For today’s class, you read Carlson, âNicholas Carr on the âSuperficialâ Webby Mind,â http://goo.gl/VqyHVm and Carr, âA writer of books, essays, and ephemera,â http://www.nicholascarr.com. During your summary writing during the first ten minutes of class, write what you learned about the book that we are about to begin to read and its author, Nicolas Carr.
Remember to type up your beginning of class writing from Monday and today, and post that writing as comments to their respective blog posts. Since Project Two is due before class on Monday, you might have to scroll down to find the correct place to post your comments.
Since our brains have the ability to change it is not surprising to me that phones, internet and other things in relation to that effect our brains and how we absorb information. We are beginning to have a short attention span for long pieces of information. This is because we are getting used to reading and gaining information quickly. I began to notice this when I got my first electronic device. I used to grow up without handheld devices that would connect to the internet. So I did most of my research on books and I used to be about to read about 5 to 10 books in two weeks. That all changed after I turned 13 and got an iPod after that my deep reading turned into skim reading, my way of gaining information changed, just as Carr had said.
I believe that not only does the internet fully can have the ability to just take over one’s whole brain and attention towards something. I think the reason for that is because of the amount of things that can grab someone’s attention in the internet. The internet is an extremely powerful thing. You can learn so much in a day by researching all over the internet. In Nicolas Carr’s Book, He speaks about ” What I started noticing around 2007 was that I seemed to be losing my ability to concentrate. Not just when I was sitting at a computer. Even when the computer was off and I tried to read a book, to sustain a single train of thought, I found it difficult.” He is pretty much describing that eventually the more information that you get the more curious you’d get and eventually you’d get drown into the world of information and letting your train of thoughts rolling through your mind. I used to always read books when I was younger because I believed and still do believe that the more you read and the more you learn, The more knowledge you truly gain and more successful plans you can have in life truly. But as the future begins, Technology enhances. So when that happens all these new products like iPhone’s And iPad’s and more things that’ll put you in a futuristic area to read and receive information and start to believe that the brain eventually gets hooked on that of technology and gain new information every day they use that of the internet.
Today we read two article about Nicholas Carr . One is article is from Nicholas Carr’s own website and the other one is from an interview with Atlantic.com . I really liked both of those article , because soon we would start reading one of Nicholas Carr’s book called ” The Shallows” . These articles helped me learn about this author’s background. Here is my overview of those two articles:
Nicholas Carr is an American author who writes about technology and culture. He has written for The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Wired, Nature, MIT Technology Review, and many others. One of his book called “The Shallows”( Which we would read in class soon) was a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times bestseller.
In his book(The Shallows) he basically tries to answer the age old question , which is “Is internet making us dumb?” He explains that Internet is now being a part our daily lives. It has changed the way we socialize, work, and get educated. But is it a good thing? Nicholas Carr said, “In some ways, I see this change in our thinking toward an ever more distracted and fast-paced mode as perhaps inevitable. I’m not sure we’re going to be able turn the clock back as a society.”
I agree with Nicolas Carr. We have came too far . I don’t think there is any turning back from Internet/technology. But it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. By using internet we save time on research, information/news travels faster, save money and gas by online shopping . It’s like the next evolution in human history!
But we pay price for all this benefits. We are losing focus, it’s very difficult to concentrate on one thing. .Also a lot us is losing the ability to read! It’s becoming a very hard thing to read a very long article or reading a 250 page book.
The readings of Nicholas Carr’s website and interview both connect with the book ‘The Shallows’. Carr talks about how we use the internet and by doing this can cause us to become âless interesting.â Nicholas Carr compiles upon the topics of technology as well as culture. He feels the internet could be changing the way our brains are thinking. Also he talks about how we struggle when it comes to concentration. He uses the example of reading a book and having a hard time focusing. The idea of this happening to younger kids is also mention because Carr discusses how everyone is involved. Anyone who uses the internet will be affected regardless of age.
In the first article, âNicholas Carr on the ‘Superficial’ Webby Mindâ Nicholas Carr base of argument is, if the internet is making changes to our brain in a negative manner. He argues that the use of internet compared to the old way of using ours brains and concentrating gap is getting bigger. In one question he states that the internet is on factor affecting your focus and train of thought. Services like Facebook and Google was also mentioned to be a risk factor of our mind. âThe danger for the young is never developing the mental facility for contemplative thoughtâ. This book should be an interesting read hopefully, and might benefit my life it is valid.
Nicholas Carr is a man that was both in the technological era and also out of the technological era so I believe that, he will be a valid reference. In the second article, âNicholas Carr, A writer of books, essays and ephemeraâ it basically talks about his backstory. He is a well-known writer of books that has to do with the effects of factors on the mind ex. internet. According to the article, âHe holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.A., in English and American Literature and Language, from Harvard University.â
As I was reading Nicholas Carr article on his book “The Shallows” it had me thinking about how much I rely on Google and other websites on the Internet. He asked “is google making us stupid?”. My answer is no, but it is making us lazy, when he hear something and know nothing about it we are triggered to explore what it is. As John Medina’s Brain rule #12, says we are “natural explorers” Google helps us to find out the answer and we’re able to get others people perspective on the subject to think about in another way. Google helps a lot of research projects and helps us to learn by seeing the information on a screen and we’re able to study it from anywhere . In the book Nicholas Carr explores in greater depth the cognitive and historic implications of these changes, comparing the internet’s impact to that of other technological innovations, including the printed book. Carr is a former member of the Encyclopedia Britannicaâs editorial board of advisors, was on the steering board of the World Economic Forumâs cloud computing project, and was a writer-in-residence at the University of California at Berkeleyâs journalism school. In the early 1980s, Carr was a founding member of the universally unnoticed Connecticut punk band The Adrenaline Boys. Nicholas Carr is a well rounded author. These articles helped me to think beyond the Internet.
We read two Articles about Nicholas Carr about his book” The shallows” In the Article published on Atlantic he basically talked about how The interned is making us loose our focus. He also says that he’s not trying to make the internet look like the “boogeyman” but he’s only exposing the bad side of it and since he starting spending less time online he’s been more happy. In the second Article published on his website It was telling us the book he already wrote and the focus on his books.
A writer of Books Essays and Ephemera stated “he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association”. Nicolas is a very wise and well known writer. Nicolas is an author of many great literatures. In the two articles about Carr and his book “The Shallow” Carr shows how internet is effecting human. According to Nicolas Carr “His provocative thesis-that internet is literally altering our brains”. Carr believes that internet is controlling our brain. Internet has positive and negative sides. It can help a person find a right resource in short time than looking for it in libraries. The negative side of internet is that it is making human lazier and people are losing their ability of being focused for long. Internet has not only changed our way of thinking but it also changed human society.
Rahat Ahmed
Professor. Ellis
11/8/15
Nicolas Carr
According Nicolas Carr using the internet too much is literally altering with our brains and the fact that we should stop using the internet especially Google for every little thing. I personally use Google for every little thing because when ever I have a question or concern about anything I usually search it up on Google.
Nicholas Carr writes about technology and culture. He is the author of the acclaimed new book that was recently published called â The Glass Cage: How Our Computer Is Changing Us. One of Nicholas Carrâs book called â The Shallows was 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times bestseller. Carr is a former member of the Encyclopedia Britannicaâs editorial board of advisors. In the early 1980s, Carr was a founding member of the Universally Unnoticed Connecticut Punk Band called âThe Adrenaline Boys.
In âNicholas Carr on the âSuperficialâ Webby Mind,â and âA writer of books, essays, and ephemera,â Nicholas Carr explained about how technology affecting our brains. He explained that we depend on Internet that made our brain lazy to explore things on our own because we have everything stored on Internet that can be accessed any time you want. If we stop using it our brain can explore things in different way and retrieve more information than it usually do on Internet. Internet has both negative and positive affects on our brain. If we try to explore things from other sources our brain will develop in better way retrieve more information. Nicholas Carr also wrote a book called âThe Shallowsâ in which he explained how internet affecting humanâs brain.
I have been a user of the computer and the internet for a very long time so I can say personally say without a doubt that the internet has a strong influence over many people in the world and are super effective in exciting the attention span of the brain. My reason for believing this is because there are a multitude of things on the internet that tend to sway, excite or pull the attention of others over the internet. Things like ads, movies, video on youtube, articles, the news, etc. Tend to grab the attention of many individuals over the internet. The internet can be an formidable force. As fro the question “Is the internet making us stupid?”, I personally do not believe that it is making us stupid. I believe it is the individuals choice and how they choose to perform actions that is the cause. True, the internet does take away our focus, but in reality, it is the individual that is allowing the internet to do these things, it’s their own choice to do and use the internet and basically become distracted by it.
According to the given to analysis the book written by Nicholas Carr âThe Shallowsâ There was this one specific question that Nicholas Carr asked which is âIs Google Making Us stupid?â right off the bat I had answer running through my mind such as, yes it is because Google is one of the most visited website in a day. People seeking for quick and fast answers to get by the day. Within the book â The Shallowsâ he searches for greater depth in past history and uses his information to compare it with the current life we are living.
Nicholas Carr is a writer that mainly focus on technology and culture. He has written multiple books in his lifetime. He is a former member of the Encyclopedia Britannicaâs editorial board of advisors. Nicholas Carr was also a writer-in- residence at the University of California at Berkeleyâs journalism school. He was an editor of the Harvard Business Review. So far he is an amazing educated person. Wait there’s more, Nicolas Carr also holds a lot of degrees such as a B.A. from Dartmouth College and he also has an M.A., in English and American Literature and Language, from Harvard University.
Nicholas Carr is an author, among many other things, and his article, “The ‘Superficial’ Webby Mind”, he argues that today’s vast network of electronics and available internet resources is actually making humans dumber, because instead of learning things through repetition, or trial and error, or any other fundamental method of learning, we are able to type a few buttons and have whatever answer we were looking for, use it for whatever we needed that information for, and then essentially discard the memory from our brains. This “webby mind”, as he calls it, is replacing actual human intellect with artificial, and he thinks it will lead deeper into an era of smart phones and dumb people.
It should be no surprise to anyone that we all use the internet every second of the day for anything we are curious about. We have such a large database at our disposal but, according to a man named Nicholas Carr, author of the book âThe Shallowsâ, maybe the internet is doing more bad than good, at least in the means of our thinking and reasoning. After reading an article of his known as âThe Superficial Weeby Mindâ, Iâve learned that Nicholas Carr believes that maybe, as us humans, may not understand that we are already victims of information overload, which means that we are being exposed to a large amount of information at once. Some of the things we research may not even be entirely accurate and could lead us astray. The problem about searching through a massive database of information is that we may not find the exact thing we are looking for or could get easily sidetracked by other outside sources within the website that is currently being viewed. I know that I am no different from many individuals today because I find myself use the web extensively for little bits of information that I may not know too well. Nicholas Carr claims that the Internet is making us stupid but, I believe that it depends on the way that the individual at hand may choose to use it. For instance, the web could be used for many different purposes such as educational, business, and entertainment.
In the two links provided to us about Nicholas Carr, who wrote “The Shallows” I learned much about him and his points of views on the internet. One question that stood out to me would be when Nicholas Carr asked if google was making us stupid. If you think about it, we do over use google. We go to google for any little thing we dont want to bother remembering or even to check something that we should instinctingly know. Carr believes that the internet is making our brains lazy and that if we continue on being so dependent on it we won’t know how to live without it when the time comes. The internet is leaving a gap that is just getting bigger and bigger if we keep on with the dependency on the computer. When Carr explains the “webby mind” he speaks about how people are trading their natural sense of intelligence for artificial intelligence coming from a computer. Basically saying we are making a bad trade. If this continues and mankind continues with the making of smarter computers there will be smarter technology and phones and dumber and more incoherent people.