The human mind is an extremely complex and unique process to comprehend, yet is similar to a computer processor. Both mind and computer learn to adapt, process information, and evolve over time. However, there is a huge difference between the two: humans have emotions and can be influenced by various things while computers don’t have the ability to. According to Nicholas Carr, in the passage “Hal and Me,” he develops a message that the internet has the ability to impact our actions and influence people on their capability to learn and retain information. Carr uses personal examples, opinions from other colleagues, and sources from the internet to express his thought of the net.
Within the first sentence of “Hal and Me,” this quote from A Space
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One can read lots of short text, and get a sufficient idea as to what they’re reading. According to Carr’s friend, Friedman, he believes that the internet has made him more creative. There are a range of topics that can be found on the web, and evoke a new idea. Three of Carr’s friends even say “they wouldn’t go back to the ways things used to be (Carr, 350). The purpose of including this colleague into this text was to tell his audience that the internet is not all too bad. It does help in multiple ways since the internet is basically an extremely advanced encyclopedia. People can obtain data within seconds, and find inspiration fairly quickly with a tad bit of research. Compared to how there was no technology back then, finding information was a hassle, but now it is effortless. When something “amazing” is invented, there will always be some great benefits; however, one should expect some consequences that may occur. Carr relays this meaning throughout “Hal and Me.” Although he may say the internet has made him lose the ability to in-depth reading, he is now able to learn about various information within seconds. He says how he can pay bills, schedule appointments, book flights and hotel rooms (Carr, 348) in a matter of seconds, and there are not that many
One for example is when he talks about how he used to be deeply immersed in readings and now after two or three pages he says “I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” (Carr, 1). Most people would look at the statement and agree. With social media prevalent in society today and with the length of articles getting shorter and advertisements constantly popping up it’s hard to stay focus on just one story. People only scratch the surface when they read now instead of diving deeper into the story. Carr argues that people’s attention spans have gotten shorter over time. But, it’s not only reading stories on the internet, it’s how we’re connected to our electronic devices. A perfect example is we’re always within arm’s reach our phones, ipads, laptops, etc. which can make people lose focus. When’s the last time you looked at your phone to look at a text or check Facebook? Was it 5 minutes ago or even 2 minutes ago? The things we can do with our phones is so technically advanced and Carr believes it’s taking over our minds in a negative way. This generation of children and young adults today are connected to the web constantly. An answer for something is always a click away, which can be a good thing and a bad
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
Nicholas Carr gives a sense of unbiased in his work when he writes, “I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the database of the internet. The web has been a godsend to me as a writer” (394). Though this statement it is clear that he sees both sides of the argument and by demonstrating this to the author he strategically is appealing to ethos and supporting his own argument. In hopes of building credibility, he begins to write, “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going ─ so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think” (394). Granted that he writes this in the beginning of his essay he is trying to credit himself as a victim which helps him support his argument against the constant usage of the internet. Nicholas Carr is aware that without building credibility within his essay the audience will dismiss his points as uneducated and meaningless.
Together they work together as a whole in order to persuade his audience of those involved in technology. Carr uses these strategies in order to back up his information and validate his point. Carr begins by using pathos by stating an anecdote from the movie A Space Odyssey, then he uses logos by stating factual evidence and statistics, lastly Carr uses ethos by stating appropriate vocabulary and conceding to opposition. Throughout the article Carr compares the past and present and how the Internet has changed not only himself, but also people. In order to show his credibility, Carr uses research and examples of other credible writers who have the same beliefs as he does on the Internet. Due to the article being lengthy in text we are able to assume that Carr does that on purpose in order to validate his point that the Internet is affecting our mind as it shortens our attention span and ability to think creatively. The purpose of the excerpt is to persuade his audience of those involved in technology that people in the society today are unable to have complete focus on a longer text due to the Internet causing us to artificial intelligence. For this purpose, Carr develops an influential tone for his audience
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
Both Nicholas Carr and Malcolm Gladwell debated how the Internet has affected humankind in both positive and negative ways. Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for the New Yorker and the author of Small Change:Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted. Nicholas Carr is a writer who has formerly written for the New York Times, The Guardian etc, he also wrote Is Google Making Us Stupid? Gladwell’s and Carr’s essays identifies how the internet has a damaging effect on people.
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
Trying to reflect the fears instilled in himself through comparison to an unrealistic movie. I believe that the internet hasn’t changed everyone’s the way the he says its changed his. I think that people who were born into the world of technology have the ability to analyze into a deeper thought what is needed and skim for instant answer when it’s not needed. On the other side those whom have been forced to adapt to it, such as Carr, find themselves losing abilities they once relied on because they were taught growing up to do both things. Now that the internet has forced them to adapt to it, they can’t focus of doing both types of thinking. The complexity of our minds is deep and that can’t be made shallow by the ability to get instant gratification of information. We simply begin to rule out unimportant things, once the important thing is found then it can be analyzed. Although Carr says his mind isn’t going as far as it used to, clearly that’s exactly what he did in this essay. He used the older “traditional way” of over-analyzing unnecessary things to reach a point that ends up being moot. Clearly, his use of logos, ethos and pathos, although present were not enough to prove his opinion to be
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
Moreover, Carr’s article mentions that by using technology of any kind, users tend to embody the characteristics stimulated by that technology. He says that given that the Internet processes information almost immediately, users will tend to value immediacy. To explain, Carr gives the example of a friend of his named Scott Karp who was a literary major on college and who used to be an avid book reader. However, since the arrival of the Internet, Karp skim articles online because he could no longer read as much as he used too. He cannot pay attention and absorb long texts ever since he read online articles. Internet...
Technology nowadays has an influence on our lives, it has affected everything in it. When this technological revolution started, we didn't expect that it would affect our emotions, and our feelings. All we expected is that technology would develop our ability to have easier life and control nature. But what really happened is that the technology started to be part of us that we can't live without. The Internet is one of the technologies that appeared in our lives, and now it is dominating our lives.