ed. Dorothy U. Seyler. New York: McGraw Hill, 2012. 498-
501. Print.
Lickerman, Alex. “The Effect of Technology on Relationships.” Psychology Today.com.
Sussex Publishers, LLC. 8 June 2010. Web. 21 Sept. 2012.
Lytle, Ryan. “Study: Emerging Technology Has Positive Impact in Classroom.”
USnews.com. US News and World Report, 14 July 2011. Web. 28 Sept. 2012.

Rosen, Christine. “Can you Finish this Story Without Being Interrupted?; Doing too
Many Things at Once may not be Saving us any Time, and Could be Harming our
Health.” Toronto Star [Toronto, Ontario] 2 July 2008: L01.
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