The internet has made our life easier, less time taking and effective. Besides the addiction to the net or the mal use, the internet has big effects on our society.  In addition, new technologies bring new methods and effective stuff to the society for example before to be able to know what is going around in the world, you had to go make lots of researches. However, now a days the idea of the media is to give the faciltity to know what is going around just using the network, it creates enormous positive effects.Shirky showed me something that i never knew, there is more freedom in the net , the freedpm of speech and press. The internet doesnt make you smarter however, it makes the future worth.

In “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?” by Clay Shirky, I was able to realize the positive effects of the internet, such as obtaining more information than ever before. Whether that information is useless or beneficial is completely up to us. Typically, when we think of the internet, the majority sees its negative effects, of course, with everything though, there is a good and bad side to it. Shirky says, “Amid the silly videos and spam are of a new reading and writing culture.” (1), I would have to agree with because just like reading isn’t innate, so are our understanding for technological tools. We just have to learn to use it the right way. There were claims concerning the long-term effect of the printing press back in the 16^th century, which were similar to these of the internet, such as, “chaos and dismemberment of European intellectual life” (2), pertained to be true. However, the unimagined use of building “new norms around newly abundant and contemporary literature” (2) was not taken into consideration. Therefore, instead of focusing on all of the bad outcomes that may happen, why not take responsibility to invest in useful resources needed in order to shape our use of digital tools, which in return is further beneficial to guide us properly towards the new age. So yes the internet can make you smarter, but it can also make you less intellectual, but the outcome is up to you and how you choose to use it. Shirky, helped me shed light on the situation making me more optimistic and aware of how I use my technology in order to fully obtained its optimal effects, which can denote any negative which is by far less great.

The article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr, taught something about the Internet that I never knew before. It is the way the Internet has the ability and power to actually shape a person’s brain, or the way a human thinks. I’ve always seen the Internet as a useful tool, for it would facilitate the way we can communicate and work. It’s amazing how I can find information based on simple, and even deep material in a relatively short period of time, and I can do it from virtually anywhere. If I’m walking outside, at the coffee shop, even at work, I can peruse through an article or look up a definition from my phone. However, according to Nicholas Carr, he stated: “I’m not thinking the way I used to think.”(PG 1) By this, he was saying that his reading wasn’t what it used to be. He mentioned when there was a time it was easy to read a book, or a lengthy article, however he admitted that now, it’s a struggle to keep up after reading two or three pages. In addition, he used an illustration to depict the way he read in the past, it was that of a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now, he likened his reading to that of a guy on a jet ski just zipping along the surface. (PG 2) The point is clear, his reading would be done in a haphazard manner, thus not allowing him to enjoy the surroundings or as he put it, “the sea of words.” Prior to reading this article, I never knew that the internet could have such an effect.

I’ve been using the internet from childhood till now. I looked at the internet as an easy way to get out of doing work. Also to pass time by playing video games and just searching “Google” for stuff I like. According to the passage “Is Google Making Us Stupid” what I have been doing for majority of my life is making me stupid. But, is it really making us “stupid”. What I learned from the article is that, the internet isn’t literally making us stupid. It is changing the way we learn. For example, “Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes (2). Because of our constant use of the internet it’s giving our brain a new interest making us want to use the internet for everything. For example, “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing (3).

Thanks to our “brain’s plasticity” we are able to adapt to the habit of using the internet and Google on a daily basis. “It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV”. Google is what our society relies on now to obtain countless information and sources. “The company has declared that its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (10). They wanted to “develop the perfect search engine”. Though, the effect of doing so, created a new way of thinking for the people using their engine.