For today’s class, you read the seventh chapter from Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows. Spend the first ten minutes of class writing your summary of the reading. What was his thesis or unity of thought in this chapter? How does his argument in this chapter relate to what he argues throughout the book?
12 thoughts on “Beginning of Class Writing: Carr, The Shallows, Seven”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
The internet is a very valuable source that everyone uses everyday. We all depend on it in a variety of ways. The internet today is a very big part of the human society. Being on the internet puts an influence on us. It draws our attention to many different things. When we go online, we go into an environment that is open to communication, doing online shopping, and looking up research. We get into deep thinking, we start to lose focus because me see advertisements which leads to pocrastination. In the chapter, it is said that the internet involves may paradoxes. A paradoxes is a statement that is logic to and could either be true or false. Being on the net sizes our attention to scatter. The internets cacophony is conscious and unconscious of what its doing. Our brain changes into a processing unit. It takes in information and breaks it down in sections so it stores in our brain.
In this chapter, Nicholas Carr starts off by discussing a lot of what he has talked about before. He then goes on to discuss short term and long term memory. How does the brain process information and what memory is being used depending on what method we use to read? Well, with reading paperback books, studies have shown that our long term memory is in play. We can remember things without forgetting them if we read a hard cover. In contrast, when we read e-boos and anything along those lines, we are prone to forgetting what we read, due to our short-term memory being in play in that time. Of course, one can say that it varies for each person, and that is true, but of course, these are studies. Also, Carr discusses a book called “Everything Bad is Good for You” by Steven Johnson. He uses it as a counterargument to his beliefs. Johnson believes that reading on hardcover is less engaging, therefore, we don’t withdraw what we would from other mediums. Carr says that in part, he is correct, but where Johnson falls short is in factoring distractions. We might not be engaged with paperback, but the less distractions we have means that whatever we do learn from a book, we do remember it better. That is linking back to the long term memory.
In chapter seven, Carr start talking about how our body reacts to the internet and the stimuli coming from it. He states that it engages all out senses, except taste and smell. The net also has a fast rewarding system. We get pings, messages, pages, notifications, emails, etc. at an instant. We receive it all quickly for social or intellectual nourishment. Our attention is solely diverted to receiving and evaluating the information from the internet . Out of many paradoxes the internet holds, Carr speaks about this one specifically” the Net seizes our attention only to scatter it” The internet promotes short-term memory, while reading a book promotes long-term memory. In the chapter, Carr cited ” the more you multitask, the less deliberative you become; the less able to think and reason out a problem” and then he writes” you become, he argues, more likely to rely on conventional ideas and solutions rather than challenging them with original lines of thought.” This sticks out because its relatable to how I would do things sometimes, especially in relation to homework.
Rahat Ahmed
Professor Ellis
English 1101
12/6/15
The Shallows
In this particular chapter of “The Shallows” Nicholas Carr mainly talks about how “We are making huge sacrifices for convenient, bite sized information. By constantly using the internet and digital media to gather information. I personally agree that sometimes its more then ok to surf the internet for something you might not know but in this modern time, everyone seems to abuse the digital media especially the internet for every little thing. According to Nicholas Carr “Our ability to make rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction remains largely disengaged” what Nicholas Carr means by this quote is that when you put your mind to a particular reading and read it very carefully you will notice that its better then having to go to the internet and look it up because that way you gain more knowledge and actually keep your mind fresh. I personally prefer to do things on my own rather then surf the net because whenever I try to look something up on the internet I always end up getting distracted and end up on Youtube watching videos.
The internet is a revolutionary technology like the printing press. Once our society starts using it once, we could never go back to what our lives was before. Like the printing press it inspire us to read, the net inspire us to seek unlimited knowledge by the click of a button. What happen to our brain when we go online? We enter into an environment that promotes rapid reading, distracting reading, and superficial learning. It is possible to have deep reading, but the net does not encourages us to go read at that way. The internet has become an obsession, to the point that is no longer a want, it is a necessity. The internet seizes our attention to only for it to scatter it all over it. Nicholas Carr states” The Net’s cacophony of stimuli short-circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively.” He meant by this is that we focus to much on the internet that, it has damage our mind mentally to prevent deep thinking and creative thinking. With the web providing us with unlimited and annoying ad, that distraction becomes more distracting. We are unable to focus on what we supposed to be focus at the start and it promotes procrastination. If we do manage to use the web to read and a source for studying, than I’m afraid to say that we would have difficult time to remember it because the web is best used for short term memory. Unlike its counterpart, which is the book, we are able to remember what we read because having a hard copy in or face of instead of digital copy promotes long term memory. Experience reader has calm mind and not a buzzing mind like people using the computer too read. The books provides no distraction to us at all. Reading advocates deep thinking and we understand and learn what we have read. It is obvious that reading this chapter Nicholas Carr has an unfair favoritism for books over the net. He viewed it as evil, but has some good to it. He believes that the good the net has provides us, does not outweigh the destructive it had already done to our mind. The only flawed I can see that the internet affect us is in our reading.
In this chapter of Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows”, Carr goes on to describe the affect that the internet has on us., our senses in particular. The internet is a great asset that us humans have developed upon our needs. We have accommodated the internet itself as a very viable resource, and to be honest, at this day in age, I believe it to be even something that is essential. Without digressing further from the overall summary of this chapter, Carr elicits the affect of the internet on our senses. He conveys this by describing how the internet is being overwhelming with things that are unnecessary. Things such as being flooded with useless pop up ads, as well as notifications and things of that nature, distraught our attention towards what we should use the internet to do, and that would be to seek out as much knowledge as possible on any given source. Yet, with the internet being taken over by big business, instead of getting a viable source on some form of research, you’re given an option to click a link that sends you to something completely irrelevant to you.
In Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows” chapter 7, he talks about short term and long term memory and how the brain process information. Nicholas says the type memory that is being used, depends on what method we use to read. Studies show that our long term memory benefits more when we read paperback books. Whereas with things like e-books or online articles, they are more for your short-term memory this is because they can be pretty forgettable. However, these facts do vary from person to person but there have been many studies that prove otherwise. Nicholas also talks about a book called “Everything Bad is good for you” by Steven Johnson and he uses it as a counterargument to what Nicholas says. Johnson considers that reading on hardcover isn’t as engaging as digital media; therefore, we don’t take in as much info as we would from digital media. Nicholas states that even though he is correct, Johnson still factor in other things like ads or other distractions. We might not be as engaged when it comes to paperback, but there are fewer distractions and the fewer distractions the better our concentration and memory
Chapter 7 up Nicholas Carr’s the shallows discusses the manner in which information is provided to us over the Internet. As Carr states, “Our use of the Internet involves many paradoxes, but the one that promises to have the greatest long-term influence over how we think is this one: the net seizes our attention only to scatter it” (Carr, page 118). Our brain can only process so much information at a time. Carr uses the term “cognitive load” to describe information flowing into our working memory. However, if this cognitive load exceeds our minds ability to process information, we would be unable to retain the information from our long-term memory which hurts our ability to learn and understand. Carr mentions that we are focusing on the screen itself when we are browsing the web, however we are distracted by “the medium’s rapid-fire delivery of competing messages and stimuli” (Carr, page 118). Carr also talks about how concentrating to intensively on something causes our mind to narrow down so we can’t think of any other perspectives causing our mind to be stuck. He introduces the “sleep on it” method in which we sleep and return with new ideas and a fresh perspective.
In Nicholas Carr’s “the Shallow”, Carr talks about advantages and disadvantages of getting content online. even when exposure is minimal. Carr spends ample time presenting plenty of evidence to support his point. Carr describes that by adding links to our copy, we encourage readers to click and gather more information from other sources, segmenting their exposure to our content and decreasing their ability to truly comprehend and process it. Carr also highlights research from Jacob Nielsen. Using eye-tracking software, Neilsen discovered that users generally “read” information in an “F” shape on the page, and he summed up his findings by saying the F is “for fast. Furthermore, That’s how users read your precious content.” He found that when word count increased, the time spent on a page only slightly increased. Carr speculates that the brain gets better at speedily categorizing whether information is relevant and important with more web use. Users also get slightly better working memories. The cost of these gains comes from weakening of brain cells for calm linear thought and lengthy contemplation. Users get better at hunting for information and worse at creating it or reflecting on it.Â
In chapter seven of “The Shallows” by Nicholas Cage, he begins to discuss how the Internet’s influence can only be judged by intellectual history. However studies and research has shown that the Internet promotes distracted thinking and superficial learning. This is not a good effect in the long term for people since they will not be able to retain the information that they may or may not need in the future. On the bright side, it rewards our brain by constantly giving it information and capturing our attention. Our brain constantly craves for new information so the Internet is like a jackpot for our brain. Although the net may do that, it also scatters our attention. Also new skills and perspectives are gain from the Internet, but at the same time people will lose their old ones they had.
In this chapter Carr title it “The Juggler’s Brain” and he did this because he want to show us how the internet has mold the human mind. He said that we are going through the same journey that he had already went through, the journey of figuring out what’s going on with our mind. According to him all research that has been done is bad for the human, because it promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking. He then went into more research to prove that the internet really do change the brain. Studies by Gray Small a professor at UCLA, have proving that digital technology don’t just change the way we live but the way our brain is, this digital technology strengthen new neural pathways in our brain and weakening old ones. To me this don’t sound bad, it just part of our existence, it’s just another step in our evolutionary path. Hypermedia was also another one of his many argument, and again he argue how it is bad for us and it is making our understanding weak of the stuff that we are learning. Again like all his other argument he have evidence. His evidence show that people who watch a presentation with hypermedia score lower that those who watch a regular presentation. For this one I agree with him, more could sometime be less. You could easily get distracted when hypermedia is use and not focus on the problem ahead. In the digression he talks about IQ testing. Studies has showing that IQ testing score has been going up, but then again Carr argue that PSAT score has been the same since 1999. The era that digital technology became widely use. Overall Carr argue that the internet is remolding out brain and making us more dependent on it, he makes it sound like a negative thing, but to me it’s just another helping hand.
In chapter seven of “The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr, entitled The Juggler’s Brain, Carr talks about the actual effects that the Internet has on our minds. Going online produces a setting that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking and superficial learning. This shows that the Internet is having a negative impact on our brains. Hyperlinks takes away from our deeper comprehension and connection making. A mixture of media affects how well we will remember things. The fact that we skim through long articles on websites rather than actually reading it makes us lazier and in term we tend to remember less. One benefit that does come from this though is that we as humans become better at looking for information when we need rather than being stuck reading through numerous texts and books in order to find the information that we need.