Analysis Of How Digital Technology Is Changing Our Mind

Kids, teens and adults are now constantly navigating the internet or using some sort of technology. In the article “Is the Onslaught Making Us Crazy” by Tony Dokoupil, different psychologist claim that technology has a bad influence on the human mind. Throughout the text, real life examples, showing psychological breakdowns, are used to support the statement.

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 technology, culture and economics writer, examines the impact technological innervation has on the way people act and think on a daily basis. His recent difficulties concentrating while reading books and lengthy articles has led him to believe that his time spent online may be contributing to his lacking concentration and contemplation skills. By prefacing his argument with anecdotes from his friends and acquaintances, he is convinced that a new type of reading and interpreting is emerging. Unlike the instinctive skill of speech, reading and writing are learned characteristics that Carr believes are being taught in a new way thanks to the amount of time people spend on the Internet. He believes that the neural circuitry of the brain is beginning to be shaped by the Internet, rather than by the books people read, the way it was shaped in the past. This provides the reasoning as to why Carr thinks that Internet may be making the population stupid.

There has been a ton of turmoil about the internet. A controversial issue on whether the internet is more helpful or hurtful to the human brain. On one hand, Nicholas Carr argues that technology may be weakening human abilities for deeper reading, an old fashion type of learning. Carr believes that relying on computers will cause humans intelligent to decline. On the other end, there’s Clive Thompson. Thompson presents computers as a digital tool that assists people in their everyday life. Providing phenomenal external memory, social connections, and endless availability of resources. Both, Carr and Thompson, believe that the internet can act as a tool that shapes the way humans think. Which brings us to the dilemma, is the internet a technological apocalypse or a promising utopia?

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.

I have grown more scared of the world now that technology is over running our life. German Theoretical Physicist, Albert Einstein once said “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction, the world will have a generation of idiots”. When we hear that we don’t really think much of it, a dead famous scientist words, they mean nothing right? Or do they? In the book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr makes the case that technology is inducing an intellectual decay in our brains. On the website fortune.com Bruce Friedman blogged It’s a provocative

It is often said, that the presumptions of negatives and positives impacts of technology is bigger than one may believe as technology is used in everyday life throughout the nation. Nicholas Carr argues that technology is a negative impact of human’s minds because such resources like “google” is making society stupid due to the fact that one’s cognition is diminished.  On the other hand, Clive Thompson shares different conclusions that acknowledge technology as positive aspect of new forms of human cognition and boosts our cognitive abilities, which is making us smarter, more productive and

Is the internet making us smarter or dumber? People continuously argue whether this rise of electronic use and internet in our lives is a negative or positive aspect. In June 5, 2010 Wall Street Journal article, Nicholas Carr raises and answer the intriguing question,“Does the Internet Make You Dumber?”Nicholas Carr argues that the internet has bad effects on our brain. He says that the internet makes it harder to remember anything, and that is harder to move memories into long term memory. Those who are continually distracted by emails, alerts, and text messages understand less than a person who can concentrate. Nicholas Carr points that the internet can change the way our brain acts. He states that those who use the internet are shallow, and the internet is causing irreversible damage to our thought processes and making us stupid. A week later, Steven Pinker counters Nicholas Carr’s assertions in his own New York Time article,“Mind Over Mass Media.”He argues that electronic technologies are not as horrible as some may make it seem, and he starts his article by addressing how“New forms of media have always caused moral panics”(199). Throughout his article, Pinker explains why critics, who accuse electronic technology as harming to human intelligence, are wrong. He suggests that,“these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart”(200). Through media and social networking, the internet brings people closer together and provides convenience for people’s life.

Another study by Mr. Merzenich, Professor of University of California in San Francisco found out that the brain is adaptable to whatever situation it is put in, therefore it can adapt to our technology habit which could be deadly to our intellectual lives. In other words, the individual “become signal processing units, quickly shepherding disjointed bits of info and then out of short term memory (Nicholas Carr).” Patricia Greenfield, a leading developmental psychologist, discovered that the “internet strengthened visual-spatial intelligence”. But for what cost, but a “new weakness in higher-order cognitive processes,” which included critical thinking, imagination and abstract vocabulary (Nicholas Carr).

Nicholas Carr brings forward a very interesting hypothesis on the internet and the effects that it can have on the mind. He discusses how the internet may be creating lasting and damaging cognitive effects on the brain, although, neuroscientists have found that the human brain is very adaptable at the cellular level throughout our adult lives. The Internet is becoming the dominant universal medium through which people read and disseminate information. In comparison to the good old text book, the internet also allows for constant interruptions which discourages deep concentration, attentive thinking and contemplative thinkers. Is the Internet making us stupid?

The technology has positive effects on our brains by providing the latest and sufficient information that we all need for every purposes. The use of technology really save our time and not much of using our brain anymore. Nicholas Carr had stated that, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to you brains… you’d be better off” (62). Rather than spending our time brainstorming and stressing out our brains, using the internet to complete any assignments make it a

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,

With the advancements of technology, what past generations have defined as traditionally being ‘intelligent’ is outdated in today’s age and Millennials have found new ways to be just as capable as the old generation. Elevating learning in a way that was once unimaginable in the past, technology is forging a path to open a brighter future built on achieving knowledge by technology and Millennials are taking wide strides across that path.

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

Although many people believe that the internet is making people smarter, better workers, and more focused, is a major misconception. Nicholas Carr, a writer about technology and culture, proves this wrong in his book The Shallows. Where he explains the negative effects of the internet, and how it is changing the way people think and process information. He explains this information by interviewing people who study in neuroscience, and by getting the opinion of other people such as bloggers who blog about technology and how it is affecting them. The internet is making people dumber, less focused, and rerouting people’s brains to think in another way.