For today’s class, you read Carr’s The Shallows, Nine and a digression. What was his argument in chapter nine, and how does it fit into the overall argument of the book? How persuasive do you find his argument now that we are almost at the end of the book?
10 thoughts on “Beginning of Class Writing: Carr, The Shallows, Nine and a digression”
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Memory is something that we almost almost every day 24/7 365 days a year. We use it when we do everyday work and we don’t even realized it. Like now, as you are reading or writing something your brain will create wires that are connected to ur memory and will create small bits of the event. In John Medina’s brain rules He talks about how our memory works and how it functions as we get older. Our brains create new wiring every day. Smell, sounds, and taste can bring back many different memories froM when being a kid to an adult. Memory helps us with our surroundings. It tries to recall a specifi piece of information that can redirect the person if they get lost. Having a memory is something that should not be put to waste. It is a very helpful tool that is in use and we don’t even know it.
Today in day’s we don’t really develop the ability that our brain has to remember things. We used our electronic devises to take over that, while I was reading this chapter I ask myself how many phone number to i know really well? then it was there that i realize that everything was true. Now that i have and smart phone I gave all the memory job I ever could instead of me remember. But on the other hand I also ask how can we remember so much lyrics of the different songs we used to hear. i know that john Medina the writer of “Brain rules” stated that what is attractive to us will be easier to remember, so i think this is the answer to my question, music really attract us and that is why we can remember so many songs lyrics.
Rahat Ahmed
Professor. Ellis
12/13/15
English 1101
The Shallows
In the this particular chapter of “The Shallows” Nicholas Carr mainly talks about numerous brain functions through detailed scientific explanations. As Nicholas Carr said “As we are denied of our inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance, Richard Foreman concluded, We risk turning into “pancake people- spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.” This quote has a very deep meaning because it sends a message that how we as humans are more dependent on the computer rather then our own brain. Its quite baffling because its honestly true. Nicholas Carr also talks about how the Internet is being used as a replacement for memory, rather than a supplement to it. Overall there are both good and bad side effects to the Internet and not enough people realize that.
In this chapter, Carr discusses memory, and our brains development in terms of it. The internet is something we need, but in terms of research and general reading, do we really remember every single thing we read? Do we actually read everything on a page, or do we just skim the page? Well, since we have google, we can just look up what we want directly, without reading a general article about the topic. Carr says that reading online doesn’t capture our attention as much as hard cover, or a newspaper. Skimming is way easier online. How is that bad, though? Well, going back to the discussion of memory, only our short term memory works when reading online. Since the medium is different, the way our brains remember it also changes. This is one thing I do disagree with Carr, with the whole skimming thing. I have found in my personal experience that, yes, reading online is easier, but not because I skim through it. I actually don’t skim. I feel that its easier to capture the information easier, and if for some reason there is something I don’t understand, Google is a resource always at my disposal.
Within this chapter of John Medina’s Brain Rules, Medina describes the function of memory within our brains, along with receptors that the brain uses in order to aid with this. He uses this information of the brain to convey more of the overall idea of the book by saying how we use the brain to replace memory. We’ve been using all of this information provided by the internet in a manner which hinders us. Instead of using it to our advantage by supplying our brains by enriching it with information provided by the internet, we’ve been using it more so as a crutch for our memory to lie on. It is the lack of the cognitive ability to utilize memory efficiently and effectively that, us as a society, have been falling apart in away since we fail to take full advantage of the resources available.
In this chapter, memory was first form with the belief of writing down your idea, would be better to recall than just shouting it out for one time. Socrates was right with this beliefs. With our ideas written down in paper, was the first step of creating a book. Books gives and offers many individual more than just cold hard facts, it provide opinion, ideas and fiction stories. Throughout the year, it was founded that we have more than one kind of memory, the other memories we have are primary memories and secondary memories. These memory plays an important role of how we perceive our environment differently than those compare with other individual. Our memory is not like those of computer because we can’t just add more memory to our brain or take it out and move it to someone else memory. But it acts the same way, in such that we are able to gather information and input it to our brain and place it into a certain location, where it could be easy to access it. Nelson Cowan states, “Unlike a computer, the normal brain can never reaches a point at which experience can no longer be committed to memory; the brain cannot be full.” This mean that we make modify our brain in a way that it can make it easier to access our memory, while making it easier on us to learn new ideas or skills in the future.
Chapter 9 of Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows” focuses on memory. Carr starts off the chapter explaining how Socrates was right in saying that as people began writing and reading the thoughts of others, they became less dependent on the contents of their own memory. Essentially, what we used to memorize could now be stored in tablets or scrolls. Peter Suderman, a writer for the American scene, argues that, ” it’s no longer terriblely efficient to use our brain store information.” What Suderman is implying is that memory, nowadays, is used as an index rather than a library. It is used to remember how to get to a source of information rather than actually remembering the source itself.
In chapter nine, Nicholas Carr talks about the memory. We as humans have relied on our memory prior to discovering writing. With the knowledge of writing, we no longer had to rely on our memory, but now refer to documents to remember anything such as books. These books provided a greater diverse supply of facts, opinions, ideas and stories that had been available before. It also promoted deep reading which encourage information to stay longer in our memory. However, in my case, I do not know why, but I find it hard to stay awake and concentrate on my book without daydreaming a few minutes into the book about something I recently saw or read. Or I could simply just fall asleep because I simply find the book boring. There has only been one book that really captivated me and taught me more about the memory which is “Brain Rules” by John Medina.
In chapter nine of “The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr, entitled Search, Memory, Carr talks about the concept of memories and how they are formed. The chapter starts with Socrates’ view on memory, and how we as people “grew accustomed to” writing our thoughts and reading other people’s thoughts, making us less dependent on our own memory. This same concept is shown today in our latest technology. Through the use of things like calculators and cell phones, we have grown to become dependent on these tools rather than trusting and relying on the basic skills at strategies that we should have learned and remembered while young. This is also shown in text messages, making the connection John Medina’s Brain Rules of repeating to remember more. This can be proven false, for example if we keep depending on a calculator for an answer, why would we remember an answer rather than just referring back to the tool we used? The internet is having a negative effect on our memory since we do not need to remember the information we see on it, since the internet and information will be there, along with vast ways to be connected to it.
in “Search, Memory,” the ninth chapter in Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows”, Carr talks about the brain and how it holds short term memory and long term memory. He starts off by talking about how the internet has been a go-to place for information that isn’t stored in the brain. He basically means that the internet has replaced the memory of the brain. Carr later talks about the brains limitless ability to store information. A lot of people these days use the internet to gather information. This process however isn’t always good because memorization requires attention and depth, something that we don’t train our brains to do when we are reading information online. All we really do is just skim the information and not process them.