In the essay “ Does the Internet Make you Smarter or Dumber?”, Nicholas Carr provides information on how the internet is making human kind into scattered and superficial thinkers. Carr goes on to explain that being online can influence our cognitive abilities. Some of those cognitive skills can be strengthen but when some strengthen some are weakened, just a few including mindfulness, critical thinking, and imagination. Carr talks about the ill effects of computers and cellphones, that the ill effects don’t go away. The thing we seem to be sacrificing, according to Carr, is engaging in quiet, attentive modes of thought. Whereas the internet makes our brains scattered, a book focuses it. Carr states that reading a book helps us develop a rare …show more content…
Paragraph 14-16: Carr concludes that reading helps the brain to develop a rare kind of mental discipline. Our ancestors needed the constant shift in attention to survive but since then we have evolved to this mental discipline. The internet is whats making us go back to the way our ancestors use to think and possibly even making our brains worse.
III. Quotation 1
“When we’re constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking” (Carr 22). The quote is saying that the more that we are online the more our brains are unable to become their own and we loose depth to our thinking. We need to not loose this because this is the main thing that make us who we are, the way think differently makes us our own individual.
IV. Quotation 2
“ What we seem to be sacrificing in all our surfing and searching is our capacity to engage in the quieter, attentive modes of thought that underpin contemplation, reflection and introspection” ( Carr 23).
As we engage more on surfing and searching the internet we start to loose the way out brains are thinking deeply. If we continue on the path we are on our brains are on the road to becoming more
While his best arguments come from cultural criticism. Written text led to the decline of oral reading and television obliterated the radio. Every technology comes with it’s trade-offs, it just comes down to moderation. There is little doubt that the internet is changing our brain. What Carr neglects to mention, however, is how the internet can change our brain for the better. Computer games have the ability to improve cognitive tasks and increase visual attention. He doesn’t always address the good effects that the internet has had on the world. One of the better strategies Carr uses is switching his point of view from third to first person. He reflects on his personal life and how his life has changed in response to what he has learned. Carr shows how even he has his faults but, being aware of a problem is the first step to finding
In The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, he asserts that the evolution of information and communication technology (ICTs) is having a detrimental impact on our brains despite the many benefits and advances we have made with it. His main focus is on the internet which he commonly refers to as the “universal medium” (92). Carr presents a very detailed but biased argument in which he views the internet and other technologies as the adversary of critical thinking and progress. To Carr, we are sacrificing our ability to think logically because we are choosing the simpler way to gain knowledge.
In Is Google Making Us Stupid, Carr concerns about spending too much time on web, making people lose the patient and ability to read and think and changing people’s thinking behaviors. He gives so many points: he can not read lengthy article used to be easy; many author begin to feel that too much reading online let them hard to read and absorb a longish article; we put efficiency and immediacy above understanding when we read; The circuits in brain has been altered by reading habit.
Nicolas Carr debates that by allowing the internet to invade our “quiet spaces,” we will sacrifice ourselves (Carr,13). Philosopher, Rene Descartes, said “I Think, Therefore I am.” The idea of our ability to think as being part of our essence, as Descartes said, is established by Nicolas Carr. He presumes that the internet is robbing humans of their essence. Without the ability to think, we become the “artificial intelligence” (Carr,
Like Gladwell, Nicholas Carr believes the internet has negative effects. In his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Carr attempts to show as the internet becomes our primary source of information, it diminishes the ability to read books and extensive research. Carr goes on to give a very well researched account of how text on the internet is designed make browsing fast and profitable. He describes how the design for skimming affects our thinking skills and attention spans. He wraps up his argument by describing what we are losing in the shift toward using the internet as our main information source. Carr suggests the learning process that occurs in extensive research and through reading is lost. While the learning process can be beneficial to scholars and intellectuals, not everyone has the capability to follow through with it. The internet offers an education that anyone can have access to and understand. Also if Carr believes the learning process is better, this option is always available for people who want to learn according to this scholarly principal. However, for the rest of the population the quick and easy access has allowed the average population to become more educated, and to expose themselves to aspects of academia that previously is reserved for
With the rise of technology and the staggering availability of information, the digital age has come about in full force, and will only grow from here. Any individual with an internet connection has a vast amount of knowledge at his fingertips. As long as one is online, he is mere clicks away from Wikipedia or Google, which allows him to find what he needs to know. Despite this, Nicholas Carr questions whether Google has a positive impact on the way people take in information. In his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr explores the internet’s impact on the way people read. He argues that the availability of so much information has diminished the ability to concentrate on reading, referencing stories of literary types who no longer have the capacity to sit down and read a book, as well as his own personal experiences with this issue. The internet presents tons of data at once, and it is Carr’s assumption that our brains will slowly become wired to better receive this information.
The use of technology is debilitating our ability to think pensively. Carr demonstrates that relying on the internet reduces the use of our creativity flow in our brains. “The Web provides a convenient and a compelling supplement to personal memory - but when we start using the Web as a substitute for personal memory, by bypassing the inner processes of
Atlantic journalist Nicholas Carr confesses that he feels something has been “tinkering with his brain.” The internet, he fears, may be messing with our minds. We have lost the ability to focus on a simple task, and memory retention is steadily declining. He is worried about the effect the internet has on the human brain, and where it may take us in the future. In response to this article, Jamais Cascio, also a journalist for the Atlantic, provides his stance on the issue. He argues that this different way of thinking is an adaptation derived from our environment. Ultimately, he thinks that this staccato way of thinking is simply a natural evolution, one that will help to advance the human race.
Author Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google making us Stupid,” discusses how the use of the computer affects our thought process. Carr starts out talking about his own experience as a writer and how he felt like “something had been tinkering with his brain, remapping his neural circuitry and reprogramming his memory”(313). Basically, he is acknowledging that since he started using the Internet his research techniques have changed. Carr believes that before he would immerse himself in books, lengthy articles and long stretches of prose allowing his mind to get caught up in the narrative or the
Carr explains how the internet can distract us making it harder to focus on tasks. He explains how processing information has become harder. Notifications, ads, popups can make it difficult if you are trying to read an article or book (Carr 57). The internet has become the center of our attention (Carr 57). Carr is explaining how this is the reason why we are struggling to comprehend a certain piece of information. He adds in his article that scientists, researchers and educators have also noticed the difference in concentration. And in further detail, he explains that we fail to see the important information, thus affecting cognition. He says that the information we gather is not valuable unless we know the meaning behind it. Carr concludes with explaining that the more the internet evolves the less valuable information is to
The internet is ever changing, and so our minds, but can the internet mold our minds? Nicholas Carr and Michael Rosenwald support the idea that the reading we do online is making it harder to be able to sit down with a good book. In their papers they discuss the downfalls of using the web. While on the other hand author Clay Shirky challenges that thought in his piece. Shirky directly battles the idea that the internet is damaging our brains by suggesting that internet use can be insightful. In this essay I will evaluate all three articles and expose their strengths and weaknesses then add my own take on the situation.
Carr provides us scientific information that proves his point. ““We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged” (Carr 3). Carr gives us information from Tufts University, that contribute to his point. This information tells us that the internet weakens our capacity for reading. That is what Carr is saying, that’s the point of all of this. Carr wrote this so he can inform us how google in affecting
These two articles are similar in the sense that they agree that the internet and computational objects are reshaping our brain’s structure by changing our neural circuit. By using examples from their personal experiences to identify a trend in technology use, the authors illustrate that the more we bury ourselves in technology the more we are unable to understand material which leads to loss of concentration and the ability to think for ourselves. As an author, Carr finds the internet a beneficial tool, but it’s having a bad effect on his concentration span. Carr points this out by stating “Immersing myself in a book or lengthy article used to be easy, now I get fidgety, lose the thread and begin looking for something else to do” (39). He is no
He states how he used to spend hours reading, but his concentration started to drift after two or three pages. He backed up his theory with stories from others who say they’re experiencing the same thing. But they still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how the internet affects cognition. After a brief history lesson, Carr starts to incorporate Google into the article. He tells us about Google’s history and their mission. Carr states how Google, and the internet itself, have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind. Apparently these companies do not want us reading slowly or for leisure. Carr then ends the article by stating that we are turning into robots ourselves, and that we are relying on computers to mediate our understanding of the
He observes that his mind has been changing with the use of the internet and that computers are diminishing his capacity for concentration and contemplation (Carr 315). He effectively expresses his feelings that longer attention spans are being replaced by more instant-gratification demanding mindsets. It’s with these newfound mindsets that Carr expresses concern that the human psyche is becoming little more than robotic algorithms incapable of reflection, deep critical thinking, problem solving, or imagination (Carr 327). Furthermore, Carr’s concern with how technology affects our ability to think has been echoed in research specific to