Summary Of ' The Shallows ' By Nicholas G. Carr

When the civilizations were first invented, there was a lot of chaos and confusion. This led to the invention of the different forms of writing. Each civilization had a form of writing for

civilization. They started the Olympic games. Greeks come up with the idea of an alphabet

The Greeks where the first to use an alphabet. It came around the time the dark ages ended and was mad of 24 letters. Most of are letters like a, b, e and o came from the Greek’s.

Phoenicians devised a simplified alphabet with 22 letters around 1300 BCE became the predecessor of Greek and Latin alphabets. Phoenicians also improved the Egyptian

The first form of writing was created by Sumerians 5,000 years ago called Cuneiform (Document 1). Sumerians used this writing system to keep track of business dealings because they traded with people who lived in lands that were hundreds and even thousands of miles away (Doc. 2). With a written language, ideas could be shared from generation to generation (Doc. 1). To write in cuneiform somebody would need to acquire a clay tablet, then bake it hard in a kiln (Doc. 1). If cuneiform had not been created, there may have not been written languages in the

Acting as the framework for many written languages to come, the Phoenician alphabet traveled across the Mediterranean, shaping the lives of many. Originating from the northwest region of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, this system of hieroglyphics was designed by the Phoenicians with help from the Greeks years later. The original alphabet —made of only 22 consonants— was altered by the Greeks as they added vowels, making the language slightly easier for non-natives to understand. The timeframe in which the alphabet was made is heavily disputed, but it is said that the Phoenicians made it sometime around the 15th century BC. This efficient system was used to record medical statistics, government rules, hymns, prayers, epics about worshiped heroes,

“We are always in a perpetual state of being created and creating ourselves (Siegel, 221)”. The brain is a product of its ever-changing environment. As certain linkages between its regions are used more or less frequently, their relative strength fluctuates. Many times, cultural shifts, such as the current transition from a print culture to a digital culture, cause the largest effect on the connections within the brain. Because of the overabundance and simplicity of information on the internet, the brain is becoming more impatient and losing its ability to focus and interact at a deep level. As a result, humans must rely increasingly on the internet.

To start, the Sumerians invented cuneiform, which began the path to written language in the future. Cuneiform was the first written language. It was invented over 5000 years ago! (Doc. 1). They used a stylus to make imprints for writing. Written on the clay tablets it was used to keep records, document business

The general argument made by Nicholas Carr in his work, From the Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, is that phones and social media has taken over, and that’s about all our generation relies on in today’s world. More specifically, Nicholas Carr argues that the internet is distracting us from our day to day work, and human interaction. He writes, “I do most of my banking and a lot of my shopping online. I use my browser to pay my bills, schedule my appointments, book flights and hotel rooms, renew my driver’s license, send invitations and greeting cards” (Carr par. 3). In this passage, Nicholas Carr is suggesting how the internet is taking over more and more of his life, and how technology is changing his daily tasks, and how

Chapter six begins with describing when the first use of alphabets occurred. The earliest alphabet happened in Egypt and had pictorial characters. Then around 1,000BC, Phoenicians began using the Egyptians alphabet. At 700 BC, the Greeks developed their alphabet and eventually the Romans developed the alphabet we use today. The alphabets were written with ink on papyrus. Once the Industrial Revolution occurred, the printing press was invented causing prints to happened much faster and on a larger scale. In 1886, Ottmar Mergenthaler invented the Linotype, replacing the printing press (which required hand setting letters) with a machine that had a keyboard. The use of typography as well as the technology used to create it has come a long way.

The Phoenicians, are known as people with a relatively small population, they profoundly changed the history of the world with a most notable contribution. It became a definite advancement in simplicity and accessibility of written communication over both the Cuneiforms of the Sumerians and the Hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. This influence redeemable the linguistic field. A system used by the Phoenician’s’ known as the first to use a phonetic alphabet, a method of twenty- two written marks, we know as letters today, all of which corresponded to a specific consonant sound of the oral language. These representing object and their phonetic symbols represent the sound of syllables as we know them today. This profoundly changed the history of the

The Ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphics which were pictures as words in order to write. It is one of the oldest form of writing which started as early as 3000 B.C. Hieroglyphics was a very complicated way of writing having 1000 symbols! Some of the symbols expressed sounds, just like our letters, and others were entire words. it took years of education and practice to be able to read and write hieroglyphics. The people who specialized in writing were called scribes. They often wrote on tablets or walls, but they also wrote on a special type of paper called papyrus. The papyrus paper, just like its name, was made from a plant called Papyrus. But it was the Rosetta Stone that helped historians initially understand hieroglyphics.This stone had

The ancient Sumerians developed the first actual language, called cuneiform. Before it was a worded written language, it was in the form of pictographs, which are pictures that symbolize something. As that concept evolved more and more, the Sumerians started using triangular shapes to show sounds, which started the concept of spelling letters. The Babylonians and Assyrians used cuneiform as well. As many more civilizations came, the symbols or alphabets evolved and changed to eventually what we know today as our English

To begin, the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia introduced the first forms of written language-Cuneiform. The beginning of writing was an essential tool that transferred thoughts and speech into text. It was extremely important and allowed for the beginning of record keeping of all sorts. “At this point, writing was used only for record keeping, and thus only concrete words(nouns) such as “ox”,”grain” and “sheep” were needed. As society became more complex, the language evolved enabling signs to be used…and eventually abstract thoughts “(Newman 44). The world came to know a unique way of expressing thoughts and learned to convey messages through writing. From then on, records could be kept, history and stories could be recorded and abstract thinking could shine

The very first recorded examples of written communication were the ancient cave paintings dating back around 20,000 years; however, the first forms of formal writing were invented by the Sumerians around 3500 B.C (Siebert). According to John Siebert, ancient writing systems grew more complex as civilizations began to advance. Ancient Egyptians incorporated symbols and ideograms into their structures