Internet On Our Minds Analysis

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The Internet’s Effects on Our Minds Today Although the internet has provided us with many useful innovations, is it really benefiting us in the grand scheme of things? With the internet, all the information in the world is at our fingertips or just a click away. A study done in 2011 published in Science Magazine states that, “college students remembered less information when they knew they could easily access it later on the computer” (Sparrow, Liu, and Wegner 776-778). This behavior has, in Nicholas Carr’s opinion, helped to deteriorate the way we process information and how it is stored in our minds. Carr demonstrates his personal struggle with this in the line, “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle” (572). …show more content…

However, not all of his thoughts and examples provide enough evidence to fully support his argument. As introduced in paragraph 30, Carr touches on a major contradiction in his thoughts, “ Just as there’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine” (579). He acknowledges the fact that people tend to expect the worst about things they do not understand, which some can argue is exactly what Carr is doing in regards to the internet. Also throughout Carr’s essay, much of his evidence to support his take on the internet is quite outdated. Some of the evidence he brought up to defend his argument was written in 1976, 1936, and even 1882. For example, Carr introduces Nietzsche’s theory about how the typewriter changed the way he wrote. Nietzsche believed, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts” (575). This statement is from the late 1800’s and is based purely on personal interpretation. Most of Carr’s examples either happened nowhere near the creation of the internet or how the internet is operated today. It is this lack of modern evidence that proved to be the weakest part of Carr’s argument. Although Carr’s essay has flaws, his main argument is still …show more content…

Furthermore, another notable point of the argument is how Carr points out that we are surrounded by many more distractions than we used to be. Although we have always had to deal with distractions, the internet does not compare to anything we have dealt with before. In the line, “now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages” (572). Carr connects the reader to his side of the argument by playing on their emotions. This adds to his argument as the reader relates their own experiences with reading and their attention

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