The Attention Span Myth Summary

In “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era,” Richard Restak considers the effect of technology on our brains. As we process increasing amounts of information at ever-faster speeds, Restak argues that our brains are undergoing “profound alterations” in order to adapt to the changing needs of our modern world. As technology connects us to more people, places, and information than ever before, Restak warns that we are losing important cognitive functions, in particular our ability to focus and concentrate. However Restak fails to mention that technology has created significant affordances as well. Allowing society to advance as a whole, via social media, e-mail, cell phones, and other various communications. Technology is reshaping our habits of mind.Yes technology created a slight defect to the mind but many advantages came about using technology as an asset.

Nicholas Carr, author of the novel “The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains” explains in his works that media and technology is affecting the way our brain works and is used in our daily lives. Carr states, “The price we pay to assume technology’s power is alienation. The toll can be particularly high with our intellectual technologies. The tools of the mind amplify and in turn numb the most intimate, the most human, of our natural capacities - those for reason, perception, memory, emotion.”(Carr, 211) Carr continues to explain an interesting phenomena that occurred in society within the

• Reading now means skipping and skimming; five minutes on the same Web page is considered an eternity. This is not reading as Marilynne Robinson described it: the encounter with a second self in the silence of mental solitude. (The end of solitude, pg. 4)

The Internet is something that some consider their lifesavers, while others believe that it takes their life away. The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr is a novel that explores the different areas of how new technologies affect humans in different ways, regarding multi-tasking and distractions, to how new technologies make us lose a little part of ourselves. Throughout the book Carr puts forward very strong arguments, but then loses creditability with his use of fallacies in argument.

“The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (Carr 773). Carr’s point is because people are using the web, it is making it harder for them to concentrate and process information. Carr and Turkle both suggest in their articles that people now have lost the ability to be able to concentrate and to be

Students may easily lose their attention and concentration with easy access to such incredibly rich store of information. With such new technologies as television, internet and social networks, people nowadays tend to multitask more often as they have easy access to large amount of information. However, such easy access may sometimes be a distraction. Study report “Your Brain on Computers” shows that heavy multitaskers perform up to 20% worse on most tests compared to performance of light multitaskers. Working efficiency of people, who multitask, are claimed to be significantly lower. The same is with concentration. As a result, they are not engaged in working process. Students tend to be easily distracted with this situation. For example, combining doing homework with operating on Twitter, phone or YouTube results in poor engagement of a student into deep thinking process, according to Winifred Gallagher, who is the author of Rapt. He also points out that nowadays high school and college students have decreased capacity of serious thinking because of multitasking and distraction. Moreover, Tyler Cowen, economist and famous blogger, claims that nowadays information tends to come in shorter and smaller portions and that explains why our generation encourages short reading. Since online information is always presented in short written passages, the web prevents user from concentration and contemplation. As an illustration, Nicholas Carr, the speaker at MIT and Harvard,

Vital Paths is the title of the second chapter in Nicolas G. Carr's book, The Shallows. This chapter continues Carr's argument, posed in chapter one, in highlighting the dangers of the internet, regarding our cognitive abilities. Specifically on format, this chapter argues for our brains neurological flexibility through an array of examples, ranging from historical observations to scientific experiments, and ends cautioning that with malleability negative neurological effects are plausible.

First, Postman discusses attention span in reference to America’s first debate between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln on August 21 1858. Attention span means the length of time during which a person can concentrate on a subject or idea. Postman first illustrates about people with disciplined minds who are able to attend and listen to a 4-5 hour lecture. People at that time can listen and gather information, so they are able to comprehend and structure sentences.

istraction. Did that get your attention? While technology is the very thing that provides us with answers, it is also the cause of our distractions. Alina Tugend essay “Multitasking Can Make You Lose… Um… Focus” and Nicholas Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid” reflects on the purpose of how technology can cause delusional reactions upon our brain. Tugend is a columnist for the New York Times and also an author who appeared in the Los Angeles Times on many occasions. As for Carr, he has written widely on technology, business, and culture while observing the latest technologies and related issue. Together they seem like vastly different individuals, but Tugend and Carr’s essay essentially serve the same purpose to their audience. Authors Carr and Tugend reveal the purpose of harmful technology and the limitations cast upon the human brain through individual implementations of pathos, examples, and the voice of their tone.

Since the rise of technology and smart devices, the public has seen controversy over the benefits and drawbacks of internet usage. Nicholas Carr shared his opinions in the article “From The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” In the text, he claims that it seems to be “chipping away” his “capacity for concentration and contemplation” (Carr 5). In addition to that, he does not hesitate to state how “some worry they’re becoming chronic scatterbrains” from using the web (Carr 6). His views are painted purple in this piece of writing, as any reader could infer that Carr possesses a slightly bitter tone when it comes to the interwebs. He displays his dislike for the way it is reshaping our brains and mental function, even going

His essay is a predominantly convincing essay, in that he attempts to explain why Google is creating an attention-deficit society. He develops the argument through mainly focusing on the logical appeal of the reader although he also delves into the emotional appeal of the reader through beginning his article with a section of 2001:A Space Odyssey where HAL 9000 cries out mimicking Carr’s own feelings on the internet’s effect on his mind, “Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” (Carr, 1). This section is the initial pointer into his argument that the internet is corrupting people’s minds. He further explores how the Google affects the mind creating an attention deficit through diving into a collection of facts, studies, and historical examples to prove that each new technology, especially the internet, changes the way people think. For instance, Carr’s references Nietzsche and his typewriter, by stating that Nietzsche bought a typewriter which had a ‘subtler’ effect on his work. One if his friends noticed that his writing style had changed and he (Nietzsche) replies that ‘our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts”. (Carr, 10). This short statement provides support to Carr’s claim that the internet can change the way we think.

Carr’s premise is that the Web is interfering with our ability to focus on lengthy material. On the contrary, the internet is actually aiding our ability to focus on reading. This holds true for younger children, who are known as the digital natives in our generation. In a research conducted by The National Center for Education shows that “by altering the mode of reading material from traditional paper-based reading to online reading,” the interest of elementary school children increased (Wright 367). Because children of the 21st century are surrounded by technology, they are more likely to gear towards digital media for their mode of learning. Contrary to Carr’s view that the internet “is chipping away [the] capacity for concentration and contemplation,” these children are more likely to read and focus as a result of

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.

Nicholas Carr published The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains in 2011 as a result of his own personal experiences and observations of his own behavior. The book was published by W.W. Norton & Company with ISBN 978-0-393-33975-8. Carr began working on the book after he noticed that since the birth of the internet, he did not think in the same ways that he used to think; he was easily distracted and had trouble concentrating on tasks requiring a lot of thought (2011). This effect, he noticed, was not unique to him. Many of his colleagues reported that they too had lost a lot of interest in reading books, had trouble concentrating and were easily distracted (Carr, 2011). What if, Carr wondered, everyone doesn’t just prefer to do their reading on the internet for its inherent convenience and speed but rather, what if the internet was actually changing the way we all think?

Using the internet for so long has made us addicted, and we constantly rely on it. If you are doing a simple task, such as reading a book, it is a lot harder to concentrate because of the distraction that comes with the Net. Carr’s take on this is