The Internet Of The Digital Age

Are you at an age where you can remember a time before the internet, where you would have to search through stacks of books or encyclopedias to find the information that you want? Some of you may be thinking “Yes, thank god for google!” and others may be thinking “Oh, the horror! I can’t imagine surviving without it!”. But there are the few that reminisce about the time when you couldn’t find whatever information you were looking for in a matter of minutes. Unlike many, Tim Kreider looks back on the times before the internet with fondness, and thinks that our easy access to information has had some negative side effects. While Kreider raises some interesting and valid points in his article, “In Praise of Not Knowing” there are still some

Carr explains that the net has become essential to internet users work, school, or social lives, and often with all three. And there are, of course, many people who do not use the internet at all, either because they can’t afford it or because they don’t want to. The scope of its use unprecedented, even by the standards of the mass media of the twentieth century. The net commands our attention with far greater insistency than our television

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.

The internet has become a large part of households and our daily lives, so much that many of us today cannot possibly imagine it not existing, even for a couple weeks, days, or even hours. Around 1998, 56k modems became a pivot point bringing the World Wide Web to a greater majority of homes in the United States. These modems were capable of transferring data at around 56kbps, or 0.056mbps. That is roughly 1/155th of the average speed of today’s household internet speed of 8.7mbps according to the latest State of the Internet report by Akamai Technologies. At those speeds, it would take around twelve minutes to download an average five megabyte song in 1998 whereas today it would take roughly five seconds in the average household today. According to an article by Steve Lohr in The New York Times, in the 1990s, when the World Wide Web was becoming popular, it was so slow and crowed that it became dubbed as the world wide wait. People were willing to wait great deals of time just for a single page to load though. In modern days, Google engineers did a study and found if users are forced to wait more than four hundred milliseconds for results the majority of people are likely to leave and search somewhere else. Reporter Vamien Mckalin concludes that it only proves how much of a change high speed Internet has brought about in our lives. Christopher Muther of the Boston Globe describes the side effects of hyper connected living as sounding like a prescription

In his essay “The Net Is a Waste of Time,” novelist William Gibson analyzes the hidden potentials of the Internet in both its vastness and affect on society. He writes this piece at the dawn of the Internet, and during this undeveloped phase, he discusses its multitude of facts as is and will be. As hinted in the title of his essay, Gibson takes the stance that the Internet at its early stages is a waste of time -- an impressively large and complex waste of time -- but a waste of time nonetheless. He is ultimately concerned with how we are choosing to procrastinate through the Internet, and that our growing attachment and dependence on the Internet reveals a “fatal naïveté” (697) about us. Gibson also brings up the true enormity of the Web even at its premature standing, detailing how “the content of the Web aspires the absolute variety. One might find anything there. It is like rummaging in the forefront of the collective global mind” (697). Despite his concerns on what the Web might become, Gibson realizes that at the time of his writing, the Web was at a stage much like the larval stage of a butterfly’s life -- seems unassuming, but as he himself puts it, “The Web is new, and our response to it has not yet hardened” (697), and that there are “big changes afoot” (696).

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives--or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts--as the Internet does today.

According to Nicholas Carr, the internet has had an effect on how we read, think and live. He provides examples of this throughout his essay. In one of his statements he says “the net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information [we receive]” (732) He gathers this information from other colleagues and friends he knows. People can access the internet and in a few clicks to have all the information they need and more. We are no longer limited by local sources to gather our data. At the speed of light, the voices of millions can be heard by all. It is the quick access and our human desire for knowledge that feeds the need for the internet. It has damaged our level of patience and causing our minds to wander. “And what

There is no denying the incredible library of knowledge the internet has made readily available for all to use. Having such a resource is transforming modern society in many ways, as it brings insight and news across the world at a moment’s notice, all the while enhancing educational and technological advancements. However, according to Sven Birkets, an American essayist and literacy critic, in his essay, “The Owl Has Flown”, it is not without fault as observations are to be made on how this new resource has transformed people’s intelligence and wisdom. The author theorizes that the large, almost unlimited, library that is now being offered by services such as the internet, reshapes the public’s knowledge. Knowledge is transformed to be horizontal or insubstantial compared to the much deeper lateral understanding pertaining to older generations because of the amount of time they spent dwelling on a much smaller set of resources. This observation made by Birkets in the late 90’s is expanded upon, and modernized by Nicholas Carr, an American writer and author, in a more inflicting and self-reflecting article for The Atlantic magazine entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains”. Carr does not just blame the Google search engine in this claim, but the internet as a whole on how it impacts concentration and our ability to contemplate. These cognitive impacts are observed and explained in more scientific terms by Eric Jaffe, a regular Observer

To introduce the arguement, not everyone has the opportunity to have internet access where they live. For example, www.techtimes.com states,"Today, 2.7 billion people, or around one-third of the Earth's population, have access to the Internet.”

The web is a worldwide PC organize giving an assortment of data, permitting individuals the simplicity of gets to and productivity of finding the information they crave, however there are a few disadvantages to the web. In the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid" the writer Nicholas Carr's subject on the web is that the data that is expressed to is so efficient and effective to information that our minds don’t processes as well as retain the knowledge thrown at us. Carr contends that the web is rewiring his cerebrum. The way Carr believes is divergent, making basic considering, breaking down, and revealing verifiable dialect in the content exceptionally troublesome. He fears that the web make us lose the not just the capacity to hold the information

Some ten to fifteen years ago, people were already experiencing the feeling that the internet may be influencing us in an unhealthy manner. As we have continued on with our progression of technology, it seems that we have become more and more dependent on our newly developed electronics. This is exactly the argument made by Nicholas Carr in his article—which became the cover story of the Atlantic Monthly’s Ideas issue back in 2008—entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” In this article, Carr explains what he has observed of our modern evolution of technology. His main point being that the internet has simply become too easily accessible. What may have taken days to research can now be accomplished in a couple hours at the most. This is dangerous as it develops

Perhaps, the most important facts about the internet are that it contains a wealth of information, that can be send across the world almost instantly, and that it can unite people in wildly

Through his research, the author gradually found that other people may be in the same situation as he is since their thinking pattern could only adapt to the instant, compendious messages and information whose literal meaning is in internet form. People have therefore started to depend more on the internet for information

The Internet can be such a wonderful and useful tool to help gather information or explore new and different ideas. However, humans are not using the Internet to the

In today’s world technology has evolved to the point where a large amount of information is stored in cyberspace. It is because of this type of storage people around the world have an easier time at accessing information than ever before. The time before the late 20th century gathering information was long and tedious to get a book that the library did not own would take at least a couple of weeks depending on the time period or it may not have been possible to obtain that book. But now people can access a vast amount of information in a matter of minutes. Example, in modern times if someone wanted to know about a different culture they could simple look up the information on a computer or any device that had access to