Change Reading Behavior

Birkerts provides three effects that will occur as a result of moving away from the printed word to the electronic media. The first effect is the language erosion. He explains the reader that transition from books will lead to the “complexity and distinctiveness of verbal and written communication, which are deeply bound to transaction of print literacy, will gradually be replaced by a more telegraphic sort of plainspeak” (9). In the future our language will start to become more simple and dumb. Whereas, by reading books and printed materials people are able to dig more depth and understand and imagine the contents. But, soon this will start to disappear as people will no longer be able to understand the complex language of the literature and intelligence level of people will start to decrease. The second effect of electronic media is the flattening of historical perspectives. This means that due to the electronic media the history will start to recede because the “printed page itself is a link” and when this link is broken the past will gradually diminish (10). Birkerts explains the audience that the past is best represented in the books and libraries. Therefore, moving away from the printed word means moving away from the past and its history. The last effect is the waning of the private self. Birkerts worries that in the future people will forget how to live because of the electronic

A huge beneficial effect of the Internet is time-efficiency because it no longer takes days to find research. Fortunately, it only takes a couple of minutes to do a few Google searches. Another benefit to the Internet, in comparison to the last example, is that it is a channel for most of the world’s information. For Carr, as for others, the Internet is becoming a universal medium. Lastly, it is probable that we may be doing more reading today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was a choice of interest. It is assumed that we may do more reading today because not only do we have access to a variety of texts, but also a numerous amount of ways of communicating. For example, social media accounts and text-messaging. A negative effect of the Internet is that it is chipping away capacity for contemplation. The Internet is

“The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (Carr 773). Carr’s point is because people are using the web, it is making it harder for them to concentrate and process information. Carr and Turkle both suggest in their articles that people now have lost the ability to be able to concentrate and to be

Carr mentions his personal experience with technology and how it has affected him. He points out his “concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages” (961). Carr isn’t the only one who has been affected by technology; he tells us that even his “acquaintances” have had similar experiences. His acquaintances say, “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (962). What once used to come natural to us has become difficult. People used to rely on books for multiple reasons when it came to research but now that technology has been used more frequently books are not that common. Carr says “Research that once required days . . . can be done in minutes” (962). Carr is mentioning the benefits of the Internet, for his argument he is using both sides so that the reader can relate to his article and understand where he is coming from. Carr quotes Marshall McLuhan when he points out that “the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation” (962). Although fast research is great and easy to access it has its flaws. Carr mentions that

It is true that people are becoming more and more reliant on the internet to do everyday tasks. I feel that Carr addresses the issue perfectly in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid”. If we continue to use technology for everything, we will eventually lose all ability to deep read and make those critical connections that are necessary for true comprehension and application. He indicates that “the more [he] uses the web, the more he has to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (736). Knowing how difficult it was to read and analyze Carr’s article myself, I fully agree with his claims. Having grown up in a world that has always had technology, I must be hyper-cognizant of the task at hand when it comes to something such as reading, particularly if it is something that I deem less than interesting. When I was finally able to get through the entire essay, I started to think about how much I use the internet. I must admit that

Carr starts at his paper in a first point of view. He expresses his feelings that the internet is changing his own personal thinking. This man is an author, he's born to read and even he says that he's having problems because he can no longer read anymore. Carr says that “the web has been a godsend” (Carr), but he also explained it's not only a

Does the internet affect the way people think? This is the question Nicholas Carr answers in his essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr writes about the negative aspects of relying on an outside source for information in order to argue that Google could be making us less intelligent. Carr’s general audience is anyone with access to the internet because he believes most people with access to the internet usually abuse it. Because the internet supplies a large quantity of information, people are less likely to learn for themselves.

Nicholas Carr writes on how the Internet has changed the way people now think in his is article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”. Carr says “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.” He is trying to express that their once was a time that even he was guilty of the internet taking over. He was a guy who would once bury his self in books, read every word, and let it soak in and understand every detail of the book, but now will skim across it to just understand the basics of it. Further into his article Carr goes on about how the internet is becoming our map, clock, typewriter, calculator, phone, radio, and our TV. The internet is “subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies” he says. What was once all separate things we needed to use our brain

Carr’s premise is that the Web is interfering with our ability to focus on lengthy material. On the contrary, the internet is actually aiding our ability to focus on reading. This holds true for younger children, who are known as the digital natives in our generation. In a research conducted by The National Center for Education shows that “by altering the mode of reading material from traditional paper-based reading to online reading,” the interest of elementary school children increased (Wright 367). Because children of the 21st century are surrounded by technology, they are more likely to gear towards digital media for their mode of learning. Contrary to Carr’s view that the internet “is chipping away [the] capacity for concentration and contemplation,” these children are more likely to read and focus as a result of

Technology has highly influenced today’s society in many different ways. This mutation has changed present and future generations’ habits when it comes to reading a book. The only reason for this habit change is that when we were young and clueless, all we had were good old hardcover paper books to read, no internet, kindles or ipads. A recent study from scholastic has found that the percentage of children who had read an e-book has nearly doubled since 2010 to almost half of all children aged 9- 17, while the number who say they’ll continue to read books in print have declined from 66% to 58%. Although e-books are a new and upcoming thing of modern society, there are still certain aspects or qualities that books possess which technology never

21st Century learner is naturally interested in technology and they see the e-readers as being more convenient than the traditional text. The reluctant readers expressed several reasons why they were compelled to read using an e-reader versus a traditional text. Students expressed they could change the font and size of the letters. Being able to adjust the light on the e-reader was important to the readers. Students felt more engaged and the e-readers allowed the students to be active readers, rather than just turning a page. The student expressed the importance of having the option of reading several books at one time, without having a backpack full of books, therefore, not taking up a lot of space. However, students also express inconveniences as well, such as

Now days with the rise of digital technology many physical items such as pen and paper are slowly being replaced by computers and smart phones. But is this really a good thing? I read books and of course so do many other people in this class and around the globe. But since the creation of ‘e-readers’ more and more people have been converting to the technology based side of reading. Although technology is slowly becoming more predominant in this era we should not rely on it to always entertain and keep us occupied.

The market for college literature has expanded over the past few decades. College students now have a choice in buying their text books in form of E-Book, hypertext, or even in paper form. However, some believe that the different types of presentation platforms differ in comprehension level. Jabr (2012) expressed concern for the comprehension of electronic reading by using an example of a common YouTube video of a one-year old girl who seemed more interested in the iPad than a paper book. The child expressed confusion when the paper book did not change pages with the simple swipe of her fingers like the iPad’s pages. For children, who grow up in a world where electronic books may be more easily accessible to them at school than paper

There have been many published studies since 1980’s where researchers from different fields like psychology, computer engineering and information science have brought up such issues in more than one hundred published studies. Many of these studies done before 1992, always concluded that people read slowly, less accurately and less comprehensively on screens than on paper. In recent studies, it shows that people still like to read from paper especially when they want to read intensively. Although the e-reading technology is gaining more popularity and becoming more common, people’s attitudes are changing. They read these books for facts and fun. In the US, there is about 15 to 20 percent of all trade book sales (Jabr, 2013). People are known to be less conducive to learning from computers and tablets as compared to paper. Reading has a physicality. When we already have an e-book we start to miss it.

The Internet is a treasure trove of information; which offers knowledge on any given topic under the sun (Pakhare, 2013). In other words, the World Wide Web was designed to be the ultimate library with its wide range of knowledge with just a click of a button away. The author proclaims that “For those who are pressed for time, stressed for resources or don’t have access to the books and ephemera found in larger cities, the Internet is a heaven sent blessing of inestimable magnitude” (Kellner, 2004, p. 13). Yes, we both owe the Internet our lives. More often than not, we have used the Internet as a guiding tool that has helped us get the information we need such as research for assignments, locating restaurants and so on. But in a copious society where people have cell phones, laptops, iPads, and minds like vacant rooms that are all connected to the Internet, we still walked around with books. For us, we would always rather prefer to search library stacks because it is easier to commemorate when we put in an effort to learn