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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The prologue of The Shallows converse about todayâs society use of technology. Two types of people are enthusiast and skeptics which both disagree on whether technology is either making us smarter or dumber. A publisher named Marshall McLuhan feels that if we use technology frequently, this can change us as people or as a society. In the beginning of chapter one, Carr starts to deliberate his experience of not being able to concentrate while reading lengthy articles or any form of text. Research has become easier to gain information and shapes our process of thought. Our mind expects us to grasp data like our computers do and we end up struggling to stay focused. A well educated man whose name is Karp is able to have the ability to think clearly believes that if we read small bits instead of a whole text or book, this could expand our minds. Also the inter-web can receive information faster if needed. Being online has caused a feeling of sensation which can be âintoxicatingâ meaning that we could become addicted to our devices and slow down. Carr buys an expensive modem and realizes machines have a huge influence over us.
Nicolas Carr is a great writer and wrote soma amazing literatures. In The Shallow, Carr emphasized on how internet is affecting us. In this chapter Carr talks about his experiences with computers and without computers. As well as the positive and negative sides of net. Carr stated that â what the net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplationâ. This shows the negative side of internet, because of internet people are gradually losing their ability to stay focused for long. People got used to getting what they need in a matter of minutes. The positive side of net is that net saves so much time of people, people can shop, banking, research, etc online. Net helps people get more information in short time than they can get from searching for physical books or articles. Carr believes that the internet is not only affecting our daily lives, but also affecting the way human thinks. Net is changing human as society. Before people used to work hard and get the information people were looking for, but nowadays people expect easy answers because of internet.
During the many years that has passed, technology has changed and so did society. There are many Pros and Cons on how technology has impacted the lives of many people. Marshall McLuhan published a novel called “Understanding Media”, he stated that “electric media” which involved telephone, radio, movies and television “Were breaking the tyranny of text over our thoughts and senses”. This book was more talked about than it was read and this goes to show that a lot of people aren’t reading the same, they’re losing their concentration and have a short attention span. Is search engines like “Google”, having a huge effect on our mind? I think it does, not making us stupid, but making us mentally lazy. We’re not likely to want to think about things, but it does have a positive effect on us. Not knowing something and being able to just look it up and find multiple answers to have you thinking about it, is a good way to gain knowledge. Scott Karp said ” What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?” I think this is true, our brains are changing and adopting on how we use technology, mostly becoming lazy.
“Media works their magic, or their mischief, on the nervous system itself.” & “The computer is our servant as well as our masters.” These are just two quotes found in the prologue of The Shallows by Nicholas Carr that sums up the prologue. We as users of the computer and the internet are not aware of the risk of using this resource daily. You tend to lose abilities you were fine tuned to do over time. Chapter 1 jumps into Nicholas Carr’s experience in using the internet more than he intended to. As a result, he ends up losing his physical editing ability which got replaced with the computer’s processing protocol. He also realized that he couldn’t even read a whole article or book because he wanted to skim through it for the answers/details. In all, he compared the use of internet and humans very similar to HAL (Artificial Intelligence).
It feels as though the nature of humans is slowly changing in order to better our selfs in the civilization we have created. Technology is not only advancing, it is accelerating and the more we become exposed to convinces the more impatient or less attentive we become. We are paying less attention to the old environment and focusing more and more on the new one, the electric world we have created. All this change makes me wonder, is it going to be good to us or is it going to effect us in an unexpected way. I wonder how far can we force our brains to change until it can no longer keep up with our fast changing environment. How long will it be till we start seeing less paper and pen and more digital writing.
In prologue Nicholas Carr talks about a certain book which was published in 1964. This book is called “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and transformed” by Marshall McLuhan . This book transformed him into a star. In this book McLuhan declared that the âelectric mediaâ of the twentieth centuryâtelephone, radio, movies, televisionâwere breaking the tyranny of text over our thoughts and senses! Nicholas Carr is inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s book because a lot of his predictions came true.
In chapter “HAL AND ME” he uses Stanley Kubrickâs “A Space Odyssey” as an example. In that movie HAL ( an A.I.)said âI can feel it. I can feel it.â. An A.I. is not suppose to feel that way ,it’s not suppose to feel at all. HAL could feel now because someone tinkered with his brain wiring. And now HAL has changed.
Nicholas Carr compares himself with HAL .He said “Over the last few years Iâve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isnât goingâso far as I can tellâbut itâs changing. Iâm not thinking the way I used to think.”- This quote from Nicholas Carr probably summarizes the main point of this book. He changed but it’s not exactly like HAL. His transformation is in a different category.
He has changed the way he used to read. He used to find it easy to read a book or a lengthy article. But now he just read the main points and also his concentration starts to drift after a page or two. He start to look for something else to do. He is not the only person who is suffering from this . We all are going through the same thing! We have become so used to the modern technology that just reading a simple book feels like too old fashioned! We have become too comfortable with modern technologies. And it all has started when we were first introduced to internet.
According to the Prologue of The shallows written by Nicholas Carr, it mainly focuses on the early experience in computers.âMcLuhan declared that the âelectronic mediaâ of the twentieth century– tele–phone, radio, movies, television– were breaking the tyranny of text over our thoughts and senseâ.Technology is making society fail in their community skills, social skills, athletic skills, etc. We all know that technology has its positives and negatives, most people only see technology for its positives. Well the truth is that media will never be good for humans.Using browers and search websites can really make a person wonder.Is google doing enough for me to gain information? Is it helping me ? Is it just feeding me answers to make my life easier ? Human use technology in a daily life if it’s to pay bills, homework, shopping, communications, social media , information, or a guide to finding a location. Nicholas Carr talks about his personal experiences when it comes to using technology. Around the 1960âs Nicholas Carr got this first mac ,which costed him 2,000.His wife was really upset. While using the mac he said he started losing his writing skills, because the computer was doing half of the work for him. If humans use the computer more we start procrastinating, which is really common in a college student.
Rahat Ahmed
Professor. Ellis
English 1101
11/15/15
The Prologue
In this particular chapter of âThe Shallowsâ by Nicholas Carr talks about how the usage of Technology has been taking over the universe. People are getting too used to surfing the internet when ever they have a question about any particular thing. The human brain expects us as humans to hold onto data like how the computers do and we end up having to struggle because thereâs only so much information the human brain can hold. Instead of making our brain work harder by for example reading a book or even a dictionary, what we do is go straight to Google and search it up. The media can be very deceptive at times. According to Nicholas Carr technology in general has a huge amount of control over our brain. I completely agree because I honestly can not live without the internet in particular.
In Prologue and chapter 2 Nicholas Carr explain how technology negatively effecting our brain and making us lazy to think. As the technology is advancing the way of gaining knowledge also change because of the technology. People donât have to use their brain the way they use to do it which was a healthier way. Due to Internet people getting lazy and donât think like people comparing to past. Technology made it easier to retrieve information but it also made people lazy to perform other task that doesnât require technology like IQ tests. The search engines like âGoogleâ made easier for people to search of anything that they want to know but it also have negative effect on them that their brain get used to it and when they have to read long passages they cant focus on it because their brain get lazy.
CHAPTER 1 ^^^^ sorry for mistake
In the start of the chapter we have Nicholas Carr discussing the way society uses technology today and its effects. There are two main arguments here. Whether technology is making us smarter, I’ll categorize that as Group A. Or whether technology is actually making a lot dumber which can be categorized as Group B. There was a publisher that went by the name of Marshall McLuhan who had published a novel called “Understand Media: The Extension of Man and Transformed”. The book pretty much discusses how the “electric media” is changing us as people individually and throughout society which is pretty much evident. Due to technology we are using our brains thinking power less and relying more on the quickly generated information that technology is giving us, basically we’re paying far less attention than usual.
IN chapter one “What the internet is doing to our brains” Nicholas Carr started the chapter talking about his own experience with computer and also without it and how he felt that he was not able to concentrate. He also wanted to persuade us that computer changed our way of thinking by thinking power less and more on quickly generated information. There was also and argument about whether Technology is making us smarter or dumber.
I’m not too sure when this book was written but when I read “Blackberry” I questioned the reasoning this book would contain. Ironically, the prologue covers some ideas we still follow today and it concerns me that the two types (being enthusiasts and skeptics) that Carr explains are still there to this day and age of technology. Carr seems to order his 1st chapter chronologically through the growth of technology and briefly goes over his own experiences with the tech he got to use. Carr brings up an interesting point at the end of the chapter when he explains his “new brain”, and how it was different in the way it consumed information. Nowadays people seem to react the same way, with smaller attention spans.
According to the Prologue of The shallows written by Nicholas Carr, it mainly focuses on as technology advancing the way we intake, process and think has changes as well. Finding out through his experience he learns is it truly hurting us or benefiting us . In this prologue he talks about his experience with computers and his before and after affects while using it. Nicholas Carr describes how McLuhan saw that in the long run a medium content matters less than the medium itself in influencing how we think and act. He says ” we’re too busy being dazzled or disturbed by the programming to notice what’s going on inside our heads. Therefore, i believe he is saying that we don’t really think for ourselves at this point. We get fed information and debates and expect to have an opinion on it based on what we are given. We never realize or put situations on our own, such as example from social media, the news, articles etc. Have we became robots to our own creation?
According to the Prologue of The shallows written by Nicholas Carr, it mainly focuses on as technology advancing the way we intake, process and think has changes as well. Finding out through his experience he learns is it truly hurting us or benefiting us . In this prologue he talks about his experience with computers and his before and after affects while using it. Nicholas Carr describes how McLuhan saw that in the long run a medium content matters less than the medium itself in influencing how we think and act. He says â weâre too busy being dazzled or disturbed by the programming to notice whatâs going on inside our heads. Therefore, i believe he is saying that we donât really think for ourselves at this point. We get fed information and debates and expect to have an opinion on it based on what we are given. We never realize or put situations on our own, such as example from social media, the news, articles etc. Have we became robots to our own creation?
In Chapter one he talks about how we evolved to become less interested in reading and our lack of focus on one thing has increased. Just take a seat and think how technology has affected you and how it benefits you in a way. He speaks about that the longer we use any device such as, computers, cell phones, iPads etc, the way we think, communication and concentrate has change. Interviews with bloggers claim that the use of internet is altering their mental habits. Even though the internet has made it so much easier to intake information and find it, Nicholas explains how its how its having a negative impact. Its made us lazy and reliable on only using the internet. Its made our concentration on longer books and articles harder to focus on. And it made it harder to grab our attention for long periods of time.
Technology works in mysterious ways that we canât possibly fathom. It rapidly advances everyday and has quickly became one the greatest tools to mankind but, a young author named Nicholas Carr believes otherwise. Sure, technology could be considered as just a tool that we use for our daily needs or in actuality, we are the ones who are being controlled by it without fully realizing such. In the Prologue of âThe Shallowsâ, Nicholas Carr goes over how the over consumption of media can possibly affect us in negative ways and change our mindset entirely. One quote that supports this is, âEven people who are wary of the Netâs ever-expanding influence rarely allow their concerns to get in the way of their use and enjoyment of the technologyâ (Carr, Par.3).
In the prologue and first chapter of “The Shallows”, Carr talks about his introduction to computers, and how they began to change the way he was able to think. These changes in his thought patterns got him to wonder if all technology is affecting all brains in a similar fashion. He found that these new, fast information sources made it harder for people to focus on long articles. As he puts it, this world of hyperlinks turned his brain into “a high speed data processing machine, a human HAL”.
In the prologue of “The Shallows” author, Nicholas Carr tells us about another book called Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan. The book was published in 1964 and was deemed “at heart a prohecy, and whatis prophesied was the dissolution of the linear mind” (Carr,1). In chapter one of The Shallows it is explained why Carr began thinking about the internet, and to a lesser degree, technology and how it is affecting the user.
The prologue and chapter one of ‘The Shallows’ Carr introduces why he believes the Internet has become and will continue to affect the human brain. He goes on to say how times have changed and how that effects the brains function on doing activities. He states, “The conception of the adult brain as an unchanging physical apparatus grew out of, and was buttressed by, an Industrial age metaphor that represented the brain as a mechanical contraption”.(22) In other words theres more than what we initially thought.
The prologue of the Shallows by Nicholas Carr introduces Carrs thoughts on technology and how it’s taking over our lives. He refers to another book by Marshall McLuhan called the The Extension of Man in 1964 which talks about how mankind will be run by technology in the future. Chapter 1 Carr talks about how the internet affects the way we think in a lesser manner.