Futurist-The William Gibson
William Gibson, the writer of the essay, “The Net Is a Waste of Time” presents various views regarding the net. He has compared the net with the wooden box (television). Just like the television has evolved from the stage of showing nothing but “snow” to something more. He has predicted that the net will also evolve into something greater and bigger. He creates the idea in the reader’s mind that the net is in its early stages during 1990’s and will evolve into something bigger. Gibson claimed that the net was like a “city”, where we could find anything, even with the people we may not have spoken to in years. He argues that because of the internet, people have lost their leisure time, play time and they have become “busybodies.” He also argues that the net is a procrastinator’s dream. While most people assume of doing important tasks on the web, many of us are just procrastinating a lot of the time. In the end, he concludes that the net is a “waste of time”, claiming that “it offers us the opportunity to waste time, to wander aimlessly, to daydream about the countless other lives, the other people” (698). Gibson presents many valid points in his essay regarding the net, where he has positively predicts the evolution of it, which is one of the biggest inventions of our time. Whereas it is also true that people have become busybodies because of the internet.
The internet makes everybody an “expert.” Before the invention of the internet, people who are professional on the field can only write a book and give an advice to the people who is seeking information and advice. But in today’s context along with the internet, anyone can write and share on any fields and subjects. Either it is in fields of medical, financial, education, beauty whether they have a degree or certification of doctor, engineer, dermatologist, beauty expert, financial expert or not. Therefore, information and data available on the internet has become unreliable and inaccurate as compare to the information and data available before the invention of the internet. Everything that people have search on the internet is completely traceable to the person it belongs to, which compromises personal information. This
A huge beneficial effect of the Internet is time-efficiency because it no longer takes days to find research. Fortunately, it only takes a couple of minutes to do a few Google searches. Another benefit to the Internet, in comparison to the last example, is that it is a channel for most of the world’s information. For Carr, as for others, the Internet is becoming a universal medium. Lastly, it is probable that we may be doing more reading today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was a choice of interest. It is assumed that we may do more reading today because not only do we have access to a variety of texts, but also a numerous amount of ways of communicating. For example, social media accounts and text-messaging. A negative effect of the Internet is that it is chipping away capacity for contemplation. The Internet is
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.
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).
The Internet, a word that is vaguely observed by the many people of this world, is an idea that plays with people’s minds and manipulates individuals by slowly taking over the way they conduct themselves. A person’s mind and the way they control their daily lives changes as the Net dominates the world of technology. In the novel The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains by Nicholas Carr, the Net is expressed through the psychological and mental health of people’s habits. Over time, society has become accustomed to the ways of self-connection and a loss of interpersonal communication, using the Internet as their shield from the communal society. No matter the type of person an individual identifies as or what electronic device
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
The author compares the difference from the past and the present and how the internet has changed not only himself, but others and the way that they are able to understand and focus due to the long-term use of the web. While comparing the past and the present the author gathers information from well know writers that feel the same way about the effects of the web. The author's choice of personal experiences, vivid imagery and analysis backed by research hook the reader and persuades them to believe that today's technology is causing mainly problems.
Does the internet affect the way people think? This is the question Nicholas Carr answers in his essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr writes about the negative aspects of relying on an outside source for information in order to argue that Google could be making us less intelligent. Carr’s general audience is anyone with access to the internet because he believes most people with access to the internet usually abuse it. Because the internet supplies a large quantity of information, people are less likely to learn for themselves.
The Internet is the culmination of technological development. Thankful to it, humans have become multilaterally developed, the time has become a measure that has truly gained value, and science is more practical and accessible around the world. In his work:” The Shallows-What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains”, the publisher and author Nicolas Carr explains on his experience how the Internet besides its benefits has an enormous defect-distraction, lack of concentration on the meaning of things, or an event. In his speech, he mentions a habit that we practice daily and we do not realize his negative impact, namely the lack of concentration caused by “over welling urge to get up and check email, start clicking on links, do some googling” even
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
People are introduced to a new technological advancement almost everyday. Some of them make our lives easier; however, every good thing has a bad side. Some influential events may be causes of really adverse effects on the way of our lives. Without doubt, invention of the Internet is one of the most powerful events world-wide. Thanks to the Internet, lots of things such as communication, research, bank transactions, shopping, etc. can be done within just a couple of seconds. While the Internet provides us these incredible conveniences, some negates would be inevitable on people. In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, published by The Atlantic Magazine, in 2008, Nicholas Carr talks about these adverse affects of the Internet. He claims that the internet is changing our research habits and the way we reach information in a negative manner.
The central message of this article is to explain to its audience how the Internet is affecting its users over the past 20 years. This article and the book itself are based on three years research of studies conducted on this subject. Mainly this message is explaining how the access to the constant and unlimited stream of information on Internet is affecting people’s concentration and loss of focus in daily life.
In the end, while Lyon and Hafner give us an entertaining story regarding how the Internet was discovered, we are still left wondering about what effect the Internet is actually having. True, we see all of the hard work that occurred behind the scenes in the making of the Internet in this book, but now the question must be asked: where does the Internet take us? This is a very important question in the context of where technology takes our culture, and takes humanity in general. Indeed, every piece of technology has an effect on the people within the culture. There is, after all, certain political and social consequences to the progress in technology. In his essay "Do
Moreover, many people are mistaken that they trust the internet, when really they can’t. They are not aware of the disadvantages of relying on the
In today’s world 3 billion humans are on the internet but there are also 4 billion people that are not. In the beginning of my study on the future of the internet, I asked myself this question: is it possible that everyone could be online and globally connected? Then I asked myself how, if everyone is online, the future of the internet change the experience of everyday life? Looking back, the internet is still a relatively new phenomenon as it was first created back in the 1960’s by a computer scientist named J.C.R Licklider. He envisioned a network of computers, called the galactic network, which would allow humans to be able to share information instantly. Overtime this is how the internet developed, as many of these networks that 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.