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 his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr explains his point of view of how the brain is being reprogramed due to technology. He states that the Internet changes how we receive and process information and that surfing the web takes almost no concentration and that is why we lose focus easily. Carr gives his experiences as an example in how he is no longer able to keep concentration to even complete reading an article. His main point is that search engines, like Google, and the internet in general is damaging our ability to think, and that we were probably better in the past when reading was done…
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…
Nicholas Carr in The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains (2010) asserts that the internet is the single most powerful mind-altering technology. Carr supports this assertion by giving various, significant examples of how people think with the internet today compared to how they thought back then. The writer concludes in order for people to improve skills, they will have to cope with the new technology and the way they think.…
The Shallows explores the idea of technology’s evolution on our minds. The internet as it is today is constantly changing how we read, write and think. Nicholas Carr wants us to realize and see the effects this new technology is having on not just us, but our culture. How we think about knowledge, what we are gaining from it and losing. Essentially, The Shallows isn’t just about how we’re changing from technology, but how Carr implements deep reflection by emphasizing academic and cognitive research. To simply put, Carr has written a book with deep thought about shallow…
Where would the world stand without technology? Without a doubt, it would be a less advanced society. But, is the advancement of the technological world harming people in a subtle way? With the help of his sources, Nick Carr conveys a belief that intellectual technologies such as the internet are affecting people's minds in a subtly negative way. Although he states that he might just be worrisome, included in his article are examples from bloggers and research studies showing how people's minds progressively change.…
The internet has become the number one source for information. It is quick and easy. Some argue that it is a distraction, while others argue that it is the best thing since slice bread. In the article “Is Google Making us Stupid?” by Carr he used a form of ethos and factual evidence to help get his point across to his readers. He argues how technology is hindering people and causing them to become lazy, therefore causing harm towards today’s society. Throughout the article “Mind Over Mass Media” Steven Pinker, also uses a form of ethos and factual evidence to help voice his opinion on how technology is serving more of a benefit. Some believe that people are becoming more intelligent because of the use of…
Imagine a world where people are all programmed to think a certain way, where every action is robotic,. wWhere they have no freedom of thought. T, this is the reality we face that is described in the book written by Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. Google is restructuring the human mind for its own purposes, forof faster information extraction and retrieval. The fact that Google is doing this is wrong, because we should be able to do more than parse through data as quickly as possible.…
There are more cons than pros for the Internet. Nicholas Carr has many great pieces of evidence to support his thesis. I agree because the Internet can take you down many wrong paths but at the same time technology is our future. Today people are not focusing on trying to improve our future, they are worried about today’s fashion or video games or celebrities. One of the studies Carr looked at was by Cornell which figured out that web surfing does distract students. This is good information for schools on how to help their students learn in the best way, and stay on track. The neuroscientist named Michael Merzenich made a very dramatic reason what the long-term effects of the Internet. Merzenich said the Internet could lead to death, which could be right but we don’t have any proof at the moment. At the same time, I think the Internet is a great source for information. I wish Carr talked a little about how the Internet also has important information…
It seemed a bit ironic that Carr was going on and on about how his “concentration started to drift after two or three pages” when this article is seven pages long. I found myself also to be “fidgety, begin looking for something else to do” also starting to scan. This is a point I want to bring up. I believe that most people blame technology for what we are becoming. Carr mentioned that “deep reading used to come natural has become a struggle,” meaning technology in a way has been “making us stupid.” Maybe not in the sense as many might think.…
Not many people ask the question “What is Google?” Google itself has changed millions on millions of people’s lives on how they think and interact with other citizens in their daily activities. Gone are the days of going to a public library to research a topic for an essay but now come the days where users are not sure to trust a certain webpage that holds the information they are looking for. “I don’t know the answer to that question so I’ll just Google it.” This simple search engine has turned into a commonly used word/phrase that is a part of our everyday vocabulary. Google has made it beyond easy for younger generations to gain the information they so desire for whatever the reasons may be, although, is this really making them smarter?…
What the Internet is doing to Our Brains: The Shallows by Nicholas Carr insightfully displays the detrimental after effects of using the Internet. As we use the Internet, we seldom think of the consequences that could arise; instead, we see a plethora of information that is readily accessible. By rampantly trying to find new ways to improve technology, we unknowingly sacrifice parts of our mind. The Internet has rewired our brains by creating a sort of superficial intelligence within us. So, although the Internet proves to be quite beneficial, it diminishes the capacity for certain pleasures, which makes us in turn worst off; the Internet proves to be fatal by severing the mental and emotional connects that allows us to connect with our heart, soul, and mind. It fabricates a sense of superficiality while plunging us into an ecosystem of technology.…
With the constant checking of different types of Social Media and websites, our ability to focus on one thing has almost become nonexistent. We are in the day and age of multi-tasking and a fast moving world, where spending your time trying to accomplish one thing at a time is viewed as inefficient and wasteful. Instead, we try to accomplish two or more things done at once, not letting a second go wasted. This has as much to do with Social Media and the presence of the Internet as anything else. In the piece “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr, he talks about how his constant Internet use has affected his attention span, most notably when reading. He states, “ Immersing myself in a book…used to be easy. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety… I feel as if I’m always dragging my brain back to the text” (P.150) Also in the piece is a quote from Bruce Friedman, a pathologist working for The University of Michigan Medical School, who states, “ I Can’t read War and Peace anymore. I’ve almost lost the ability to absorb a longish article on the web or in print.” (p.152) The Web and…
With the constant changes of technology in the world today it is apparent the human brain is headed down a path of destruction. Before the year of 2000, society spent their time in a library gathering information to gain knowledge; now that time is spent on the Internet through personal cell phones, google, and facebook. I, in fact have fallen into this category of not realizing simply how much the Internet has grown and how it has altered the use of my brain over the past five years. It is now second nature for me to pick up my cell phone to look up a number when I once had to remember through memory or even check my Facebook for social acceptance that I once gained through talking face to face. There are many humans in the Internet society affected by how the brain truly works when one is faced with emotional, educational, and spiritual problems using the Internet as an easy fix to get through the day.…