Most people in today’s society have been affected by how simple technology makes our lives. Considering they’re hand held computers, it makes sense. All of this technology at our fingertips has also brought upon its negative outcomes. Technology has created a false world that we consume ourselves with on a daily basis. Technology allows us to separate ourselves, mentally, from what’s going on around us. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, by Nicholas Carr, he notices how the internet allows him to jump around and lose focus. Another effect that technology has on society is that we are losing fundamental social skills. Texting and emailing make it easy to contact someone, but we are losing skills that come with face-to-face communication. …show more content…
Technology can become a necessity, to where we need it to communicate. In “Meet Your iBrain” it says, “As the brain evolves and shifts its focus to new technological skills, it drifts away from fundamental social skills, such as reading facial expressions during conversation or grasping the emotional context of a subtle scripture”. Technology has become a way out of in person communication. Whether it be sending a simple text or creating a false self-image on social media, technology provides as a buffer to reality. It goes in the article to say, “…young people eight to 18 years of age expose their brains to eight and a half hours of digital and video sensory stimulation a day”. That is eight and a half hours that we lose face to face communication, such as, playing a sport or hanging out with friends. Another reason technology is harmful, is that is allows us to jump from one subject to another without truly concentrating on anything. For example, in “Breaking Down Borders” Carr says, “A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse …show more content…
My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.” By quickly reading information off the internet it changed the way he read. Instead of focusing on a piece of writing, he would just skim it. According to a Tarleton student I interviewed, he said it’s hard for him to multitask. For example, he said he can’t watch television and do his homework, because he would only focus on one or the other. He spends most of his time on his phone texting, snap chatting, and using other social media. When asked how often he switches between apps within 10 minutes he responded with 20 times. In “Meet Your iBrain”, it says our brains are always in a “continuous partial attention”, we are always keeping busy while never truly focusing on anything. In my opinion technology has completely altered the way we think and how we communicate. In previous generations, say 60 years ago, if you wanted to talk to someone you would meet face to-face and have a conversation. Now we can send brief texts to get the point across, but we are not clearly getting the emotional point of view. When we have a question instead
Technology in today's world affect everyone about the same since we can not live without. The amount of different activities and possibilities to do on the internet using different devices is immense . Whatever you want if it is food,games, or researching something anyone can receive in a matter of seconds. Tammy Kennon who is the author of , “ 5 New Brain Disorders that Were Born Out of the Digital Age” states the negatives about the technology devices that run the world. She tells us about how our patience, attention spans, and memory are all affected due to that fact that we are obsessed with electronics. In today’s world everyone relies on web searches like google to answer a question or do something for them. When a research was conducted by researchers they found out that”[O]ne -Third of them did not even try, reaching for google immediately” this shows how much people rely
In his article entitled Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Carr expresses his concern over the way the internet is changing our brains. Every since he started skim reading on the internet he’s lost his ability to read for a long time; “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do” (Carr 314). Our minds have adapted to reading on the internet. We take in vast amounts of information in a short period of time and so anything that’s long can’t hold our attention. We are no longer to analyze and think deeply about texts because we can’t focus for that long. I definitely feel the effect of skim reading. I do read a lot but I don’t deep read. Whenever I’m trying
The article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” by Nicholas Carr provides the argument that the internet has turned traditional reading into passive reading that prevents deep-thoughts and intellectual growth. Carr believes that being able to sift through extensive amounts of research and noteworthy articles online in a couple of minutes has turned us into passive readers. He explains that not having to spend time searching for information from books has given us a new habit where we quickly sift through information online and miss or forget many important details. Carr claims that the internet has taken his ability to stay focused and have deep thoughts. He explains that his mind expects quick and efficient passive reading to learn new information. I agree with this claim because just as Carr explains, I also feel as if “someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain.”
In the Atlantic article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr discusses the changes in a human’s thinking style and concentration ability that have occurred since they start depending on the internet for information. The author begins describing the new struggle that he is facing with reading lengthy texts. He indicates that this change is caused from spending a long time on the internet. Carr noted that this universal medium does not only provide endless benefits for the public, but also shapes the process of their thoughts. The internet is affecting human cognition; therefore, controls their brains, causes lack of capacity to concentrate, and disengages their ability to read, absorb, and interpret articles. The author is not the only
Technology has become a daily part in one's lives where it helps people do the simplest of tasks and allows time consuming tasks be completed in seconds. People don't have to go to a bookstore to buy books anymore since e-books made the process easier or have to wait in long lines at the DMV when people can make an appointment through their phones. The amount of time technology saves people isn't beneficial though, according to Paul Goldberger and Christina Kline technology has belittled experiences that they believe are part of the experiences of life on a daily basis.
The article published by The Atlantic, titled Is Google Making Us Stupid? causes the reader to contemplate the effect that the internet really has on us. Technology is used daily by the grand majority of people, and we jumped into this lifestyle without researching the effects it would have on us. Until recently people have not thought twice about this, but now we mutiple people, including scientists, questioning the effects on the brain. One of the hypothesized problems caused by the internet are the inability to retain information. The reasoning behind this thought is we try to be quick about our reading, we do not like being inefficient, what we do is we skim. The writer found this to be true for himself as well as a couple of his friends
Both authors point out the negative reasons of using “too much” internet and less interaction with people. Because people lose their focus from doing the work. Carr offers concern by stating how writing few pages is hard and reading long articles has become difficult. Car writes, “Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it” (55). Even he has become the victim of online browsing and not able to write long articles, which shows how he has problems focusing on writing a blog. More easiness has made people lazier because people do not have to put extra effort to do any tasks. Therefore, Carr says that some people would save a long article to read it later, but the chances are less that people actually go back and finish it (55). He also shows how people may forget to work on something they had saved for later while doing something online. However, they tend to forget it because some may get distracted from scrolling through one link to another which slips out of their mind. Bauerlein would strongly agree with Carr that people are becoming more distracted and technology-like. Bauerlein also shows the concern that people use fake facial expression to describe their expression. He argues that people send “smileys” and “emoji’s” when they send text messages on phones or inserts an emoji on Facebook, but their actual expression could be completely different and no one would figure it out (77). It prevents people from knowing a person very well because they could have a totally different perspective about them over the phones. Bauerlein describes his concern that people are not at their benefits when they talk through “emoji’s” on the phone because they would not be able to figure out a person’s hand movements when they talk about certain things or their actual facial
In his 2008 article, “Is Google making us stupid”, Nicholas Carr makes the claim that the use of the internet is having a detrimental effect on people’s cognition. That by having our attentions constantly interrupted our brains are being rewired causing our attention spans to be shortened and reducing our ability to contemplate on what we are reading. He offers his own experiences with reading printed books and articles and the decline of his concentration and contemplation. While Carr makes some interesting claims, he misses the idea that the internet is not changing our brains in a negative way but is allowing us to free our thoughts. This change could result in reducing the need to retain minor or inconsequential data and it
Carr observes this in his own behavior, “And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation,” (Carr 20). As people change the way they learn from reading books to skimming online articles, their attention span for the former significantly shrinks, and they no longer find themselves able to sit through a book or even an essay. Also, similar behavior to what Carr experienced was documented in a British study, “They found that people using the sites exhibited ‘a form of skimming activity,’ hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they already visited,” (Carr 21). The internet promotes skimming opposed to actually reading and digesting articles, and because of this people are less and less interested in deep reads and deep thought. They are beginning to refuse any learning outside of the efficiency of the internet, even when better information may lie in a longer
Carr quotes Scott Karp, “ What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”(Carr 2) This quote illustrates his idea that the internet is having a negative effect on the population’s comprehension and reading ability. The rapid way the Internet spews information at us has changed the way we read. I would argue that is not a bad thing, if you study about how eye sight works skim reading is the natural evolution of our mind. Our eye’s work in a certain way so that they do not process everything they see, causing phenomenons such as change blindness. The internet has caused us to start to isolate the important facts from essays and articles, Mimicking the way our eyes only process relevant information. Eventually the way we write will adapt to the way we read as everything changes based on the
2). Carr explains the issues he is having with deep reading after spending too much time on the Internet, beginning with; how he becomes fidgety and distracted when reading. He looks for other things to do as opposed to reading and now struggles with reading all together; a hobby that used to be so easy for him. Today, the Internet is an essential source of information, as Carr explains in paragraph four. Despite the endless knowledge the Internet has to offer, Carr argues that it is doing humans more harm than good by saying, “And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” What Carr is trying to say is that the Internet is leading individuals away from reaching a deep level of reading, thinking, and analyzing. By comparing his concentration to the ocean, Carr shows his audience how the internet has negatively altered his way of reading intellectually. Bruce Friedman, faculty member at the University of Michigan Medical School, describes how the Internet has changed the way he reads into a sort of “staccato,” meaning
Technology is an essential part of the American life and it's constantly changing with the newer generations. A few people view technology as a positive addition to life while others believe it is a negative thing and will take over their lives. Nicholas G. Carr a well known American, the author of The Shallows a novel about the various distractions that come with internet and how people are losing key skills. In the start of the book the negative effects of modern technology on the masses. Carr’s argument is effective and flawed for various reasons such as don't include the helpful advances have improved education, medical field and business.
In his article for The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr gives the argument of how the internet is changing the way people are now reading less than they used to a century ago. People all over are becoming less interested in reading material that is longer than a few pages sometimes they can't even comprehend to finish reading a paragraph. The concentration someone had while reading a lengthy book is now gone, one of the smallest distractions can get your attention even just boredom itself can make you drift away from your reading. The more time people spend online, the more their ability to concentrate on their readings diminish until they no longer can stay focused on reading something that is longer than three sentences. Because of the way the use of internet on a daily use has made it more efficient for people to search and find what they were looking for right away, the need to be searching through books or other types of informational mediums, is no longer something that is done as often, sense it would take less time and effort to look something up rather than read through a book to find the
When we walked into the 21century, technology has not only become an important part of our daily life, it has been advanced at a rate we could never imagined. Technology broadens our horizon and shows us so many aspects of the world. However, the more advanced technology becomes, the more we lose our ability to care for others, which is a significant part of our humanity. We use machines a lot more in our daily life instead of ourselves. Due to this, the open world makes it more difficult to concentrate and focus on ourselves , others and our environment. In “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era”, Richard believes that modern technology makes us less attentive and hard to concentrate on one thing. The development of technology does bring us convenience and let communication become easier and faster, while we become too rely on our technology and use them to store our memories, communicating and so on. In “We Are a Camera”, Nick claims that we are more likely to use electronic products to record our memories instead of our own brain.Technology could make people become too lazy to memorize or talk to each other face to face. The development of technology lets us become more connected to the whole world, however, we also spend less time with our close friends and family. We are losing our humanity because we rely on technology more than ourselves, this is shown evident through cognitive attempts at multi-tasking which is to follow society’s fast speed and focus
Furthermore, I agree with Turkle that technology is overtaking our lives in a way that we might not even notice. Most everyone has one has a cell phone. Whether we are texting, reading emails, or playing Angry Birds, we are so absorbed into a virtual world. Even though we may not realize it, many of