Is Technology Making USarter?

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.

Nicholas Carr is an American author who writes the majority of books and articles about the continuously evolving world of technology and how it is effecting our society. Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, was a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times bestseller. In this essay I will be rhetorically analyzing Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid” published in 2008. The purpose of Carr’s essay was to bring light to an issue that many of us face but only a meniscal few have come to terms with; and that is that technology is mentally incapacitating our society and simultaneously making us lazy. This essay was intended for anyone was has been consumed in today’s culture by new technological advances to the extent of not being able to function without some sort of device, IE cellphone, laptop or tablet on a daily basis.

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

Technology has been evolving and improving at an extraordinary rate so much so that it already started affecting not only the way we live but also the way we behave and think. This essay synthetizes the ideas explored in articles “Better than human: Why Robots will-and Must-Take Our Jobs” by Kevin Kelly, “Is google making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, and “Smarter than you Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better” by Clive Thompson. The authors brainstorm the past, current, and future repercussions that new technologies will cause in our society, economy, and own selves and whether we should welcome them or not.

Technology has become a hot topic in peoples’ daily conversation, and it is everywhere in our lives. We use cell phones, laptops and advanced vehicles every day. It unconsciously influences us at a rapid pace. However, Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google making us stupid,” and Jason Pontin’s “Can technology solve big problems,” have different opinions about the relationship between humans and technology. Carr and Pontin talked about the influence of technology based on their unique experiences and insights, letting this topic move from a discussion on right and wrong toward a question on technology’s influence to humans’ future. Both authors show concern with different angle for the future of society due to use of technology that Carr worries more about

Once the world transitioned into the “digital age”, many believed that advanced movements in technology would positively impact everyone. Some would argue that this is the case several decades later, as people are becoming more comfortable with using technology on a regular basis. However, there has been many people who have came to the conclusion that the use of technology on a daily basis has negatively effected the ability of humans to effectively think or portray information. Technology has its positive aspects, such as, improving the health of a relationship or helping people think creatively. Then, technology has its lows, such as, it gives people anxiety problems or people that become attached to their technological device,

Since of the technological era, people have experienced different change of lifestyles because the human´s needs have increased through over time. Consequently, technology has taken different ways: robots, search engines, and social media since the last Industrial Revolution. Therefore, people have been concerned with those changes that are happening now and are going to happen in the future. That is why in his essay, “Better than Human: Why robots Will- and Must-Take Our Jobs,” Kevin Kelly reports that technology as robots are going to take our jobs and create more fields of jobs and people have to learn how work with robots. Nicholas Carr´s essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” he states that technology as Google has changed the way of thinking and cognitive skills of people. “Smarter than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our minds for the Better,” by Clive Thompson, he explains that people who have worked alongside robots have much more benefits than the others. Those writers’ statements give some historical and scientist events from the beginning of technological era, examples of how technology as the Internet has affected cognitive skills of people now, and how technology and people are going to be in the future.

Whether you are a geek, buying the latest smartphone, game console, and latest Apple products or you are just the minimalist who only has the necessary smart devices like your phone and maybe a laptop, it is undeniable that technology is making its way into every nook and cranny of modern society. Owning your own car was treated as a way to be free back in the eighties, but now owning a car is starting to become a thing of the past as companies such as UBER and Lyft are replacing taxies but making a new form of public transportation constantly available almost everywhere around the world. Even though technology has basically taken over every aspect of our lives does not mean that every person has embraced it with open arms. These days we still have an ongoing debate about whether smart devices and the internet are helping or hurting society as a whole or not. Enthusiasts on this topic tend to look at a more optimistic view on this new technological age expressing how they think that robots and artificial intelligence will change our world for the better both Kevin Kelly’s “Better than Human”, Clive Thompson’s “Smarter than You Think”, as well as Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld’s “The Influencing Machines” explore. On the other hand, skeptics tend to write about how these new technologies are tainting our own capabilities and making us more dependent rather than relying on our own skills, says Nicholas Carr in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”. Although technology has changed many aspects of our lives we should still pay attention to how it has benefitted many aspects of our daily lives.

One viewpoint describes that technology is changing our minds for the better. Clive Thompson, who wrote the article Smarter than You Think. Clive states that humans have made a robot that can play a full game of chess by figuring out ways to beat its opponent. Clive tells us that robots are a good thing for us because the robot does not make any mistakes. Unlike humans, we all make mistakes; Clive says, “We are all playing chess these days. We just have not learned to appreciate it.” (Thompson). He makes a good point by saying that we have computers to help us work smarter but we have not learned to accept them. In a sense, we are becoming dumber and less creative because of new technology. Humans have no incentive to think anymore with the help of computers. Mr. Thompson is exactly right, the computers are helping us with work, but not helping us with critical thinking.

While both authors present some of the positive effects of technology, as mentioned above, to us, each of them addresses different issues on how exactly uses of technology and technological improvements negatively impact human life. As people become addicted to the valuable web efficiency, it turns out that the Internet serves to be quite harmful towards human cognition in such that it diminishes the capacity of human concentration and contemplation. As Carr says in “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, “media supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought” (Carr 2). In other words, Internet is controlling and changing the way we think or consume information and thus, flattering our own intelligence into “artificial intelligence” (Carr 8). People nowadays are so used to the information provided by the Internet that they do not rely on their own knowledge or think on their own like they used to prior to the advent of Internet. An instance that reflects this idea of self-manipulation is shown in Carr’s own statement, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (Carr 2). Even though Carr does not go onto to say that he is becoming vacuous, he believes that his mind is changing due to spending so much time on the web over the last several years. Before, he was very much engaged

The continuously advancing and changing technology in society today is a constant source of debate. Every time a new invention takes hold of society, people argue whether or not said invention is ultimately hurting or harming our brains and thought process. This debate was sparked at the invention of the book, type writer, and now with computers, phones and tablets running our lives, people are wondering the same thing. Clive Thompson gives evidence to support his claim that technology is not harming our brains, but on the contrary, humans and technology work best in tandem and will create the most successful world through working together.

The human brain is one of the most complex brains among all living creatures. The amount of work it does is off the scales. It can think, retain memories, understand language, create words, see, hear, learn new things, feel and so much more. Within the last few decades, a question has arose. Has technology affected the way our brains think? In the essays “ Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr, and “ Technophilia” by Kevin Kelley, these men dive into the idea of how technology has altered our brains, forever.

Technology has been evolving and changing for decades. Today’s technology has a vast amount of benefits. Or does it? While technology can make life easier and more enjoyable, it comes with many disadvantages. Technology causes people to think differently than in the past, be lazy, have less self-control and not be as social. While technology can be useful, the disadvantages of technology outweigh the benefits and affects today’s society negatively.

Since the beginning of time, man has walked the earth, and the natural instincts of the fight for survival, our love and nurturing nature, life processes, and protective instincts have taken man through many eras of time. Throughout this time man has evolved, and so have the abilities to develop useful tools and instruments to aid man through life. In the prehistoric days, man built tools from stone, weapons to hunt, built fires, invented cookware. We are forever evolving, introducing more technology, greater advances, compelling efficiency and immediacy, pushing increased productivity. We lavish ourselves with the numerous benefits of advanced engineering, available at our fingertips, or even at our voice commands. We form bonds, connections, attachments to our technological devices; consequently we have acclimated to relying on technology to meet some of our social, emotional, and physical needs. I was born into this era of time, which formed me into the individual and entrepreneur I am today. I appreciate my smartphone, cherish my truck, value the internet, and am thankful for all the technological gifts my ancestors accomplished to benefit all our future generations. This progression of technological advances, leading us to the access of the internet, has sparked conversations and various opinions which are discussed in the essays of Nicholas Carr’s, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” and Kevin Kelley’s “Technophilia,” in reflection on the positive

Technology can help with humans with our everyday actives. Clive Thompson is a freelance journalist and blogger, also the author of the essay “Smarter than you think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better”. In his essay Thompson brings forth the idea