Nicholas Carr The Shallows Essay

The social generation has taken over. If you don’t tweet on the daily, receive dozens of instagram likes, or know what the heck Tumblr is, you better get Googling because you’ve been left behind. It’s easy to get caught up in all the likes, retweets, comments, and ratings. We seem to need this sense of validation through numbers. We are never offline, we are permanently logged in. In Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows he searches for the consequences in the power of technology. It seems everybody in this ever-connected world is linked to some form of social media. And if you aren’t, I applaud you. It’s a TRAP. Carr begins his book by telling the stories of three well-educated men and the effects the internet has had on them. As stated by Bruce Friedman, a blogger about the use of computers in medicine, “Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it” (Carr 7), it’s too hard to focus on lengthy articles. The internet has shortened our attention span’s, seeking answers purely for convenience. I’m often looking for a

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