At the beginning of our penultimate class, write a summary of your reading of the last chapter and epilogue from Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows. Think about how Carr approaches his argument and counter-arguments throughout his nonfiction book. How can you incorporate his approach to argumentation in your own writing?
6 thoughts on “Beginning of Class Writing: Carr, The Shallows, Ten and Epilogue”
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In chapter ten of “The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr, it mainly discusses about a computer program named Eliza. Weizenaum, a computer scientist, introduced this program, which became extremely popular. As it obtain famed, it has been theorized that it could be used to treat mentally ill patients because through this program the people who use this program actually imagine that they are talking to another human being. Weizenbaum came to believe that,” Wha makes us human is the connections between our mind and our body, the experiences that shape our memory and our thinking, our capacity for emotion and empathy. However eventually we will lose our humanness as we continue to use computers.” I can relate to this because what I experienced through the first eighteen years of my life has affected my thoughts that I think about these days and how easily I feel empathy for others, too. Also I have noticed that people around me are constantly on their phones texting and etc, but the scary thing is that they actually seem to be less emotional, too.
In chapter ten titles A Thing like Me, Carr starts off by telling us, what is now know as the instant messaging. This technology was invented by Joseph Weizenbaum, who was a Forth-one year old, computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then went into more detail and started to talk how the brain has different field of view. One of these examples is when he said that when a carpenter picks up a hammer, the brain sees it as parts of the hand. In the Epilogue he discusses another important subject that seems to affect us as student. This subject is the computerize grading of essay, the problem with this is that everyone have a different style of writing and the computer is not program to handle all of it, so that make it a disadvantage for some student. As Carr said they are made to follow rule and not to make judgment. Judgment is one of the main characteristic of grading an essay. Overall he doesn’t say that the computer and the internet is a bad thing, he just saying that we are depending on it too much and it starting to have a negative effect. He also said that it would be good, if we as human could control and use computer as another tool and not let it happen the other way around.
In chapter ten of âThe Shallowsâ by Nicholas Carr, entitled A Thing Like Me, Carr talks about how computers are only as smart as we want them to be. He starts off by talking about Joseph Weizenbaum, who founded the programming language ELIZA, which was able to make a human sentence and correctly respond to it. We as humans have grown emotionally attached to technology, like how those grown attached to ELIZA when it was introduced, as if it was human. Like Carr said, computers have âcome to mediate that activities that define peopleâs everyday livesâ affecting the way we learn think and socialize with others. We have grown extremely dependent on technology, from our computers to our cellphones, and treat them like its human, and a friend, rather than just a tool. This attachment also relates to the attachment we have to the internet, and how we treat the internet than more than just the tool to our success, as if it has a life of its own.
In chapter Ten of âThe shallows âby Nicholas Carr, this chaper functions as a summary, but also as a description of how we shape technologies and how they shape us. We create tools as extensions of ourselves, but âevery tool imposes limitations even as it opens possibilities. The more we use it, the more we mold ourselves to its form and function⌠McLuhan wrote that our tools end up ânumbingâ whatever part of our body they amplifyâ (Carr). For example, when the robot arms were made, factories work lost their position. The point of this line of thought is the dependency that forms between us and our technologies. Furthermore, Carr illustrates an interesting study from Dutch clinical psychologist Christof van Nimwegen in which two groups of participants tried to complete a logic puzzle on computers. One group had the aid of software designed to be âas helpful as possibleâ. The short story is that this group became dependent on the softwareâs assistance; they âaimlessly clicked aroundâ to solve the puzzle, while the group using bare bones software completed the puzzle âmore quickly and with fewer wrong movesâ (Carr). Carr describes that Even more impressive is the fact that eight months later, the groups completed the same puzzle as well as a variation, and the group without helpful software completed the puzzle twice as fast.I honestly think that simplicity is way to go , this how confusion is avoided. Nevertheless, technological inventions have a main purpose , but could have many affordances.
Joseph Weizenbaum stated that people would have to see the machine and the technologies it has. It was said to be both like a map and clock that transformed nature and altered âmanâs perception of reality.â Later, Weisenbaum was the founded of a program that has the programming language called ELIZA. This program was able to make human sentences and respond back as if it was a human. Today we have grown attached to technology, like how those grown attached to ELIZA when it was introduced, as if it was human. Technology is used every day. Many people depend on the use of technology. It has shaped our brain by becoming dependent on it and has shaped who we are. We use it everyday for multiple reasons. Nicholas Carr explained how computers are are very intellegent.
To understand how technology, we need to understand, that the machine is a part of human past intellectual technologies. It is a tool that changes man perception of reality that it is the very tool that form and construct the world we live in. It takes one time for the technology to completely take over our life. For this only reason, the technology becomes a reflection of your former self. The computer mold ourselves to function like a computer. Itâs alienated ourselves from our friends, disturbed our learning process and diminished our memory. It is Important to note that if we do break free from the chain it give us, we will never truly go back to what our lives was before it. âThe brighter the software, the dimmer the user.â This mean that better the technology we receive every year, the harder for us to resist it and be free from it. What matter In the end is not what we will become in the future, but what we are already have become.