Is Smart Making Us Dumb Summary

What if our life becomes fully dependent on the electronic devices in the future? “In Into the Electronic Millennium”, Birkerts discusses his concerns with the oncoming electronic world. Birkerts provides lots of cons about the electronic devices that can affect people's lives. The author’s intention for writing this essay is to make the audience aware of the significant changes that have started to occur as electronic technologies have developed. He uses various rhetorical devices to convey his arguments to the readers. Through this essay, he is trying to inform the academic community that the culture of printed words has ended in the society, while electronic technologies are starting to dominate. Birkerts uses anecdotes, juxtaposition,

Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld are the authors of the article “The Influencing Machines”. This article is about technology and is written through a comic-style form. Gladstone’s main idea on this article is that we should not fear technology. Gladstone’s and Neufeld’s comic-style article about technology is the best way to convey her argument because it gives visuals to express her argument, has a different form of arrangement of her details and thesis, and she gives examples of modern technology that should not scare us.

Technology has always been a controversial subject between conservative people and innovators. Some people believe that it is a great tool to connect cultures and improve education and innovation in our society today, but others view it as a menace in our lives. “Growing Up Tethered” by Sherry Turkle and “George Orwell...Meet Mark Zuckerberg” by Lori Andrews both view technology as a dangerous tool. They believe in the many drawbacks of technology and the harm it can do to our lives with no explanation of the positive effects it has had on our society. “Our Future Selves” by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen plays the role of a positive look at technology and its role in our lives today. It gives examples of how advancing technology helps us and improves so many peoples’s lives. We can use Schmidt and Cohen’s essay as a lens to view the other two texts and gain a different understanding of what they are writing about.

Technology nowadays always use to have so much information at our fingertips, but is this a good thing? That is what Jamais Cascio’s “Get Smarter” and Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” both discuss; they specifically address the effects that new technology, such as the internet, has on the way humans think. The difference is that Carr argues that this new technology is making us stupid while Cascio argues that it is making us smarter. Nicholas Carr’s article discusses the negative effects of the internet and technology like it. It specifically mentions slight changes in the way people do things because of the influence of technology and gives many historical and anecdotal examples. Jamais Cascio’s article is about the advancements of technology and how it is makes people smarter. Cascio talks about Twitter, mental enhancement drugs and AIs, focusing a lot on the benefits of the advancements.

Technology has evolved so much over the course of 82 years. People who were living in 1935 would have no clue what a computer is or what it could potentially become. Education itself and how we learn has come a long way. Everything was hand written. Now in 2017, we have every answer with just one touch of a button. Google is a search engine that holds almost every answer in the world. There are many opinions on the way humans in 2017 function, and process information. Nicholas carr is a respect author who writes about the relationship between technology and culture. He has written for the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, etc. He has written two great essay that have won The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Best collected in Several Anthologies, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Best Technology Writing. One of them which is titled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid.”  Nicholas Carr argues that Google is not making humans stupid, but as technology progress our minds must adapt and change the way we think and process information. This essay has many rhetorical approaches. Nicholas Carr uses imagery, opinion, ethos, and pathos to persuade his audience, provoking a doubt on whether google is making humans stupid.

The reason Nicholas Carr wrote this article is to inform people of the danger of Internet overuse through his use of ethos, logos, and pathos, along with other rhetorical devices. He starts with a scene from a classic movie that dealt with the prevalence of technology, 2001: A Space Odyssey. He shows that with the technological advances of today, the line between human and computer has starts to grey.

Clive Thompson’s “Smarter Than You Think” reflects upon the idea that technology is her to help us more than we think, rather than the popular belief that technology is ruining the way we think. Thompson believes that the pair between human and technology is making us smarter. Along with that, our minds are slowly adapting to the use of technology, advancing our thinking. Lastly, the relationship between technology and human, has brought humanity closer than ever with the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time. Clive Thomason believes the stronger the bond between humans and technology, the smarter we can become; I also alongside with Thompson believe this is true, and if so us as humans need to embrace the use of

Carr and Cascio’s outlooks on “what technology is” were similar, but they had different perspectives on how technology affects our society. Carr notices that while technology keeps artificial information moving forward and huge amounts of information at our disposal, it also affects our natural ability to think for ourselves. He is appealing to pathos because he senses that this common problem is making our society less dependent with their selves and more dependent towards technology. He uses his article to appeal to the fact that he notices the changes in the ways that he used to think came from the use of technology. Cascio, on the other hand, thinks that technology is what makes our society so efficient. He uses ethos to propose that the concept of co-evolution between human and technological interaction has helped us adapt to the ever-changing world around us. Carr’s and Cascio’s perspectives toward the effects of technology usage are the starting point of contrast between the two articles.

There are some common ways in which different cultures express their values. Cultures value different things. Some ignorant people think that this also means all cultures do not have similarities to teach or express values. In “Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning” it conveys how a professor recorded how American families talked about intelligence being something people are born with. In contrast, in Eastern families they talked about how hard work brought intelligence (Spiegel). This passage shows extremely different values, but when examined, researchers can see they both were expressed through speech. This discovery is not surprising

The internet has made an immense impact on every generation since its existence as it continues to grow throughout time. Its effectiveness is prodigious; the internet allows people to gain information that once took days to retrieve it in a few minutes (Carr 1). Writer Nicholas Carr, in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, explains that the use of internet and technology causes harm to people and their brains. Carr’s purpose is to address to internet users that Google (or any electronic helpers) is making them “stupid” and lazy because it minimizes their concentration and willingness to think. He attempts to adapt to his audience, dedicated internet users, as he uses the rhetorical appeals to try to convince them of his purpose. However, this was not enough. Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” is ineffective because of his poor use of ethos and logos despite his good use of pathos.

The use of technology in society could be very beneficial in many ways, contrary to what the article, “Will Alexa Take the Witness Stand?” by Patricia Smith, states. The text mostly covered the use of crimes and technology. It also covered privacy struggles and issues with the government on modern technology, such as personal assistants. These “issues” could be very beneficial and go against the use of the modern technology. The use of technology in society is very beneficial and is making society more and more advanced.

In the article “The Influencing Machines” by Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld, the authors take a stand against people fearing new technologies. The authors are effective in making their argument with the main claim being that a person should be cautious of new technology but they don't need to fear it. Also, the purpose of this article is to relax anyone that fears technology while being geared towards an older audience.

In today's society there is no escape from technology. We are completely submerged in our iPhone, ipads, computers, and gaming systems. These gadgets give us the opportunity to be connected to each other and the rest of the world at all times. But, this is not a glorious step in history. Technology blinds us from the real world. As John Tudor said, “Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except technology.” We may run our lives with the help of our iPhones and computers, but do these forms of technology in turn control us? At first glance these new advances are greater steps to making our lives easier. But, when examined closely a large portion of technology is the cause of many problems in our society.

Is the internet making us smarter or dumber? People continuously argue whether this rise of electronic use and internet in our lives is a negative or positive aspect. In June 5, 2010 Wall Street Journal article, Nicholas Carr raises and answer the intriguing question,“Does the Internet Make You Dumber?”Nicholas Carr argues that the internet has bad effects on our brain. He says that the internet makes it harder to remember anything, and that is harder to move memories into long term memory. Those who are continually distracted by emails, alerts, and text messages understand less than a person who can concentrate. Nicholas Carr points that the internet can change the way our brain acts. He states that those who use the internet are shallow, and the internet is causing irreversible damage to our thought processes and making us stupid. A week later, Steven Pinker counters Nicholas Carr’s assertions in his own New York Time article,“Mind Over Mass Media.”He argues that electronic technologies are not as horrible as some may make it seem, and he starts his article by addressing how“New forms of media have always caused moral panics”(199). Throughout his article, Pinker explains why critics, who accuse electronic technology as harming to human intelligence, are wrong. He suggests that,“these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart”(200). Through media and social networking, the internet brings people closer together and provides convenience for people’s life.

The rapid technological growth brings modern innovations in the field of technology. There is an enthusiasm toward a new technology increases suspicion and anxieties regarding its probable negative and positive social influence in today’s world. Surrounding us are various technologies which are assisting humans to live their life with more luxury for instance Artificial Intelligence and social media as well. Nowadays, Artificial Intelligence is in routine use in various field and it concentrates on providing solutions to real life problems to make it easier (Ferrari, Paladino, &Jetten, 2016). However, social media develop to a phenomenon that has triggered a shift in the way the world communicates. The rapid pace of advances in technology has considerable benefits and drawbacks. These will be discussed in this essay. In addition, this work aims to clarify which technological advance is more dangerous to humans and evaluate the level of threat.