Analysis Of Nicholas Carr's 'Hal And Me'

In Nicholas Carr’s “Hal and Me,” an excerpt from The Shallows, Carr highlights his experience with the internet and his perspective on how the internet affects a person’s capacity of reading and absorbing information. Using his and others’ perspectives, Carr is able to write in a practical method, to which his audience can understand the impact of the internet in a relatable context. Before the internet, Carr experienced what Scott Karp, an online media blogger, called a “linear thought process” where Carr “[dove] in [a] sea of words,” without having been distracted by other sources and slowly absorbed information piece by piece. Practically having lived in his college library, Carr spent an immense amount of time wandering through the “tens of thousands of books,” and had “[worked] part-time [at]

Blank in terms that there is a superficial outlook on learning new information to where it is not applied into everyday life. For Carr, he consumes all this information as a source of entertainment, a past-time. He now “[spends] so much time staring into a computer screen” becoming “accustomed and dependent on the sites and services of the Net,” as if society is becoming a pawn to the internet. As a result, the internet has changed the ways of thinking and the structure of the mind; slowly creating human HALs.

Carr concludes his excerpt with the statement “I missed my old brain,” because he was once so active in his learning, but now with exposure to the internet he has become close to being the contrary. Successfully, does Carr create a stance on how the internet has had a negative impact on how a person thinks and learns, from trading away an “old linear thought process” in return “for the riches of the Net.” Also, Carr creates a point that if society continues in this new form of mind, everyone will become human HALs and turn rogue against