The Shallows

In his book "The Shallows," Nicholas Carr claims, “With the exception of alphabets and number systems, the Net may well be the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use. At the very least, it’s the most powerful that has come along since the book” (Carr, 118). Carr supports this claim through examining other early inventions of man, such as the book, and using other 's opinions and evidence to prove the Net can alter the mind. The author suggests that because of this new mind-altering technology, we are in a modern renaissance. Carr establishes a cautionary tone for his audience, anyone who does and will use the Net, to raise awareness of how the Internet is refining people 's minds.

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.

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.

The internet, in short, is our everyday savior when in distress. Technology is our main source of communication in the 21st century. However, according to Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, published in the July/August 2008 issue of the Atlantic, the internet is reprogramming his memory, and remapping his neural circuitry. Carr accuses the internet of taking away his focus and concentration.Even though Carr uses logos intensely and multiple rhetorical approaches in convincing the reader of his point of view, he fails to make a logical, persuading argument for multiple reasons.

The Internet has proven itself to be helpful, but it can also be a scary place. When the Internet first emerged, it was difficult to gauge its full potential. The Internet was actually created as a “military communications network in the 1960s” (Campbell et al., 2016, p. 41). However, the Internet became a more integral part of society around the 21st century when it transformed into a hub of information and entertainment. The film, The Net, features the early years of the Internet and the dangers that came with it. This film took a radical stance about how the Internet can damage a person’s life. The film remains relevant today since it inspires paranoia regarding the fragile safety

The debate over the internet's influence on human minds has been long running. Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" article successfully defends both opinions on this issue. He has plenty of history on the topic and has seen much success in previous works. Carr uses his past to impact the present issue society is challenged with every day. With his background on the subject, Carr is able to establish credibility as a speaker before he reasons for both sides of the debate successfully.

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

Throughout the article, Carr consults with credible sources that agree with him and believe that the internet is forcing our brains to evolve to face the growing nature of the web. A media specialist who Carr consulted with admits that, “[M]edia [is] not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought,”(Carr 92) and as media evolves it ,”[shapes] the process of thought.”(Carr 92) Carr argues that media is demising our intellectual ability, his argument is aided by his appeal to logos. Carr cities many credible sources that support his argument, that the internet is diminishing our cognitive ability. Car quotes multiple researchers and fellow “friends and acquaintances — literary

Could you imagine travelling the world as a powerful writer, befriending monumental people? This is the life of Pico Iyers. Iyers questions the intent of technology and whether or not this generation can depict the difference between what is a want and what is essential. How does Pico Iyers write so powerfully? Iyers does not act alone he quotes people of authority, releases his personal experiences, and paints a picture that brings the whole piece together.

A little bit about our author Nicholas Carr, he is a well-known American writer, interest in technology and culture. He has published books, essays and blog posts, his work “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” was a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times bestseller. He is also a former member of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s editorial board of advisors, he got an M.A., in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid” Carr writes about the impact that the Internet is having on his brains as well as everybody’s brains, by giving himself as an example “I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has

Technology can help us find answers in a matter of a few seconds. In the article is “Why Google Isn’t Making us Stupid … or Smart” Chad Wellmon briefly explains how the internet is not helping us get any smarter or any stupider. We are just not learning anything and we just find results. “Digital technologies, claim the most optimistic among us, will deliver a universal knowledge that will make us smarter and ultimately liberate us” (Wellmon 68). Wellmon is try to explain to us that the Internet will help us in looking up things that we might want to know. We can learn new things just by a quick search. You can look up anything on the internet and you will find answers from all over the world. Therefore, you can learn anything you want about the world. Without Google we probably would have had still been stuck in the stone ages. “Likewise, to suggest that Google is making us stupid is to ignore the historical fact that over time technologies have had an effect on how we think, but in ways that are much more complex and not at all reducible to simple statement like ‘Google is making us stupid’ (Wellmon 69). This quote is telling us how we can learn anything we want thanks to the internet because all we have to do is search something and millions of results will show up at the tip of our fingertips. With this technology we have had made great discoveries around the world. Both the internet and technology is beneficial to every single one of us nowadays because we all use it on a daily basis, either to talk to people or to research for an

Over the past two weeks, I have been reading The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas G. Carr. In the book, the author discusses the various effects of the Internet not only on our minds both physically and mentally, but also how it affects our race's actions and behaviors. I have spent the past two weeks reading this book, and I finished reading 280 pages in 325 minutes. Like the previous book I read, I chose this book because the subject was something that I haven't really explored before in other books that I have read, and my goal is to try to read at least a book every two weeks, When reading this book, I sometimes found myself confused, for reading about the brain's structure and how it functions wasn't something

Carr states a point that I have previously mentioned: “[a]nd what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation” (Carr 1). Not only do I relate to this reaction, but I deem it true for any person attempting to use the Internet for research, writing, or seeking specific information. Given that the preceding few weeks I have been in this online course, and up until this reading, I had not taken notice of how horrible my concentration became while on the Internet. Nicholas Carr lets the reader in on a fact that I was negligent of, explaining, “…the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements” (Carr 1). If this statement does not make one feel “stupid,” let me expand a little further. Did you know Google and “other companies” hire minions to take a look at what pages we spend the most of our time viewing and then use that information to feed us more unsolicited internet propaganda? Essentially internet users have become a group of clicking guinea

Throughout history, no single piece of technology has been so heavily relied upon such as the internet. Things such as the first car, the first telephone, and even the first airplanes were not as easily, or readily accessible as the Net is today. In all reality, the internet is the greatest and most useful tool that humanity has ever dreamt up. From instant transferring of data to endless sources of information, the Net not only connects all corners of the world, but makes each and every person more knowledgeable and self-aware. But as with all new and virtuous things, there is a darker and more dangerous side. The internet is a tool that consumes the intellectual, changing the way the brain functions and ultimately creating a reliance. This reliance is so severe that all of life’s functions depend on the internet without the same dependency being reciprocated. The relationship is one sided, where the Net has much to gain while the user has little. Furthermore, in its relatively new state, the internet is very obscure and has very questionable ethics. Although beneficial in specific cases, the internet affects one’s emotional state and latently mars cognitive function while creating a devastatingly powerful and coercive reliance.