Nicholas Carr The Shallows Essay

In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr challenges the pervasive effect of Internet, citing psychology and neuroscience to prove the consequences done to our neural pathways. Technology influences the way we think, making us efficient but superficial processors who are easily distracted. There is little doubt that the Internet is reshaping our brain, but every intellectual technology does the same thing. Due the distractive and pervasive nature of the Internet, it weakens personal memory and reduces attention-spans , and interfere with students’ scholastic accomplishments. o Perhaps the biggest advantage of the Internet is its convenience, but Carr stresses that convenience is not everything. Instead, he argues that its pervasiveness is actually

‘We want to be interrupted, because each interruption brings us a valuable piece of information… And so we ask the Internet to keep interrupting us, in ever more and different ways. We willingly accept the loss of concentration and focus, the division of our attention and the fragmentation of our thoughts, in return for the wealth of compelling or at least diverting information we receive.’ (133-4) Reduced attention-spans of serious consequences. Without being able to think long and hard on a certain subject, this may revert to academic failure or more course content reduction, in an effort to keep the school system afloat. It is very likely that the Net is the ‘most powerful mind-altering technology’. (116) With the fragmentation of thoughts, schools and eventually even governments will be forced to reform their way of thinking. The Internet rewires your brain to the ‘new normal’. Being homeschooled and using the Internet for research and classes, as well as acting as an editor for some people, I found that the more I use it, the more my ability to concentrate is reduced. During the summer, I hardly used the Internet at all, and happily reread Ivanhoe and Shakespeare without having to pause. Now, when I use it for classes again, I find that even reading familiar books such as Jane Eyre have become more tedious, and I am