For today’s class, you read Carr’s The Shallows, Prologue and Chapter One. Spend the first ten minutes writing a summary of your reading.
You will have until our next Monday class to type, edit, and post your summary as a comment to this blog post.
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Computing changes how people think, and that is a fact. The Book The Shallows give a non-fiction view of the effect of the Internet. I prologue of The Shallows the author Nicholas Carr explained about the shift from printed book and the old time to what we know now, which is the digital world. Nicholas Carr showed his experience about his time using the Internet. He told about how the Internet used to be a gateway and a pathway to receive and distribute information in the most amazing way. Nicholas Carr loved what the Internet was doing, but overtime his thinking changed and realized media is not just providing information on screen, but also just changing the way we think. The first chapter of the book Nicholas Carr talks about his first introduction of the Internet and how it consumed his mind. Nicholas Carr said, “ The Net has became my all purpose medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind.” Me being born into the Internet world I was already consumed and was easy for me to be into the Internet life. On the other hand it was a struggle for Nicholas Carr to have that some sort of shift from his early time to being introduced to the digital life. His mind and motives started to change as he got used to the Internet. He spent more time on the web then reading a printed book. Eventually Nicholas Carr became less patient with printed books, he rather have read links, or small article to acquire information.
In the chapter Marshall MeLohan talks about how the Internet is changing our way of learning, reading, etc. The Internet is a good thing to have because we can refer to it for additional information and referencing. We learn new information on it and we are able to complete our tasks. On the other hand, the internet is something we should never depend on. Sometimes it is better to just have the real knowledge come from our brains and experiences. The internet is bad in a way because not all of the information is accurate. There are hackers, third party websites, slow connection, can’t learn certain things, etc. In the book, MeLohan tells us how he was the type of person who enjoyed reading, and when wrapped up in the book. But now he says that the internet has changed the way he lives and everyday life. The second chapter and digression from Nicholas Carrs The shallows, was about how our brains are wired to technology. There was a physiology professor Nietzsche who at the age of 34 was starting to have worsened health problems. He was losing focus, he couldn’t stay focused on reading and feared he would son have to stop writing. He later got a type writer that he became so addicted to, he started to remember the keys on the machine. It helped him to do his work and there was a slight change in how he would write. Later in the year, Nietzsche officially lost his eye site and prevented him from writing with the use of pen and paper. This book can be connected to John Medinas Brain Rules because they both talked about how the brain is not just plastic. It creates new ways of processing information and how it wires to different parts of the body. Over time the brain changes shape and makes new connections. In this chapter, car even explains hows he get inpatient when it comes to reading books. He said he would rather be on the computer and view links of articles, books, story, and other types readings.
In the chapter Marshall MeLohan talks about how the Internet is changing our way of learning, reading, etc. The Internet is a good thing to have because we can refer to it for additional information and referencing. We learn new information on it and we are able to complete our tasks. On the other hand, the internet is something we should never depend on. Sometimes it is better to just have the real knowledge come from our brains and experiences. The internet is bad in a way because not all of the information is accurate. There are hackers, third party websites, slow connection, can’t learn certain things, etc. In the book, MeLohan tells us how he was the type of person who enjoyed reading, and when wrapped up in the book. But now he says that the internet has changed the way he lives and everyday life. In this chapter, car even explains hows he get inpatient when it comes to reading books. He said he would rather be on the computer and view links of articles, books, story, and other types readings.
Nicholas Carr discusses the internet, our past ways of thinking compared to our modern way of thinking, and how we can be blinded by the internet. We see the internet as this great resource that we can depend on to get any research we want. He discusses a book by Marshall McLuhan that says that our marvel of modern technology will breakdown our “Linear Mind.” The amount of technology that we have marveled towards has been so much for us to take in. Carr says that even McLuhan couldn’t of for-seen this amount of technology coming towards us. Then, in chapter one, Carr references to HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL is a high tech device, which is human like, with infinite capabilities of doing whatever he wants. This is what Carr is trying to compare us to now in the computer age. He ten discusses how our research habits have changed. He quotes Joe O’Shea, who says that he doesn’t red books, if he needs to research something, he looks it up on Google, and absorbs it from there. We have created a dependency on the internet which is why Carr is concerned.
Within the Prologue, Carr explains the transition we have made as a society from just books, to what we know to be the digital world of today. He also describes how based off of Marshall McLuhan’s “Understanding Media”, whenever a new medium comes along, people naturally get caught up in the information or “the content” it carries. This is one of the reasons why people can get caught up on internet trends. It is also because of this that according to Nicholas Carr, ” Our focus on a medium’s content can blind us”. With the prologue, it becomes evident to us that In the very first chapter of Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows”, we are introduced to the mind of Nicholas Carr himself, along with his opposing feelings towards technology. In the very first chapter, Nicholas Carr expresses more of how he feels about technology. He states that he feels as if that someone, or something, has been tinkering with his brain by remapping the neural circuitry, as well as reprogramming his memory. He tries to emphasize on this, for he believes that we’ve become too dependent on the internet. He has great concern for this because he misses how his brain used to be when he wasn’t fixated on the internet.
The Author Nicolas Car wrote a book name ” The Shallows” and try ‘s to answer the following question, What the internet is doing to our brain? Car introduce the book by saying that times has change, that now communication and focus it has being more difficult because of the new technology. In the first chapter he relates some self experiences that he had, he said that he was a really good reader back in the days, but after a decade to now he can’t be the same as the one he was back in days. After he stated to read he try to find something else to be focus on, he doesn’t catch the context as deeply as he did before, He realise that after a decade technology has been changing, that is why he decide to stop reading and focus more into different medias of technology, An English professor from Florida University said that she don’t pretend her students to read a all book, because their is now different sources that make their life easier and as young adults they prefer to use than read the all thing even thought the class is Literature.
As it’s being stated by car technology has made humans more dependent of the same.
In this chapter Nicholas Carr talks about HAL. HAL is the super computer from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Carr then started to talk about how his brain is remodeling itself, all because of the way he is using technology. He said because of technology he use to spend too much time on his computer and that started to affect him, in the way he naturally do his everyday work. Even the way he uses to do deep reading started to become a struggle. Because of all the effect technology had on him, he stops using it all together. According to him technology is becoming a bad thing to us, because of how much we rely on it. Thought his writing he has a lot of different people option, people that are very Pascual-Leone influential. Some of them agree with him but not all of them, technology is also a good thing it help us in many ways. I agree with O’Shea, who is a philosophy, he said he don’t see the reason for us to read an entire text, chapter by chapter anymore. Because of the internet we could learn a lot more in that same amount of time, we could just cherry-pick our way through text and gain a lot more knowledge without getting bored. This is something that I personally do and it work. By just skimming the text you get the main idea the text is sending. This only work on certain text like for example long article, but for books that you’re reading to get a story out of, it’s better to read the entire book because the small detail are the most important part in those type of text. In general this first chapter is an eye opening experience for me because it made me rethink, on how I should go about using technology.
The internet may be a great and versatile tool for everybody to use. However, Nicolas Carr argues in his book “The Shallows” that the internet is affecting our brain negatively. Several people if not all will understand less and our maps will be remap with the evolution of technology. It affects our cognition and he brings up that his own concentration starts to drift after reading two pages of a book. Also that the internet has made us hungry for information. The internet may connect us to other people easier, but personally I feel that between me and my friends or people in general there is an awkward gap due to the internet. Although it feels awkward in general when friends just hang out with each other, but just take out their phones to mess around with for most of the time.
The prologue of Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows” gives us a brief understanding of what we will be discussing and reading about throughout the book. Carr mentions a man named Marshall McLuhan and the publication of his book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.” Through this book, Carr talks about how it predicted the “dissolution” of the human mind through the uses of modern day technology. He elaborates on this throughout chapter one as he gives us some insight on his experiences with the computer and internet as it was first being developed. Carr kept up to date with recent technologies especially that of Apple but as he began to use it more often, he began to notice many changes in his work style. For example, Carr used to be able to edit and proofread his work from a sheet of paper but over time he would only be able to do that if the word were on a digital screen right in front of him. This shows that digital technology is impacting our brains in many ways.
The prologue in Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows” he gave an explanation of what the book will be about and what he though of the internet. He also wanted us to know about Marshall McLuhan and the book he published in 1964 “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” and on what McLuhan express that the internet media of the 20th century restrain most of our senses and thoughts. In Chapter one Nicholas Carr starts off with comparing him self with the computer A.I. HAL from “2001: a Space Odyssey” on how he feel like his brain is taking and wanting more information like HAL. He explains that the internet is doing the same to our brains, we taking in a lot of information and leaving our brain wanting more making us like the computer HAL.
The internet has affected the way we live our lives. Nicholas Carr talks about two personal experiences that he has when using the internet. At, he has no interested, but he knew how to use the first computer process. It was when he purchased his Macintosh that his perspective of the computer change. But it was when the internet, was first released, had dramatically change his life that he could no longer go back to his normal life. He would go from doing daily task, such as print out his paper and corrected it manually, to doing everything in his computer, such as correcting his writing in his computer, now. WEB 2.0 had changed everybody life like the printing press had, because once it was released, nobody can go back to what society was meant to be before it. The printing press inspires people to read, by allowing every individual to have access to a book. While WEB 2.0 inspire people to use the internet, by allowing every individual to access the internet, really easy. The internet is an evil entity or a good entity, it what you use it that form your opinion of it. Everybody use the internet for individual Peron. Such revolution idea had impacted our society, that we could no longer go back to what life was before.
In prolonged of “Shallows”, by Nicholas Carr, he discusses about how his era was affected by the Electric media. Carr tells that before digital era, the physical copies of writing material dominated nations. Now in twentieth century device like TVs and radio are both being use as source of information. Carr also brings up a man name McLuhan. McLuhan was showman as a scholar, was a master at turning phrases according to Carr. However, there is one phrase what was quite special. “The medium is the message” (McLuhan). In fact, Carr mentions that he was not celebrating, the transformative power of new commination technologies. He also sounded alarm about the threat the power poses and risk of being oblivious to threat. Carr you used the term “enthusiasts”, which described people who were for the kind of media. As oppose to “Skeptics”, which a problem with this new advancement in technology. In my opinion using radio to obtain information is not as efficient as watching the news on the TV. Although, some times I feel like the news presence irrelevant to the people. A good a example Justin Bieber personal business and dating life. I understand if fans want know about that, but why is it on the news? There are shows that meant. for this kind of events. Furthermore, in chapter one “Hal and me”, Carr makes a comprising to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick, where he feel too connect to the internet just like Hal and if did be disconnect his mind would be gone. The same with Hal, when his brain is disconnect he wont be able to communicate with others. This is due to the internet , for Carr’s search, shopping , checking e-mails and watching video steam became much simpler and this enable him to save time. However, Carr notice that he was getting addicted to the internet and it’s wonders. Nevertheless , he was got trapped in the “upgrade cycle”, where he began spending money in new device year. The saddest part is Carr seem to struggle going in back to reading book. I understand where Carr is coming from becausing every body in my era is part of the upgrading cycle. My mother as birth day present she purchase an iphone 6 and later on dave enough money , then I got myself a iphone 6s in couple of month. I truly find some joy in upgrading to the latest devices, but to some this cycle is might be terrible.
In the prologue of The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, we learn about Marshall McLuhan and his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. The book proved to be important due to its connection to culture at the time, in which he both praised and gave warning about new communication technologies that we and in the process of being developed. In chapter 1, entitled “Hal and Me”, Carr gives a brief summary of his history with being introduced to computers and the Internet. He spent his and his wife’s savings on a Mac computer, becoming addicted to the word processor upon it. He then eventually became obsessed with the Internet and realized the negative impact that his crave to surf the Web was leaving on him. The chapter also talks about how him and other people do not read physical books or much reading at all these days, due to the fact that the simplicity of finding the needed information through search engines. It’s also mentioned how when they do read, it’s not in entirety, more so just skimming through the reading for main points. This tactic has proved to be beneficial to some. An example from the chapter would be Muses Davis, in which he states that “The Internet may have made me a less patient reader, but I think that in many ways, it has made me smarter.”