Summer Reading Assignment Of Cat's Cradle

Instead of starting homework, teens and others find themselves falling to distractions such as social media. A computet scientist named David Gelernterexpresses his concern by writing, "Our children's attention spans are too short already, but the Web is a propaganda machine for short attention spans" (Source E ). Teachers ulimately find themselves as rivals with technology. Students disregard teachers through phones, iPods, and more. If technology was introduced to schools, teachers would need to acwuire a compromise between distractions and

The novel Cat’s Cradle, written by Kurt Vonnegut, has become an eye opener to readers today. The novel is filled with themes that us as readers can relate to and compare to our today’s society. Many themes such as religion, science and government were satirized in the novel. As Kurt Vonnegut writes this novel, we readers tend to ask questions on why an author would write their novel(s). The criticism Kurt Vonnegut wants to communicate to his readers about the consequences in human society through science and truths of religion in his writing, Cat’s Cradle.

“Other researchers have found similar attention spans among computer programmers and medical students, and in those studies technology provided the major sources of distraction.”(Rosen 6) He refers to “Other researchers” but doesn't give them a name. It adds to his purpose by having others agree with his main idea. Yet it reduces the credibility of the information. Rosen also fails to confront opposing ideas about how technology can be useful or if there is another factor such as students having too much screen time that is causing the distractions. By disregarding opposing ideas it, weakens in quality, doesn't deal with all aspects, and is not effective in developing his main

Technology in today's world affect everyone about the same since we can not live without. The amount of different activities and possibilities to do on the internet using different devices is immense . Whatever you want if it is food,games, or researching something anyone can receive in a matter of seconds. Tammy Kennon who is the author of , “ 5 New Brain Disorders that Were Born Out of the Digital Age” states the negatives about the technology devices that run the world. She tells us about how our patience, attention spans, and memory are all affected due to that fact that we are obsessed with electronics. In today’s world everyone relies on web searches like google to answer a question or do something for them. When a research was conducted by researchers they found out that”[O]ne -Third of them did not even try, reaching for google immediately” this shows how much people rely

Nicholas Carr, a skeptic of the digital age, is an American writer who writes on subjects such as technology. On June 5, 2010, Carr published his article Does the Internet Make You Smarter or Dumber?” The article was published in an edition of the Wall Street Journal. He included many references from psychologists, scientists, and experiments conducted at universities to support his argument. Carr’s argument is that the Internet is causing people to become shallower thinkers because of its constant distractions and interruptions. As Carr stated, “We become mere signal-processing units, quickly shepherding disjointed bits of information into and then out of short term memory.” Moreover, people have become too dependent on the Internet and are unable to retain the information.

Vonnegut uses the phrase to impart a cyclical quality on the novel. We see it repeating consistently in the novel, bringing us back to a theme of renewal. As a person dies, we are given an insight into the human idea that life must go on. The phrase is paradoxical to the emotions and reactions usually associated with death, but Vonnegut is never one to be predictable. As one person dies, life moves on, people keep living, and then the process repeats itself ( McGinnis, Web,1975).

Twenge is thorough and credible in listing the many ways in which youth and young adults of today are affected by new technology. The article was intended to prove that children who grow up with a phone or tablet in their hands will have

In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr uses chapter seven to discuss the studies of how individuals alter their brain when they use the internet for lengths of time. Gary Small, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA states “the daily use of computers, smartphones, search engines, and other such tools ‘stimulates brain alteration and neurotransmitter release, gradually strengthening new neural pathways in our brains while weakening old ones’” (Carr 120). In other words, when individuals surf the web they are experiencing a new brain activity than the activity they were doing before. While in Johnson’s article, she discusses how the internet helps children’s cognitive skills by learning how to use the internet. Johnson and Johnson explained how “children who used the Internet at home for learning and communicating demonstrated

In the section titled The Dumbest Generation, “Digital Nation” lays out a haunting narrative describing technology’s negative impact on students today. This section draws from an interview with Mark Bauerlein, a professor and author of book titled “The Dumbest Generation.” Bauerlein claims that reading, writing and math skills of students have all already began to deteriorate. It seems that constant interruption and attempts to multitask are at the heart of this deterioration. I received my first smart phone just before the beginning of this semester, from my own experience I can only agree with the assertion that technology puts a damper on the educational experience. The issue does not come with the technology itself, rather, the desire for constant connection distracts from the learning experience. As the first generation of persons who grew up with technology become parents, I hope they can teach their children the skill of moderation and the importance of education – skills often not taught to kids today by their parents born before the technology boom. These ideas will solve the deterioration of reading, writing, and math that Bauerlein speaks

Alfonzo Porter, a publisher for The Washington Post, is a strong believer that technology has caused massive problems when it comes to educating students. The publisher mentions that student are losing interest in school and becoming more distracted with their cellular devices. In the newspaper, Porter writes, “76 percent of teachers believed students are being conditioned by the internet to find quick answers, leading to a loss of concentration.” Alfonzo Porter believes that students are not taking advantage of technology, instead, they are manipulating it. In today’s modern society, there is a higher percentage of students using their cellphones to find answers, compared to students that are properly reading a book to find solutions to their problems. This issue is leading students becoming less interested in expanding their knowledge.

The battle between questioning control of your own life and having faith in destiny is one that has been going on for a very long time. The beliefs of which is true are different for everyone, depending on anything from their experiences in life to how they were raised. In the novel, Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, individual control and the idea of destiny are two competing forces throughout the story. While John is struggling to write a book about the Hiroshima bomb dropping, his research takes him on an adventure that was out of his control. He sees how several other characters’ lives were greatly affected by the bomb and what they have done since the event. In my opinion, the story revolves much more around the theme of destiny and accepting your fate than anything else. Reasons as to how the story revolves more around destiny include the bomb’s influence on the characters

Nicholas Carr is a writer on mainly technology and cultural subjects. At the beginning of his Article, he uses an anecdote from the movie Space Odyssey, where a super computer with a artificial brain is talking to Dave Bowman about losing its brain power, and pleading with him to please stop, just as Dave is trying to pull the memory circuits out to turn it off. Due to the fact that the computer leads him in to the middle of nowhere in space, Dave no longer trusts the computer. So he decides to pull the plug on it. Nicholas Carr uses examples of his own life and others to come to a conclusion about internet use and its effects on the human brain. By using statistics and scientific studies, he connects the dots on how and why he may be experiencing his own mind changing while using the internet, such as memory, concentration, and reading.

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.

Carr assumes that the increased level of visual-spatial intelligence needed for fast internet usage is a negative. Carr hasn’t considered the effectiveness the increased spatial intelligence gives its user in other areas of technological advancement that require this skill set. Carr assumes that the internet is the main reason for people becoming distracted and therefore having low cognitive abilities, Carr’s studies don’t include how distractions can come in all forms not just pop ups and advertisements on a computer screen. He further assumes the classroom experiment revealing the internet didn’t help the learners is typical for all internet users.

In season 5, episode 14, the episode titled: “The Cat’s in the Cradle”, it stars the main character Dwayne and his friend Ron, attending their school’s football game. In the beginning, it shows Dwayne nagging Ron about selling his tickets, due to him being confident in his school’s football team. While in the process of arguing, three white students from the opposing school happened to hear their conversation and insisted that their school was going to win, hearing this Ron decided to propose a bet and the opposing students agreed. This results in Dwayne attending the game alone, as Ron sits in his car and goes to sleep. As he wakes up, he hears the broadcast on his radio saying that Hillman won by 44-3, thus causing Ron to rejoice. As the three white students came back to deal with the bet, Ron then decided to insist that if their team had a few “brotha’s” on it, then they would’ve lost as bad as they would. Hearing this enraged the opposing students, asking Ron is he actually saying that whites can’t play as good as blacks. This results in the three white men to hold Ron down and spray paint the front of his car with the words “N” and “I”. At the same time, coming from the building Dwayne sees the fight and rushes to help Ron and the scene takes them inside jail. While in jail, the five characters, where then meet by sheriff (), who asks both parties to briefly explained what happened. When given the chance to do so, both parties decided to tell their story differently