The Shallows What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brain Analysis

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

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.

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.

Nicholas Carr’s Is Google Making Us Stupid? explains the impact the Internet is having on his (and others) patience with in depth reading habits, and possibly the way their brain is processing information. The old days of having to spend hours researching a subject are long gone because of the Internet. Having such a powerful tool available at any time can be a good and bad thing wrapped up in the same package. Over the last couple decades, home computer and smartphone ownership has been on a steady rise with most homes now having multiple devices. Therefore, having unlimited information available at all times has become a reality.

As technology begins to advance every day it starts to have a large impact on us humans, not only on just our lifestyle but also the way we prefer to receive information. In the novel The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr, he proclaims a biased argument about the internet consequently how it is changing our ability to think logically because we are choosing the easier route to gain knowledge. Additionally, argues that due to Google we lack our critical thinking skills causing less knowledge to be created. The Internet is designed to connect people on a personal and commercial level, on the other hand, Carr rejects that idea, moreover views it as making us individuals more shallow by using the Internet. Despite the benefits the internet has, it is degrading us and we don’t even know it.

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 is an excellent place to explore our mind and put our thoughts together; however, it also has a negative effect to our brains, and the more we use it the more it decrease our intelligence. In this essay “Does the Internet Make You Smarter or Dumber?” by Nicholas Carr, he argues about the immoral side of the internet. According to Carr, “When we’re constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking” (22). Carr’s pint of view about the internet is that it does not make us smarter in any way; if anything it make us dense and slow. Scientific study have shown that most people who stayed on the internet quit a lot are more likely to damage their brains mentally. According to Carr, the internet is also a place to waste our time. Carr backed up his arguments with studies from scientists, researches and even books. In these essay, Carr’s appeals to logic and understanding is the strongest; whereas his appeals to ethos and his appeals to pathos are finite.

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

Do you feel more comfortable on the online world or the real and physical world? In the hallways at school, while walking down the street, in parked cars in a parking lot, in the store; everywhere you go, humans have their heads down, scrolling through the online world instead of getting a grasp of the physical world. In recent discussions of technology, a controversial issue has been how the internet affects us as humans. On the one hand, some argue that the internet is the “best thing to ever come alone”. On the other hand, however, others argue that the internet never should have come to life. The best perspective on this issue, is reflected by Nicholas Carr in his book The Shallows when he writes, “With the exception of the alphabets and

Dependency on Smartphones Albert Einstein once said, "I fear the day when technology will surpass our human interaction. We will have a generation of idiots. " Today’s generation has become so dependent on our smartphones for information. As smartphones have become a great and easy tool for things such as surfing the internet, communication, and navigation.

The internet is our conduit for accessing a wide variety of information. In his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr discusses how the use of the internet affects our thought process in being unable to focus on books or longer pieces of writing. The author feels that “someone, or something, has been tinkering with [his] brain” over the past few years (Carr 731). While he was easily able to delve into books and longer articles, Carr noticed a change in his research techniques after starting to use the internet. He found that his “concentration often [started] to drift after two or three pages” and it was a struggle to go back to the text (Carr 732). His assertion is that the neural circuits in his brain have changed as a

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.

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.

Through the internet people have lost the ability to focus and not interact with people as much as theywe used too without the internet. In the book “ The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr he explains and shows us examples of how the internet has changed us.