Smart Technology Making Us Duaver Rhetorical Analysis

Nicholas Carr’s Is Google Making Us Stupid? explains the impact the Internet is having on his (and others) patience with in depth reading habits, and possibly the way their brain is processing information. The old days of having to spend hours researching a subject are long gone because of the Internet. Having such a powerful tool available at any time can be a good and bad thing wrapped up in the same package. Over the last couple decades, home computer and smartphone ownership has been on a steady rise with most homes now having multiple devices. Therefore, having unlimited information available at all times has become a reality.

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

Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, questions the impact the technology has upon our lives. He argues that the internet prevents our ability to engage in deep reading and thus restricts our ability to think critically. He says this is due to the idea of neuroplasticity, which is where our brains change in order to adapt to the different stimuli it encounters. When books were first introduced, our brain had to rewire itself in order to achieve the ability to focus for long periods of time on text and to think deeply about it. This resulted in a literate deep thinker. However, the internet has forced our brain to rewire itself again. Carr says that “there is evidence that the cells of our brains literally develop and grow bigger with use, and atrophy or waste away with disuse” (22). Our brain has many structures that perform specific functions and the structures associated with deep thinking can decrease and eventually will serve no function if we don’t use it. We are much better thsn our ancestors. According to Carr, “the oral world of our distant ancestors may well have had emotional and intuitive depths we can no longer appreciate” (56). In other words, Carr believes that people in the past engaged in focused, immersed thinking. I believe that Nicholas Carr is right when he says that the internet is changing the way we think, however I don’t believe that we need to turn off the internet in order to reduce the chances of losing

They argue that the way they’re thinking is changing, how their “concentration… starts to drift after two or three pages” and that modern technology doesn’t push them to commit to a certain informational source long enough because “research… can now be done in minutes” (Source 4). The internet seems to have all the answers, which generally shortens the time needed to spend on an activity thus limits the room to think critically. And in this case, not only does it ruin our contemplation but also our concentration and patience because we expect the internet to feed us information. However, this is not all true because the “digital world lowers barriers to self-directed learning” (Source 3). There are many “new forms of media” people can explore with and use to carry out their interests, and they become more involved with their peers when they can learn from each other.

Technology allows us to separate ourselves, mentally, from what’s going on around us. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, by Nicholas Carr, he notices how the internet allows him to jump around and lose focus. Another effect that technology has on society is that we are losing fundamental social skills. Texting and emailing make it easy to contact someone, but we are losing skills that come with face-to-face communication.

This article by Nicholas Carr is about the access we have to the Internet nowadays and how it affects our intelligence. It tells us how dependent we are of Internet and how we get affected by the technology around us. It also says how Google is trying to replace our brains, which are not fast enough, with a faster contrived brain. Carr claims that the accessibility to fast information is making us stupid and less focused. “He notes that the Internet is causing people to want fast information, rather than read through a long article.” The availability for fast information is affecting our minds and makes people stressed.

Technology is slowly taking over our lives. Individuals can chat with their loved ones whenever they want, even those who are many miles away. With a click of a button, one can purchase something from halfway around the world. Perhaps more importantly, technology is changing the way we access information; anything is accessible in mere seconds. This implementation has resulted in the most aware society of all time. Most information is just a quick and simple Google search away. An article, written by Nicholas Carr “Is Google Making Us Stupid? “ in a 2008 issue for The Atlantic magazine, questioned the negative cognitive effects of the world wide web. Carr recognizes how much we rely on the internet and believes that humanity needs reform. According to Carr, we rely on technology too much! In the article Carr dives into detail and supports his argument by providing research facts and personal examples. Even though Carr believes the excessive use of the internet will inevitably turn humans into machines, I believe that the internet has benefited us in various ways. Carr does not see that the western fast paced lifestyle has caused us to lose our ability to focus on reading. Using technology will not turn us into robots, but instead it allow us to always be connected. Therefore, we should welcome technology openly.

Technology has become a powerful resource that changes our brain’s activity. Nicholas Carr, the author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and a graduate from Harvard University, believes that technology will have an overall negative impact on humans. However, Clive Thompson, the author of “Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better” and a freelance contributor to well-known publications like the New York Times Magazine, disagrees with Carr. Both authors agree that technology can be efficient and help accomplish tasks, but Carr also accredits technology for decreasing the amount of concentration and contemplation possible by the average human. Furthermore, Carr concludes that making the internet as our primary knowledge source will decrease our ability to read books, long passages, and will diminish our learning experience. However, Thompson conceives that humans will adapt to the latest changes and retain what is valuable from the venerable times.

According to a media theorist, Marshall McLuhan pointed out that the “internet supplies with the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought.” (Carr). This information given from the internet is useful for our everyday lives but it also comes with a cost of changing the way we think. Carr also states from personal experience that he used to concentrate on reading a book with ease, but once he spent a lot of time on the Internet it changed the way he read. He went from understanding the “narrative or the turns or argument” to losing his concentration around the second or third page all because of the time he spent surfing the internet or just replying to emails. Carr asked the question “is Google making us stupid?” and from what is shown we can say that it might actually. In sum, it has been shown that the media is shaping the process of thought and thus making us lose our concentration and the act of thinking of something

A cartoon about this subject features a man at a dinner table asking if his family members (all of whom are completely absorbed in electronics) if they had read an article on “how electronic gadgets undermine our ability to focus and concentration.” However, he fails to even finish his sentence before his attention is stolen by another article (Gadget). The irony behind the cartoon is that he is distracted by his tablet just as he begins to realize that his tablet is distracting him from his life. He is unable to recognize his inability to focus, even as it is spelled out for him, because technology has severely impacted his brain and thought process. An article in The Telegraph further explores the idea that the cartoonist is making. The writer, Nicholas Carr, argues that the internet has made us accustomed to over-simplified information and an unhealthy level of multitasking. This dangerous combination has altered our brains, making us easily distractible and scatterbrained (Carr). These mental changes even impact the way we process real-world information. Personally, I find it is becoming increasingly difficult to read long passages, because I am now used to information being delivered in a quick and simple fashion. Thus, in this regard, technology is heavily impact our day-to-day

Are we to busy searching the web to realize how dumb we are becoming? We live in the age of technology, where there is easy access to the Internet. Nicholas Carr, the author of “Does the Internet Make you Dumber?” stated a good question that is relevant to our generation. Since we have easy access to the Internet, it is making us dumber instead of smarter. I believe individuals have taken advantage of the Internet and it is costing them their thinking skills. Sometimes individual don’t realize the impact that the internet has on our brain and education. The author states that the internet comes with distractions, many information, and it models our brains.

I read the article, “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?” The article is basically explaining that older generations feel that the internet is making kids today less intelligent. She explains in the article that instead of using the internet for the benefit of spreading knowledge and information, it is more or less used for streaming home videos done by people all over the world or discussing uninteresting or unimportant topics.

Through technology people find means of communicating to people, reading upon things, and instead of gaining a sense of humanistic behavior and understanding we tend to desensitize ourselves by talking via e-mail, text, or a social media messaging of some sort. We lesser ourselves in intellect because of how we interpret things by subjecting ourselves to the easiest way possible to get out of things. Experts say that because technology is advancing so rapidly that we lose our sense of focus for reading

With the invention of new technologies, people have become more infatuated with drama and irrelevant matters. Even though the internet can be used as a great source for answers and thought-provoking information, it is used for other more mindless and selfish reasons. Some people could care more about something completely irrelevant on their phone than something serious that is happening right before them. And as for our future, technology will become more advanced and start to reduce our “capacity to think” as Postman put it. It is already shown with things like

Is technology changing the way we think and the way we learn? The internet is a powerful source that has taken over our current generation. The way we do things is changing every day and technology is advancing faster than ever. We don’t think like we used to because we have no reason to anymore, with the internet we have many ways to get by things without having to try hard or to memorize anything. The internet highly affects our brains and the power of education. The internet not only affects our brains, it also affects our education through other ways, such as social media, and a source for us to rely on instead of working as hard as we need to.