From Brain Gain The Underground World Of Modern Slavery Analysis

Many people dream of being able to live the American Dream and sadly, many people fall in the wrong hands and get cheated on a fake American dream. Although, America is always advertised as “The Land of the Free” slavery is still going on and no one seems to be aware of it or concerned about it. Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter talk about slavery in The United States, in their article, Slavery In The Land of the Free. In this article, Bales and Soodalter talk about how slavery is still happening in the country, but in many different ways. Bales and Soodalter use stories, statics, and comparisons of every slavery case there is in America. However, most of the stories they told were about Hispanics being in slaved, and did not really include stories of other races

Carr identifies how reading a book is different from reading online because when you read online, you don’t think deeply about what it is you’re reading, and you don’t have to concentrate nearly as much. Carr also mentions that the Internet is something people find themselves going to more often than books because it is more time efficient.

With the rise of technology and the staggering availability of information, the digital age has come about in full force, and will only grow from here. Any individual with an internet connection has a vast amount of knowledge at his fingertips. As long as one is online, he is mere clicks away from Wikipedia or Google, which allows him to find what he needs to know. Despite this, Nicholas Carr questions whether Google has a positive impact on the way people take in information. In his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr explores the internet’s impact on the way people read. He argues that the availability of so much information has diminished the ability to concentrate on reading, referencing stories of literary types who no longer

In his writing, Carr explains how his mind has become much more erratic since his use of the internet. “I get fidgety, lose the thread, [and] begin looking for something else to do,” Carr says (572). The availability of information that people have these days is astonishing, and their intake of it is even more considerable. In connection to the information people have access to in our day and age, it has promoted a culture of disinterest and boredom. You are able to see this clearly in a study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from University College London. The subjects displayed “a form of skimming activity,” jumping from source to source. They normally would read no more than one or two pages of a book or article before they would go to another site, seldom returning to any source they had already viewed.

Although its intention was to nourish our minds with an instant unlimited source of valuable information, the internet has caused some people to lose their appreciation for long texts and their ability to concentrate. Within the essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, the author feels that someone has been tinkering with his brain and that he can no longer enjoy reading a book of any length because he cannot sustain concentration on the book (Carr 1). This is a result of the fact that when people use the internet to find information, they habituate themselves to skim along the lines to quickly allocate their answers and once they have gotten what they needed, they close the browser without any further analysis of the information.

In a society where quantity of work overpowers quality of work, there is no wonder why "neuroenhancing" drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin are on the rise of consumption. As more people adopt the idea that these drugs are cognitively beneficial; the more they secretly use them for non-medical reasons. Margaret Talbot, a writer for The New Yorker, looks more into this problem in her article, "From Brain Gain: The Underground World of "Neuroenhancing" Drugs". Throughout this article Talbot focuses on a new trend of drug use, such as Adderall and Ritalin, for non-medical intentions. She focuses mainly on the increase of drug use by scholars and public intellectuals throughout her article. Talbot successfully proves to her audience that non-medical

For instance, as Nicholas explained how links make it simpler to jump between digital documents than printed ones, he also mentioned, “ A search engine often draws our attention to a particular snippet of text, a few words or sentences that have strong relevance to whatever we’re searching for at the moment, while providing little incentive for taking in the work as a whole” (Carr 91). Unlike printed articles, books, or texts, digital documents make it possible for us to go through information quickly just to find what we need. The problem with this is that we continue to follow this method for everything we read on the Net and after a while, we become accustomed to this way of reading; thus, creating a less intelligent way of skimming through passages and not being able to interpret the text as a whole. Glancing through words hasn’t just turned into the norm; it’s becoming a part of our daily habits.

In her article, Brain Gain: The Underground World of “Neuroenhancing” Drugs, Margaret Talbot discuss’ the use of different drugs like Adderall, to boost their productivity. She’s writing to people from college up to people who have 9 to 5 office jobs. She uses her essay to not be on one side or the other, but to analyze both points of view. She never puts in, or implies, that she has had a personal experience, and her background doesn’t give her much credibility to speak on the matter to people who already have an opinion on it themselves. Talbot uses anecdotes to…and she uses statistics. But her thesis strays away from what she was indicating about the drugs.

Margaret Talbot “From Brain Gain: The underground world of “Neuroenhancing” Drugs” aims to illustrate how the use of neurotransmitters are in the college setting in attempt to aid college students with their busy lives. Using an unbiased tone, relatable people, and comparisons to convey her message, she creates a very realistic view of the current use or abuse of “brain-boosting” drugs.

Nicholas Carr’s article is directed to an audience that should realize Google and today’s technologies are hindering our societal progress. Carr proposes that reading online is less thought provoking than reading an actual book. In his opinion the Internet was created to distract us, therefore, changing the way we think. Carr suggest that the value of reading online is associated with efficiency and information gathering rather than knowledge and understanding. To support his claim he references blogger, Scott Karp, who admits to having stopped reading books all together. Karp states that his reason for reading online is “I’m just seeking convenience.” (511) Carr goes on to argue that we read online because we feel the need to be efficient.

In my analysis I am going to analyze the effectiveness of Margaret Talbot’s argument in “Brain Gain: The Underground World of Neuroenhancing Drugs”. This article is about the use of stimulants as cognitive enhancers for high-functioning people and not the intended use for the drugs. The problem is whether or not these stimulants should be considered ethical for everyday use as a cognitive enhancer. Talbot effectively supports her argument that “neuroenhancers” should be allowed for everyday use through her use of testimonials and factual information/statistics that she provides in the article in order to convince her targeted audience that the assistance of a stimulant as a cognitive enhancer is beneficial.

In his Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Nicholas Carr contends that the overload of information is “chipping away his capacity for concentration and contemplation”(315). He admits with easy accessibility of information online, the process of research has became much simpler(Carr 315). Yet such benefit comes with a cost. Our brains are “rewired” as the cost of such convenience(Carr 316). As the result, “we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s...but it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking”(Carr 317). Carr argues the forming of such habits can prevent us from deep reading and thinking. In fact, he provides may evidences in the

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

Before technology we were forced to read deeply through pages of information to get what we need, however now it has been proven that we skim instead of read because the answers to our questions can be found at our finger tips. In the article “Is google making us stupid?” Famous writer Nicholas Carr compares reading from a paper vs reading on some form of technology to scuba diving vs jet skiing. In his metaphor, he describes scuba diving as being submerged deep in the water sounded by silence and peacefulness slowly observing what is around us and compares this to reading a book on paper with no distractions and being able to be absorbed into the book. In contrast, he compares Jet skiing to reading on the internet where one is exposed to fast speeds, scenery always changing and only focus on the moment instead of looking at the whole

Nowadays, there are thousands of books available free on the Internet, and people find them easy to read the book online instead of getting the hard copy of the book. In his book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr explains that the online readings make it becomes difficult for us to pay full attention to the reading “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing”(7). For example, when I have to read the articles from the Internet for my research papers or class assignments, I always have hard time focus on the reading because I easily get distracted by the ads shown on the pages. I start paying attention to the ads instead of understanding and absorb the information. Carr also states that “For some people, the very idea of reading a book has come to seem old-fashioned, maybe even little silly- like sewing your own shirts or butchering your own meat”(8). In these days, people find it boring to read books, especially young adults, they think it is a waste of time to read books when they can get the short versions of reading from the Internet instead of reading a page to