In the book “The Shallows”, Nicholas Carr develops his argument just as an architect would construct a building. The foundation is laid then in tedious and eloquent manner, he begins an argument that defines the book. Shedding light upon the dangers our society may encounter through the internet, Carr uses personal anecdotes, parallels, ethic and reason based arguments, and disguises himself as an authoritative figure to execute a view changing book.…
Carr has first hand experience with what the Internet is doing to the minds of those who use it on a daily basis. He used to be able to completely immerse himself into a long book, and spend hours pondering the words and arguments. However, since the “Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind”(p.90) he finds that he can no longer concentrate and contemplate on longer pieces of…
In the speech delivered at the Harvard Book Store Nicholas Carr, an American writer interested mainly in technology and business, presented his new book “The Shallows. What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”. The writer explained also the main thesis of his work, which seems to be the following: Using the Internet has an impact on our brain and the way it is functioning. His arguments, not against the Internet in general, but against overusing it, are the result of his personal experience as well as the scientific studies on the topic.…
Through the short story, Is Google Making Us Stupid, the author, Nicholas Carr suggests that the Internet affects how human beings process literary works. He begins to illustrate this point by using a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey where the man purposely disassembles HAL, the supercomputer, in order to disconnect its ability to think for itself. Carr personifies HAL, and describes how it could feel its brain being taken away as the man stripped it of its memory circuits. Carr compares the sensation that the supercomputer endures, when losing its mind, to how the Internet has rewired our human brains. It has made low-concentration levels a norm, and thus, has caused a change in our reading styles: we now immerse in a shallow…
When we search something we automatically believe what is stated on the internet because we think technology is more intelligent than people. Another think Carr touched upon is that the quality of our knowledge is being sacrificed. There is a generation that doesn’t know life without the Internet and the way that they think. Over time it is only going to get worse. Carr also makes an economic analysis of this new way of thinking and reading. “It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction,”…
In “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr expresses his concerns on how the Internet is changing the way his mind works and how it’s affecting him in a negative way. Carr suggests that the Internet offers us the benefit of quick and easy knowledge. However, he goes into details about how we merely rely on Google that makes us process information differently from the past and how it’s degrading our critical-thinking skill. Moreover, he touches upon his own experience how accessible the Internet is with hyperlinks and flashy ads that can divert his attention from reading. With this, he noticed that his capacity on concentration for reading has been taken away. Carr proved that others have experienced the same thing that he did…
The general argument made by Nicholas Carr in his work, “From The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” is that technology is dangerous to the brain, conditioning the body that they need more technology, and less of anything else. More Specifically, Carr states that, “I used to find it easy to immerse myself in a book or a lengthy article...Now my consideration starts to drift after a page or two” (Carr par. 2). In this passage, Carr is suggesting that the effects of technology and the internet have imposed on him that he needs the internet to function at a proper level. He thinks that this is going to be a problem in the future of society. He is suggesting that we will be unable to communicate…
In Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to our Brains,” he makes the powerful point that in order to assume technology’s power, especially intellectual technology, we must pay a particularly high price. Carr states this idea in one quote from his book, “The price we pay to assume technologies power is alienation. The toll can be particularly high with our intellectual technologies. the tools of the mind amplify and in turn numb the most intimate, the most human, of our natural capacities- those for reason perception, memory, emotion(pg 211).” This price for intellectual technologies can range from a lowered ability to pull up memorized information, a shorter attention span, having a harder time learning new information, or even a changed perception of our world. All of these points help show how the internet is affecting our brains physically and mentally.…
In Steven Johnson’s, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter,” and Nicholas Carr’s, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” both authors highlight the ways media have changed the way we learn in the world today; Johnson argues that television is having a positive effect on society and, in fact, is making us smarter, while Carr contends that media, especially the internet, limits our ability for, “deep thought.”…
The piece, “Is Google Making us Stupid?”, by Nicholas Carr provides an interesting view from a writer's perspective of his change in processing information due to the growing digital world. He reflects on how the internet has made his life easier but also caused his attention span to shorten. He believes that while the internet is very helpful, it is changing the way people think. Carr relates his struggles to those of many of his intellectual colleagues and how it has changed their lives as fellow consumers of text. He explores the changes within the mind and the way that, in turn, it has changed a person's response to reading. To further his explanations, he uses in depth descriptions of various technologies and their…
In Sherry Turkle’s article entitled No Need to Call (2011), Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld’s article entitled The Influencing Machine (2011) and Nicholas Carr’s article entitled Is Google Making Us Stupid? (2008), each author examines how technology affects the way we communicate with others and the way we think. Turkle writes about how we are choosing our phones over people and losing out on face-to-face communication, Gladstone and Neufeld discuss echo chambers and how we can easily block out thoughts we don’t like, and Carr talks about how skim reading on the internet has disrupted the ability to deep read. The purpose of each article is to bring awareness to the dangers technology can have on our lives. Each author wants to reach…
Bright screens with backlighting, noisy keyboards, quiet touch pads, swiping to turn the page, all great examples of futuristic technologies; books were at one point a futuristic technology, but now they're a thing of the past. What happened? Swiping became easier than turning; backlighting in screens became easier than managing a book light; typing became easier than written annotations. In Alan Carr's novel, The Shallows (2011), he writes, "The price we pay to assume technology's power is alienation," (Carr 211). What Carr doesn’t mention is the high taxes we pay in addition to the price of alienation.…
Though Amusing Ourselves to Death was published in 1985 and The Shallows was published in 2010, both authors tried to inform its readers of the alarming signs. We are blind and not even aware of it. The invention of technology has transformed it users to become flat out lazy. Carr once said, “ Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy of a Jet Ski.” We no longer can enjoy the adventure of scuba diving because it takes too long. We now prefer Jet Ski’s so that we can go accelerating speeds and feel the adrenaline rush. At one time, we possessed a linear mind. We were focused and enjoyed reading without distractions. It’s harder now to sit down and read a book, write an essay, or even focus. The Internet has changed our minds and us. In spending just 5 hours on the Internet, our brain can rewire itself. The human brain contains many things that shape the way we think. Our brains contain 100 billion neurons that have different shapes and sizes. The normal size neuron produces 1,000 synapses, which help us understand what to think, who we are, and how to feel. Neurologists once thought that…
We are at a time where technology is widespread; it has become a part of our everyday life leading to advantages and disadvantages and technology currently has become the most important topic to discuss and everyone has developed their own unique opinion. In Nicholas Carr’s article published in 2008, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, he argues that as technology progresses people’s mentality changes. Carr is effective in his argument by sharing his fears and personal experiences to influence the audience utilizing pathos and ethos. Not only does he include his own experience, but he also includes other people’s point of views. He goes on to support his claim of how technology…
Modern technology has its merits. As Bauerlein points out in his article “the Dumbest Generation”, the digital revolution has provided us with “miraculous quick and effortless contact with information.” Indeed, we are the generation surrounded by technology, and the immediate access to countless of information has definitely aided us in many aspects of the modern society. Researching information has become…