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The influence of the internet on society
Impact of the internet on our society
Impact of the internet on our society
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This article starts out by talking about how the Internet is a resource we can use for almost anything. In result, we are becoming dependent upon it in things like to increase work, reading, and writing. This article also claims that technology is a huge distraction in our lives. Media has to live up to the expectation their audiences have of everything being a "shortcut". We are becoming too use to being able to getting everything online. Carr takes issue with the constant skimming those results from using the Internet, mostly because he sees it is changing how our society thinks. Carr believes the gathering and quick reading of information will revolutionize how we intake written data. Carr believes that his recent difficulties with concentrating while reading books and long articles may be due to spending a lot of time on the Internet. …show more content…
He describes how the internet is set up to make other people money and how our thinking skills and our attention spans are undercut in the process. Carr raises the point that unlike speech, you need to be taught the ability to read in order for the brain to interpret symbols into words. He claims that the internet has actually affected how human beings process information. Carr goes as far as to say that the impact of the Internet may be far greater than any other previous technology because the Internet is gradually performing the services of most technologies. Carr also shows examples from history in which human behavior is changed due to a new invention. He shows how the invention of the clock changed the way that people lived in that they “stopped listening to their senses and started obeying the clock” (Carr). For example, before the invention of the clock, people would eat when they were hungry and wake up when the sun came
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
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
The internet is used today for many reasons. It is a platform for people to stay in touch with others, entertain themselves and complete work tasks. In the following articles, “Internet Addiction Left my Brother Homeless” by Winston Ross and “The Pointlessness of Unplugging” by Casey N. Cep, the internet is discussed very deeply, but in two varying lights. In the article by Cep the author is writing from personal experiences and research. In the article by Ross the author is writing merely from opinions.
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.
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
Through the art of “power browsing,” long passages have become too much to “absorb,” according to Bruce Friedman (Carr, 3). Nicolas Carr thinks that we have learned this habit, due to the fact that while we are reading an article, theres links with alluring titles waiting to be read, and advertisements blinking on the side of the screen specifically for us by companies who have access to our information to catch our interest. This all results in the “distraction” of our concentration (Carr, 12). It diffuses our attention by giving us a great deal of things to look at, ridding us of time to articulate information.
The internet is our conduit for accessing a wide variety of information. In his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr discusses how the use of the internet affects our thought process in being unable to focus on books or longer pieces of writing. The author feels that “someone, or something, has been tinkering with [his] brain” over the past few years (Carr 731). While he was easily able to delve into books and longer articles, Carr noticed a change in his research techniques after starting to use the internet. He found that his “concentration often [started] to drift after two or three pages” and it was a struggle to go back to the text (Carr 732). His assertion is that the neural circuits in his brain have changed as a result of surfing endlessly on the internet doing research. He supports this statement by explaining how his fellow writers have had similar experiences in being unable to maintain their concentrations. In analyzing Carr’s argument, I disagree that the internet is slowly degrading our capacity for deep reading and thinking, thereby making us dumber. The Web and Google, indeed, are making us smarter by allowing us access to information through a rapid exchange of ideas and promoting the creativity and individualization of learning.
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
With the rise of technology and the staggering availability of information, the digital age has come about in full force, and will only grow from here. Any individual with an internet connection has a vast amount of knowledge at his fingertips. As long as one is online, he is mere clicks away from Wikipedia or Google, which allows him to find what he needs to know. Despite this, Nicholas Carr questions whether Google has a positive impact on the way people take in information. In his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr explores the internet’s impact on the way people read. He argues that the availability of so much information has diminished the ability to concentrate on reading, referencing stories of literary types who no longer have the capacity to sit down and read a book, as well as his own personal experiences with this issue. The internet presents tons of data at once, and it is Carr’s assumption that our brains will slowly become wired to better receive this information.
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
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
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
Are technology and the media shedding the very fabric of the existence we have known? As technology and the media spread their influence, the debate over the inherent advantages and disadvantages intensifies. Although opinions vary widely on the subject, two writers offer similar views: Professor Sherry Turkle, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, in her article “Can You Hear Me Now” and Naomi Rockler-Gladen, who formerly taught media studies at Colorado State University, with her article “Me Against the Media: From the Trenches of a Media Lit Class.” Turkle asserts that technology has changed how people develop and view themselves, while at the same time affecting their concepts of time management and focus (270). Similarly, Rockler-Gladen believes media and its inherent advertising have had a profound effect on the values and thinking of the public (284). I could not agree more with Professor Turkle and Ms. Rockler-Gladen; the effects technology and media have worried and annoyed me for quite so time. The benefits of technology and media are undeniable, but so then are the flaws. People are beginning to shift their focus away from the physical world to the virtual world as they find it easier and more comfortable. The intended purpose of technology and media was to be a tool to improve the quality of life, not shackles to tie people to their devices. I no longer recognize this changed world and long for the simple world of my youth.
Even the society is becoming more and more in favor with advancements in technology and mass media. The rate that we get information is too much for us, but it is what keeps us intelligent. Personally, I am quick to open the Internet when I have a question about something or want to research a topic. The accessibility of the vast information available at the finger tips makes learning easier and more tangible. The issue that we are facing with technologies is due to our lack of self-control. Even the society is becoming more and more in favor with advancements in technology and mass
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.