Guomin Zou Prof. Coleman Sociology 001 Mar. 3, 2015 What Is Wrong with Technology? “Up to 90% of young adults in major East Asian countries, including China, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, are nearsighted” (Park par. 3). The main reason that causes this phenomenon is that the East Asian students are overusing technology such as smart phones, Ipads, and computers. These technologies devices are the friends that they spend most time with. Playing video games and watching TV for over two hours each day can really hurt the teenagers’ eyes. However, bad eyesight is not the only impact that technology gives us. Technology is also shortening the time we spend on reading paperback books, obstructing us from gaining knowledge, creating communication problems among teenagers, and weakening our problem solving skills. These impacts can each cause the teenagers and even adults serious problem if they are not aware of them. Technology is “stealing” the time we spend on reading books. As Nicholas Carr has mentioned in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Many famous writers are having troubles on reading books. Most of them have not been reading books for months (447). That is one of the impacts that the technology gives us. Teenagers spend most of their time on smart phones and laptops. They have already absorbed enough information from the Internet. As a result, when they are trying to read books, they will feel like they are having a hard time concentrating on
Technology has always been a controversial subject between conservative people and innovators. Some people believe that it is a great tool to connect cultures and improve education and innovation in our society today, but others view it as a menace in our lives. “Growing Up Tethered” by Sherry Turkle and “George Orwell...Meet Mark Zuckerberg” by Lori Andrews both view technology as a dangerous tool. They believe in the many drawbacks of technology and the harm it can do to our lives with no explanation of the positive effects it has had on our society. “Our Future Selves” by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen plays the role of a positive look at technology and its role in our lives today. It gives examples of how advancing technology helps us and improves so many peoples’s lives. We can use Schmidt and Cohen’s essay as a lens to view the other two texts and gain a different understanding of what they are writing about.
With the rise of technology and the staggering availability of information, the digital age has come about in full force, and will only grow from here. Any individual with an internet connection has a vast amount of knowledge at his fingertips. As long as one is online, he is mere clicks away from Wikipedia or Google, which allows him to find what he needs to know. Despite this, Nicholas Carr questions whether Google has a positive impact on the way people take in information. In his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr explores the internet’s impact on the way people read. He argues that the availability of so much information has diminished the ability to concentrate on reading, referencing stories of literary types who no longer
Carr argues his point in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, and believes that the internet is our primary source of information which effects our ability to read books. Carr explains how him and his colleagues struggle with reading a book now because he is use to the internet, which I potentially agree with, I believe it could affect your reading skills; “If you’ve ever gotten a headache staring at pages filled with text or felt like you couldn’t focus when reading a simple paragraph the internet has affected with your attention span” (Morgan). The internet does take an affect in your brain. Carr addresses his new idea of considering the mind as a computer, and he feels bad for the loss of reading and what it provides for our brains. We have developed a
I personally prefer reading store bought books rather than ones on a Kindle. Tony Schwartz, the author of Addicted to Distraction, felt the same way. He had piles upon piles of books by his bedside that he had no time to read. People get distracted by whatever they have easy access to, and many people have easy access to technology. Even though I prefer things that are old-fashioned, I could not imagine my life without technology. Weirdly enough so many people, myself included, forget that thousands of people lived in a time where there wasn’t much technology, and they survived just fine. I think we should be thankful for the technology that we currently have because in the future things will become even more complicated. We will eventually become the generation that does not understand how to use the newest technology while younger generations watch and laugh at our expense. In conclusion, technology is a fantastic resource to have. Technology has helped to create so many advancements within our society. Technology is a good thing to be distracted by if it is used in a healthy
It is true that people are becoming more and more reliant on the internet to do everyday tasks. I feel that Carr addresses the issue perfectly in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid”. If we continue to use technology for everything, we will eventually lose all ability to deep read and make those critical connections that are necessary for true comprehension and application. He indicates that “the more [he] uses the web, the more he has to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (736). Knowing how difficult it was to read and analyze Carr’s article myself, I fully agree with his claims. Having grown up in a world that has always had technology, I must be hyper-cognizant of the task at hand when it comes to something such as reading, particularly if it is something that I deem less than interesting. When I was finally able to get through the entire essay, I started to think about how much I use the internet. I must admit that
“Google is my best friend,” said many people in today’s world. Technology was made to make life much easier than it is, but is it really making easier or is it making people stupid? In the article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, author Nicholas Carr conveys a message to his readers on how he believes the internet is making people today stupid and how it is fake knowledge. Carr starts off with an explanation on how he feels while reading a book to get his readers to connect with him by letting his audience that he gets fidgety and zones out when reading and a lot of people can relate to this because they too can get fidgety and lose focus when reading a text. “For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the internet,” (3). Carr goes to talk about his life surrounding the internet and how it brings upon the issues that he has when it comes to reading a single text. Carr uses many rhetorical devices such as imagery and personal experience to draw his readers in to inform and
Nicholas Carr’s article is directed to an audience that should realize Google and today’s technologies are hindering our societal progress. Carr proposes that reading online is less thought provoking than reading an actual book. In his opinion the Internet was created to distract us, therefore, changing the way we think. Carr suggest that the value of reading online is associated with efficiency and information gathering rather than knowledge and understanding. To support his claim he references blogger, Scott Karp, who admits to having stopped reading books all together. Karp states that his reason for reading online is “I’m just seeking convenience.” (511) Carr goes on to argue that we read online because we feel the need to be efficient.
According to the United Nations Agency, approximately 3.2 billion people have used the Internet since 2015, which has made a drastic increase since 2000 with there only being 738 million internet users then. That is almost 43% of the world's population that uses the internet. A controversial topic that is commonly being brought up in today's arguments is the use of the internet and how people believe it is becoming such a detriment to our society, because nobody in this generation acknowledges the value of books, or even prefers to use an actual copy such as a paperback. The internet, such as Google, is being classified as lazy or ignorant, but reading a book is labeled as literate or being knowledgeable. Thesis:“Teaching in the #Age Literacy” by Jennifer L. Nelson and “Is Google Making Us stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, both analyze the pros and cons to having the internet and information at our fingertips, how it is affecting the way we read and analyze text and different scientific experiments that have been put to use to decode why we think the way we do now and how to improve our intelligence.
In his article for The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr gives the argument of how the internet is changing the way people are now reading less than they used to a century ago. People all over are becoming less interested in reading material that is longer than a few pages sometimes they can't even comprehend to finish reading a paragraph. The concentration someone had while reading a lengthy book is now gone, one of the smallest distractions can get your attention even just boredom itself can make you drift away from your reading. The more time people spend online, the more their ability to concentrate on their readings diminish until they no longer can stay focused on reading something that is longer than three sentences. Because of the way the use of internet on a daily use has made it more efficient for people to search and find what they were looking for right away, the need to be searching through books or other types of informational mediums, is no longer something that is done as often, sense it would take less time and effort to look something up rather than read through a book to find the
In the book, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury mentions a lot about TV replacing books. Ray’s predictions were correct about technology taking over books. Most people read online now on their kindles, iPads, iPhones, laptops, or a device that connects to the internet. Even at our school we use audio books. Mr. Bradbury was right to fear the replacement of books with technology. More and more kids are finding less interest in reading. With the growth of technology, kids are finding this more important and procrastinate on assignment, such as reading. There is pros and cons to technology and the replacement of books is most likely the worst. Reading is not appropriately valued in today's society anymore. People do not care to read anymore they
Carr’s premise is that the Web is interfering with our ability to focus on lengthy material. On the contrary, the internet is actually aiding our ability to focus on reading. This holds true for younger children, who are known as the digital natives in our generation. In a research conducted by The National Center for Education shows that “by altering the mode of reading material from traditional paper-based reading to online reading,” the interest of elementary school children increased (Wright 367). Because children of the 21st century are surrounded by technology, they are more likely to gear towards digital media for their mode of learning. Contrary to Carr’s view that the internet “is chipping away [the] capacity for concentration and contemplation,” these children are more likely to read and focus as a result of
According to HealthLand, up to 90% young adults in major Asian countries (China, Taiwan, Japan) are nearsighted. But guess what? According to A Day Of The Internet, there are only 27.5% of people in Asia have been using network. Although in North America, there are 78.6% of people have been using internet before, but according to Vision and Ageing Lab, there are only 25% of people are nearsighted in North America. After all, what is the major cause of myopia? For kids, the main cause of myopia is over reading and learning. According to Ian Morgan’s experiment in Asia, they found out sunlight can let human’s body produce more dopamine to prevent myopia. In Asia, student’s pressure of school works are great, so they don’t have enough time to play under the sun and get enough sunlight, that is what cause them get myopia. Unless those people who are internet addiction patients, internet may let them get myopia because over focusing on internet may let them cut back the time they play outside, but that does not means people should stop using internet. They should control and make a plan about how long they can spend their time on
In today’s modern world, technology reigns. Millions of people all over the globe utilize technology for a multitude of purposes every day, whether it be at work, school, or even from the leisure of their home. If you were to ask most people in America if they could live without technology even for a day, the answer would most likely be no. Contrary to opinions that are popular with my fellow millennials, I think that society is too dependent on technology. I believe society relies on technology too much because we use the internet for simple tasks that we should be capable of doing ourselves, our dependence has resulted in laziness, and technology is rapidly replacing people in the workplace, thus resulting in less jobs.
Now days with the rise of digital technology many physical items such as pen and paper are slowly being replaced by computers and smart phones. But is this really a good thing? I read books and of course so do many other people in this class and around the globe. But since the creation of ‘e-readers’ more and more people have been converting to the technology based side of reading. Although technology is slowly becoming more predominant in this era we should not rely on it to always entertain and keep us occupied.
Nowadays, there are thousands of books available free on the Internet, and people find them easy to read the book online instead of getting the hard copy of the book. In his book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr explains that the online readings make it becomes difficult for us to pay full attention to the reading “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing”(7). For example, when I have to read the articles from the Internet for my research papers or class assignments, I always have hard time focus on the reading because I easily get distracted by the ads shown on the pages. I start paying attention to the ads instead of understanding and absorb the information. Carr also states that “For some people, the very idea of reading a book has come to seem old-fashioned, maybe even little silly- like sewing your own shirts or butchering your own meat”(8). In these days, people find it boring to read books, especially young adults, they think it is a waste of time to read books when they can get the short versions of reading from the Internet instead of reading a page to