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Internet Impact On The Internet

Decent Essays

The internet is the newest mass media and has the potential to change human society. It has given us the ability to access almost all of human knowledge in an instant. It has also allowed the constant connection between friends and family. As technologies go it may well be the most influential in human history. The internet is one of the most impactful technologies in human history as presented in The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, specifically because of its speed, interconnectivity, and its impacts on the human mind. The internet’s speed has rapidly increased the speed of communication between people. Carr experienced this when he started blogging “ Blogging junked the traditional publishing apparatus. You’d type something up, code a few …show more content…

“The net differs from most of the mass media it replaces in an obvious and very important way: it’s bidirectional.”(pg 85). Unlike newspapers and books which, for the most part, only allow one way communication, the internet allows for rapid replies. This can allow for collaboration over long distances which can dramatically increase the speed certain projects are completed. Carr also experienced this “You’d also get something your rarely got with more formal writing: direct responses from readers … It felt new and liberating.”(pg15). The changes in Carr’s publishing allowed him to get feedback on his writing from readers helping him improve and adapt to their new reading style. Since the internet allows anyone to contribute the sheer amount of things available to find can be liberating or overwhelming.
The internet’s speed and directionality set it apart from media that from other media that has come before it but the internet’s true impact is the ways it changes how we all think. “Many producers are chopping their products to fit the shorter attention spans of online consumers.” (pg94). Since the internet is so fast most if not all consumers have had their attention span reduced which has been responded to by online producers. This change is one of the key focuses of Carr’s book specifically that human society is transitioning from the contemplative book reading

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