Technology And Information : Slippery Slope

If a person wishes to be up to date on what is going on the world around them, in all facets and walks of life, then they must spend a considerable portion of time merely skimming the water of each pool of knowledge, never having the time to truly sink their feet in. This correlates directly back to the massively increased availability of information and writings, whose shoulders Birkerts puts the blame of our loss upon. Nicholas Carr cites a study done on the “behavior of visitors to two popular research sites” which gives its users an even larger degree of online texts.

When students are doing research on the internet, Wikipedia is usually one of the first site to appear. For students, the site is usually tempting to click, but they are quickly reminded by their teachers that Wikipedia should not be used as a site of knowledge. They label the site as inaccurate, unreliable, and uncreditable. In Boyd’s article she writes that teachers consistently tell students to stay clear of Wikipedia at all cost. Students should not have to see the site as tempting. They should be allowed to use it and embrace the site. Wikipedia has so much educational potential and should not be ignored by teachers. Boyd also writes that some analyses have shown that Wikipedia’s content is just as creditable as, if not more reliable than, more traditional resources.

As Carr continues, he speaks of his extended use of the internet over the last decade, explaining that all information that he once painstakingly searched for is done in minutes with the use of search engines. In doing this, Carr places blame on the internet for breaking his ability to concentrate. Carr presents his arguments in a way that his readers could easily agree. He gradually works up to the idea that the internet has weakened his ability to focus, and as he does this he makes several general statements about the internet’s nature. These points on the net’s nature are so basic that any reader of his article would be inclined to agree with them, and this lends itself to help readers believe the argument Carr wishes to propose. Because it would be hard to provide factual evidence to support his claims, Carr effectively uses logical reasoning to convince the reader.

In the article, Domonoske begins with explaining studies founded by the Stanford researchers, and how they evaluated and their ideas concluded that, “students” ability to assess information sources are described to be as "dismaying," "bleak" and "[a] threat to democracy." The tone in the statement is crucial and gives a strong feel which makes it more appealing and more attention-

In this new age of technology, information is becoming more readily available to practically everyone. This revolution has raised one major concern for the students of our generation: that we will not be able to think at all. That this generation will rely so heavily on the ability to access information immediately that we subsequently lose the ability to think for ourselves. This will not happen, however. Although many believe the internet is spoiling our generation, the fact of the matter is that the internet actually enriches our education and aids us in coming up with more educated solutions.

In his writing, Carr explains how his mind has become much more erratic since his use of the internet. “I get fidgety, lose the thread, [and] begin looking for something else to do,” Carr says (572). The availability of information that people have these days is astonishing, and their intake of it is even more considerable. In connection to the information people have access to in our day and age, it has promoted a culture of disinterest and boredom. You are able to see this clearly in a study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from University College London. The subjects displayed “a form of skimming activity,” jumping from source to source. They normally would read no more than one or two pages of a book or article before they would go to another site, seldom returning to any source they had already viewed.

From websites dedicating their server space to unveiling government conspiracies to those comparing the benefits of different fruits, the Internet is host to many different ideas. The Internet permeates academics as there are websites devoted to making money off of desperate students by writing essays for them. In The Shadow Scholar: How I Made a Living Helping College Kids Cheat, Dave Tomar believes that professors feel threatened by our perpetually evolving relationship with information and obstruct students' access to outside material in order to assure their future as controllers of knowledge. However, I believe that professors are purposefully preventing students from accessing knowledge for more benign reasons; unlike Tomar's assessment

According to the United Nations Agency, approximately 3.2 billion people have used the Internet since 2015, which has made a drastic increase since 2000 with there only being 738 million internet users then. That is almost 43% of the world's population that uses the internet. A controversial topic that is commonly being brought up in today's arguments is the use of the internet and how people believe it is becoming such a detriment to our society, because nobody in this generation acknowledges the value of books, or even prefers to use an actual copy such as a paperback. The internet, such as Google, is being classified as lazy or ignorant, but reading a book is labeled as literate or being knowledgeable. Thesis:“Teaching in the #Age Literacy” by Jennifer L. Nelson and “Is Google Making Us stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, both analyze the pros and cons to having the internet and information at our fingertips, how it is affecting the way we read and analyze text and different scientific experiments that have been put to use to decode why we think the way we do now and how to improve our intelligence.

As information technology continues to expand, we find that almost anyone can be a self-claimed expert in almost any field, without the cumbersome technicality of having an educational background on the matter they choose to discuss. This issue is further exacerbated when those individuals are given a public platform to convey their poorly substantiated opinions. Now it is important, as it has always been that the individual must take it upon their self to properly research the subject matter before developing an opinion. In this case, information technology has provided people with the ability to easily obtain information from reliable sources.

In the article How Google, Wikipedia Have Changed Our Lives, the author Jennifer talks about how students today use Google and Wikipedia more than students did back then. The author says that back when she was in high school, she had to use an encyclopedia to do her research. Now that technology is out, she uses the internet more to research about almost anything and she finds it hard to stop using. Learning back then for Jennifer, she had to rely on getting her information from her teacher and also went to the book store and look up books that best fit the topic she was learning. Now, she would just pull out her devices in class and look up information instead of being patient and waiting for her teacher to tell her.

In Carrs article he discusses the way that the Internet gives us a false sense of knowledge. When we want to know about something we Google it. We find the article title that is closest to what we are searching for and we click it. In our everlasting quest to be know-it-alls we skim and skim or look for bold words and sentences until we feel that the information we have now obtained is suffice and we are considered knowledgeable about the topic. Although we feel this way, this “knowledge” is usually based off of two or three sentences that are compact and straight to the point.

Reader- Response to Rothenberg David Rothenberg in his essay “How the Web Destroys the Quality of Students’ Research Papers” identifies and explains several clues that disturbing decline of students’ work. The professor was trying to criticize the World Wide Web in some ways such as lack of creativity, outdated material in depth, and decline in the use on a par with the quality of libraries. He persuades his readers who are students and teachers that the internet has not been doing any good to the development of students’ research papers. Rothenberg provides extremely well-described examples that show that the World Wide Web affects negatively on the students’ work.

The Internet is the key to development. In the United States, the Internet has a positive effect on education. It has broadened the amount and kind of resources accessible for research, provided students successful techniques for collaboration (discourse boards and forums), and has allowed for social networking to become not as formal and more widespread. The internet has the potential to be an enormous force for augmentation by giving fast and inexpensive information. It has turned into an instructive means for students, expanded communication, and allowed learning of all subjects to be shared.

I would like to share with you what I have recently learned about obtaining information through the Internet. The Internet is a tremendous potential source of information about virtually any imaginable topic of interest. However, because there is no regulation or quality control over what people choose to publish online, it is crucial to learn ways of distinguishing credible, reliable, factually accurate information sources from those that are not credible, unreliable, factually inaccurate sources. For example, websites that are maintained by government agencies, accredited university research programs, and licensed professionals are good candidates to be considered reliable sources of information online.

However, some would say that within education, the use of technology can influence students to cheat or take the easy way out on their assignments. “Students today can easily access essays, reports, class notes, tests, etc. online, making it that much more difficult for teachers to know if the work their students hand in is original” (Ronan). This dilemma interferes with teenagers processing new information. The Internet is a great tool; however, teens may rely too heavily on it, and worse, believe everything they see. I believe that the internet can be a great source to gain more knowledge, however, one needs to acknowledge how to effectively use this tool to benefit them.