This experience will first cause an addiction of feeling power and self worth. During this, people actually feel more confident and connected, which leads them to the path of continuous partial attention. There will be a boost of energy and memory can actually increase in short-terms. The problem is, that when the brains can no longer handle the excessive amount of information. In this stage, stress and adrenaline shoots up in the body and long-term exposure can be detrimental to both mental and physical health. Evidence supports the idea that these events can alter neural pathways, changing our brain physiology. (Small and Vorgan, 2008). This means that parts of the brain that is in control of mood and thoughts are being transformed without knowing the effects of it.
There is another article that is written by Richard Woods called Report: The Next Step in Brain Evolution focuses on a young woman who said “First thing every morning I wake up, check my mobile for messages, have a cup of tea and check my e-mails… Technology is an essential part of my everyday social and academic life.” Woods describes her as a “digital native” because she grew up in the technological era. Her mother however is refereed to as a “digital immigrant”, a person who did not grow up with technology. He used these two individuals as an example of how the explosion of technology in our lives is only increasing. More things are being done, the impossible suddenly becomes possible and now we are able to connect human brains to a computer. If we actually started to connect our physical self to a computer, would we still be human? That type of evolution will be the death of all things natural. We can only imagine the outcome of what our future technology w...
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These sources include Sherry Turkle, a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and analyst Andrew Frank from Gartner Research (171,173). While both of these sources are from respectable technology backgrounds, Wortham does not disclose why their work is relevant to her essay. She gives no research results from studies that her sources have completed that supports the idea that Facebook corrupts the emotions of the public. The scarcity of support from her sources fails to reinforce her main points in her
Fleming begins her argument by paralleling the transformative properties of the invention of the telephone years ago to social networks today (Fleming). But, Fleming states that “students’ online identities and friendships come at a price, as job recruiters, school administrators, law enforcement officers and sexual predators sign on and start searching” (Fleming). Social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook are frequented favorites, especially by college students. These sites have become so popular that “friending” a person is now a dictionary verb. However, Fleming believes that students are not as cautious as they should be. In fact, “thirty percent of students report accepting ‘friend’ reques...
“With every new innovation, cultural prophets bickered over whether we were facing a technological apocalypse or a utopia” (Thompson 9). This quote states that with every significant break-through with technology, people contemplate whether it will have a positive or negative effect on mankind. Technology allows for external memory sources, connections to databases, and it allow easy communication between people. Thompson then directly counters Carr’s hypothesis and states that “[c]ertainly, if we are intellectually lazy or prone to cheating and shortcuts, or if we simply don’t pay much attention to how our tools affect the way we work, then yes - we become… over reliant” (Thompson 18). In his opinion, “[s]o yes, when we’re augmenting ourselves, we can be smarter… But our digital tools can also leave us smarter even when we’re not actively using them” (Thompson
Humans are becoming more technologically-efficient every day. New inventions and innovations are constantly being made. The Internet is becoming more “reliable” every day. However, how much do we really get from the constant advancement of Internet use and smarter technology? Should we look at their contributions to the world as a benefactor or a curse? The common effect of “artificial intelligence” in the technology we use every day is examined by two brilliant authors, Nicholas Carr and Jamias Cascio. In Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, he explains the effects of the Internet and technology in our society and claims that the overuse of technology is dangerous and can affect how our mind operates. Jamias Cascio, on the other hand, uses his article “Get Smarter” to show the positive effects of technology in our constantly adaptive society claims that technology may just be making our society smarter and more efficient. While Carr and Cascio both use the claim of cause in their articles to provide valid points on how technology affects our society, Carr’s article proves to be more effective because it focuses on skeptical-based evidence and uses a variety of appeals and proofs.
Interestingly enough, both journalists conclude their articles with the uncertainty that goes into their viewpoints. Where will the future take us? We have no idea. Will technology ultimately harm human cognition? We don’t know. We will never know for sure until the time arrives. In the meantime, we can continue to research and speculate, but that is all. Personally, I believe that technology has a significant effect on the human mind. It has come to dominate all aspects of our lives, even our biological processes. Technology is an incredibly powerful tool, and with great power, comes great responsibility.
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
Using technology can have certain effects on the brain. Nicholas Carr’s magazine blog, “The Web Shatters Focus, Rewrites Brains,” tells us an experiment from a ULCA professor, Gary Small. Gary Small
thereby alter life situations in the natural? What he found was that it is possible that the mind acts back on itself (as the brain) to cause physical and structural change.
R. L. Paul, M. M. (1972). The Species of the Brain Research, 1-19. pp. 113-117. S. A. Clark, T. A.
While the concept of the “triune brain” is, as a whole, wrong, MacLean in 1970 did propose some interesting ideas about the evolution of the brain. He proposed that there are three main layers of evolutionary progress in the human brain. It starts in the middle with the most basic, the reptilian brain. The reptilian brain is the brainstem itself, and is responsible for the most basic of survival behaviors. The next layer out is what he called the paleomammilian brain, which is where MacLean says we find the limbic system. This part of the brain deals with social and emotions, and MacLean argues that most mammals have this. The third and most complex layer is the neomammilian or neocortex that deals with the highest of cognitive functions. LeDoux argues that while MacLean was fundamentally wrong about the physical layers of the brain, he was not far from the truth about the evolutionary brain. Emotions at the core are in part for survival, and so therefore the more complex the emotion, the more complex the functions needed.
According to an article on mashable.com, since 2006, the amount of time spent on the internet has more than doubled, from 2.7 hours to 6.9 hours per month. Today, there are so many more available internet based sites accessible to Net users of all ages, making it possible for adults and children to spend their time surfing the internet, watching Netflix, and instant messaging with people all over the world. “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity” (Albert Einstein). With the advancements of technology come the evolution of humanity. Does it help us or harm us? Actually, it has done both helped and harmed the brains, lifestyles, and interactions of our species.
Facebook is a helpful website that allows people to build relationships and stay in touch with friends and relatives. People first create a personal profile to let users know more about the people they interact with online. This personal profile includes “personal information (birth date, gender, hometown), general preferences (movies, music, books), and status (student, alumni, current occupation)” (“Facebook”). This section of Facebook allows people to get to know the person better and to see if there are common interests that could eventually start conversations and build friendships. People enjoy social interactions and are “driven, primarily, by a desire to stay connected to and involved in the lives of friends who live close by, far away, or have just entered into their lives” (Henig and Henig). It is hard to see friends or relatives who live far away, so Facebook is a great source to stay in touch. Since people are connected with friends and relatives online, it keeps them from loosing touch with their relationships. Modern relationships “flow between flesh and technolo...
and family, and also “meet like-minded people” ( Metz, par. 1). In some cases, business people such as Ron West, claim that he uses Facebook “to become acquainted with new customers”( par. 8). Yes, these types of websites are great tools to stay in touch with old classmatesand faraway family members. It is a great source of communication, but there is always a con to every pro. Even though users are connecting with others, users of social networks never know exact...
Physical consequences can also lead to social consequences, an article states, "an addicted gamer who loses sleep because he 's playing so much simply doesn 't have the energy to invest in relationships. Lack of sleep may also make him irritable and difficult to be around" (Video Game Addiction). The article also goes on to explain the long term effects that having a video game addiction can
...r phones update our minds suffer another loss. People are slowly losing their independence to think for themselves and the ability to rely on their own intelligence instead of a computer`s. When this happens, it can endanger the proper development of the personality and hamper the social relationships needed for life together in society. The more we succumb towards technology, the less personality we are capable of retaining. It`s come to the point that the smaller our devices get, the smaller our brains get as well. Technology has vastly improved over just a short amount of time, and societies` dependence on it is strengthened more and more with every day that passes. Yes, it makes life "easier", but the easy way out isn`t always the best way. People don`t just depend on their technology for help anymore. It has come to the point where they depend on it to survive.