Comparing Richard Sennett's Humanism And Is Google Making Us

1454 Words3 Pages

Humankind has become overly dependent on technology due to its uncomplicated availability for information and interaction. This has raised great controversy to whether these advances have been beneficial or dangerous to humankind. Some people argue that the advancement of today's technology is ruining our productivity. Others believe it has created a great range of outlets for communication, research and media. This has affected the way we think, act, communicate, live and learn. Take the advancement of telephones for example. With social apps and direct messaging systems, like email and text messaging, dialogue has become nonessential unless it is business or news related. In "Humanism", an essay written by Richard Sennett, Sennett mentions …show more content…

These direct messaging systems have caused face-to-face contact between peers to decrease. Also, compared to past generations, children no longer spend as much time outside playing. Instead, they spend most of their time on smart devices playing video games, talking on the phone, or communicating on social network apps with friends and family. It can be argued that the advancement of telephones has allowed communication and the sharing of ideas to become increasingly functional. In the essay's "Humanism", by Richard Sennett, and "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", by Guy Billout, it is mentioned how the advancement of technology has had good and bad effects on the brain's conservation of information, human observation of time, and the use of effort to find information. Like mentioned in these essay's, I agree that the advancement of technology has had some beneficial and detrimental consequences for all …show more content…

As we continue to gaze at a computer screen, our attention span is lost, affecting our cognition. Billout supports this claim as he explains "the variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli". He also states that "[t]he more [humans] use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing". However, it is important that we understand that reading "is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It is not etched into our genes the way speech is" (Billout). This means we as humans have to spend additional time encoding and understanding information we acquire after reading. However, in Sennett's essay, he argues that the time we are allowed to sit back, and process information online allows humans to, "become better at strategic thinking, since, by stepping back, [humans] are able to reason why a failure occurred". Many see this time being wasted time due to drift of concentration when reading. It can also be said that our abilities to convert knowledge conveyed in writing has been framed by "the technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading", as a result to its effects on the

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