The Shallows What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brain By Nicholas Carr Summary

Nicholas Carr, in “The Shallows What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains” (2011), argues specifically that technology and the Net is complex and will continue to grow and change our brains. He explains how everyday situations such as a child drawing a simple map on paper, is becoming more complex and often grows into a map with countries, states, cities, and even the capitals marked in properly. Carr concludes that in order for us to get older human brains have to grow. The writer convinces his audience that With the exception of alphabets and number systems, the net may well be the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use. At the least, it’s the most powerful device that has come along since the book.

We get so used to everyday life, that if something is changed or taken away we can not get used to it. One machine that is always changed or getting better, is clocks. A world without clocks is difficult to imagine because they are always in our daily lives. “so imagine if written language, an even more primitive technology, hadn’t come into use ten

thousand years ago. When the Greeks formed one of the first alphabets in 750 B.C., access to the written word became far more available to the population at large.”(The Shallows) Because clocks are part of our everyday life, they continue to get more complex and easier to use.
If items that were created before the internet was developed never existed, our brains would have never developed the way they did.

We need the simple tools like the alphabet to be successful in life. Students are learning different by reading books off the the Net than a paperback book. In today's society people have stopped using paperback books as much, and have instead resulted to buying a e-reader or other devices that you can download books on. “the Internet has even worked its way into books themselves, in the form of e-readers. Some fear that this last refuge of immersive, linear thinking is also disappearing as e-books steadily gain in popularity, bringing immediate availability, distracting links, and possibly lower incentive for quality.”(The Shallows) A survey from pewresearch.org shows that 27% of Americans read an e-book in the past 12 months up from 17% in

2011.
The Net has took over the use of appliances that we use in our everyday life. People used to have to use a typewriter, printing press, a radio and tv at separate times, but now we have the Internet, this has taken all of these tools and but them in one machine. Since it has so many uses we end up spending the majority of our time interacting with it. A 2008 international survey of 27,500 adults showed that around 30% of leisure time is spent on the web. In 2009, Ball State University determined that the average American spends over 8.5 hours a day looking at a screen (TV, movie, computer, mobile phone). There are so many people who waste so much time on the Web and its hurting them more than helping them. Some effects of using your phones or computers to much include Computer Vision Syndrome, text claw and cell phone elbow and even nomophobia (the fear of being away from your phone).
Humans know that the Net can be used in many ways. Humans also know that the Net can change the way people think and act. The internet will continue to grow and become more complex and will gain new users and may change in certain ways, but one thing that is certain is, even if it is harming humans it’s the most powerful device that has come along since the book.