The Effects of Technological Advancements on the Brain Analyzed in The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

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

In the excerpt “What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains”, Carr suggest the Internet is having an effect on

Nicholas Carr covers an unprecedented amount of material in his novel, “The Shallows.” He delves into subjects ranging from the history of the book to the business of Google to the psychological concept of neuroplasticity. All of these topics support his main argument: the idea that the internet is destroying our brains. He takes the deterministic approach that we are the tools we use, meaning they shape our brains. According to Carr, the internet negates our memories, deems print books useless, and distracts us from reality. His counterargument comes from the instrumentalist approach; this viewpoint maintains that people stay the same no matter the tools they use. His arguments are both sound and flimsy, current and outdated, and he rants

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.

In the book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr discusses the impact that technology has on humans. He introduces two philosophical viewpoints: determinism and instrumentalism. Determinism is the philosophical idea that assumes that a society’s technology dictates the development of its social structure and cultural values. The second viewpoint being instrumentalists, states people who devalue the power of technology. Instrumentalists believe that tools are just instruments that auxiliate their users, but people are not dependent on them. Carr views technology’s impact on the human brain like a double edge sword: it can help access countless information, but at the same time can overwhelm us and distract us. As a millennial, I have grown up in the digital era and have viewed the countless benefits of technology such as advances in health, access to information, and variety of entertainment which make my ideas align more with Instrumentalism.

Carrs's explains how his mind feels differently about attention and understanding of texts since he started using the internet. "I get restless, I lose the thread, [and] start

There is a huge price we pay for assuming that technology is an inanimate vesicle thing. To not recognize the impact such devices have on our brains is a naive thing to do. Based on the research that Nicholas G. Carr presented in his book The Shallows the human brain is becoming more disorganized and less focused at the task at hand wanting mostly immediate gratification. There is a good and bad side to everything and tecnology is not to be taken lightly and can be abused just as easily as anything else and can abuse us in return.

In Carr's essay, which he expanded into a book called The Shallows, he explains how the internet effects a person's thoughts. He quoted bloggers and other people, who claimed to have trouble concentrating after they began to use the internet. Carr values deep reading, which he says is indestingushable from deep thinking. He sees the idea of creating artificial intelligence as reducing intelligence to a mere algorithum. He calls it Taylorism of the mind, comparing it to the algorithums that industries use to help their worker become more efficient.

In The Shallows it 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). In the book, it says we pay more attention to technology than more as ourselves. Technology is taken over our brains as we speak. People are more focused on cell phones, computers, etc, that they forget to focus on everyday life.

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

But firstly, he has to get audience’s attention by narrating a conversation in A Space Odyssey in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Then he believed that the Internet has changed his mind, he was mentioning that he cannot concentrate a reading book like he used to do. He thinks he know what’s going on in his mind, he starts to become bored after two or three pages. He uses evidence and quotations from various authors and expert that mention the Internet may affect our capacity for deep reading and the Internet is going to replace the way reading in the traditional sense. He used the speech from the CEO of Google to mention and show us that Google is inventing the search engine because of money. The technologies can rescue and solve any problem in the fastest way like the typewriter can replace for writing by hand, the mechanical clock can change habits and behaviors of human now. By those evidence and background issues above, Carr is showing us the Trait of Human Nature that people now embrace new technology, resist and who are indifferent. Also he is inviting the audience to agree with him that the Internet, technology and Google are bringing the distraction for our mind so we cannot concentrate on what is called self-dependent.

The Shallows by Nicholas Carr is a compilation of critiques on current societal trends and observations of brain studies intermittently mixed with his reminiscing about how the world was before the mainstream adoption of the internet. Throughout the book, Carr expresses concerns that if humanity does not stop or change the way we interact with the internet, attention spans will plummet and deep thinking as we know it may cease to exist. I enjoyed this novel as an avid technologist for the fact that it provided well structured versions of the arguments technophobes have been using for years. Being able to switch my perspective through this book gives me new insights on why people are afraid of technological advancements and aids me in calming

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?

“Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think.” These daunting words were echoed by Nicholas Carr, author of the non-fiction , “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” His work has received both acclimation and criticism for exploring the extent of the internet’s influence on cognition. While Carr argues that the internet is indeed responsible for rewiring our brain leading to negative implications, others believe that the internet can be tailored to generate long-term benefits, and some believe that it there isn’t enough experimental evidence to support either side.