What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains: The Shallows By Nicholas Carr

Nicholas Carr in, What the Internet is Doing to our Brains: The Shallows(2008) argues that the net is the single-most powerful mind altering technology that has ever come into general use. Carr supports this assertion by explaining how the internet has changed our thought processes, and how we use the internet.

Nicholas Carr, the author of The Shallows, wrote his book to convince further society that the internet is having an adverse effect on their brains and how they are receiving information. His major thesis for the novel was expressed when he exclaimed, "...the Internet controls what we think and the process in which we think because with its efficiency and speed, we are formulating all of our thoughts through the speed of the internet rather than through the speed of our mind." Throughout the novel, Carr discusses multiple reasons on how we have changed to depend on the internet. As well as how we have let go of older versions of technology and methods of learning because they seem insufficient compared to the internet. Carr was very biased

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 is an American author who writes the majority of books and articles about the continuously evolving world of technology and how it is effecting our society. Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, was a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times bestseller. In this essay I will be rhetorically analyzing Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid” published in 2008. The purpose of Carr’s essay was to bring light to an issue that many of us face but only a meniscal few have come to terms with; and that is that technology is mentally incapacitating our society and simultaneously making us lazy. This essay was intended for anyone was has been consumed in today’s culture by new technological advances to the extent of not being able to function without some sort of device, IE cellphone, laptop or tablet on a daily basis.

In the Shallows Nicholas Carr shown his side of the argument that technology is overpowering our minds. How he proves this fact is that whenever we learn something new on the computer it takes less than 2 days for the brain to reshape itself to adapt to the new learning environment. The brian has a plasticity to being able to mold itself into a new challenge to adapt to a new circumstance. We become dependent of the internet addicted to see what is new with our friends. Finally it shows that we can’t be offline for a certain time period or we will get withdraws like a drug. This shows how the internet and technology has affected us in a terrible manner.

The general argument made by Nicholas Carr in his work, From the Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, is that phones and social media has taken over, and that’s about all our generation relies on in today’s world. More specifically, Nicholas Carr argues that the internet is distracting us from our day to day work, and human interaction. He writes, “I do most of my banking and a lot of my shopping online. I use my browser to pay my bills, schedule my appointments, book flights and hotel rooms, renew my driver’s license, send invitations and greeting cards” (Carr par. 3). In this passage, Nicholas Carr is suggesting how the internet is taking over more and more of his life, and how technology is changing his daily tasks, and how

Can a material such as the internet really go deep into the mind and rewire it? Nicholas Carr’s opinion is that the internet makes us shallow, hence the title of the novel “The Shallows, What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains.” I agree with Nicholas Carr’s claim since it not only makes us shallow, but also disconnects us from our heart, souls, and loved ones. The reason his claim is so riveting, is the result of our heavy use. Many of us spend hours on the internet and don’t even recognize it.

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?

With technology advancing faster and faster, it seems to have taken control over our lives. Society today spends more time on the internet than anything else, which means there’s a rapid growing of corrosion over our minds. When we use technology, such as watching television or surfing the web, do we even use our brains at all? Today, most of us live in our heads rather than in the real world. Technological regression in the tracking of smartphones, the inclination of society’s laziness, and the abuse of features such as posting/commenting have all contributed to a dystopian world.

In the article “What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains”, Nicholas Carr points out that many people can not sit down for long periods of time and read in today’s world, due to the Internet. Carr states, “Over the last few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping my neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory” (Carr, par. 2). That someone, or something just so happens to be the thing that controls our world today, the Internet. Anything you want is just a click away on the Internet. Although the Internet can be a great tool to have, it is indeed changing the way we think.

The internet is affecting the teenage brain mentally by making us lose the way our brain thinks and learns. Nicholas Carr is the author of a book called “The Shallows-What

From my perspective, Nicholas Carr’s argument that the internet appears to be decreasing his capacity for concentration and contemplation does apply to my generation’s internet natives. Generation Z, my generation, has an innumerable amount of internet natives who are perfect examples of Carr’s argument against the internet. My generation, who will be the leaders of the world, are losing their mental capacity because of the frequent use of electronics but especially the World Wide Web. Approximately twenty percent of children from ages eight to sixteen have a computer in their bedroom, and fifty four percent have internet access. Unfortunately, Carr’s argument applies to my generation’s web natives because they are engrossed in the web

When most people think of the Internet, they think of all the benefits of using it: countless websites filled with seemingly unlimited information, numerous ways to communicate with friends and colleagues, and games and interactive activities. What does not come immediately to mind, however, are all the downfalls of the online world. In chapter seven of his book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr addresses this fallacies by presenting the facts through studies and research. He begins with the dwindling ability to communicate well with others.

We live in a world that is overrun by technology. Nowadays, everyone uses technology, from children and teenagers to adults and elders. It’s no secret technology is becoming more integrated in our daily lives, and by becoming more comfortable with it, we are allowing this revolutionary innovation to become more involved in our personal lives too. Technology is having a negative impact on today’s society for a couple of reasons. It’s putting our privacy at risk and it’s creating an environment where people lack social engagement. Overuse of our devices has even lead us to become sleep deprived. The problem is, people too readily embrace technology, seeking only the benefits and ignoring the many downfalls. We need to learn to socialize with one another and live without the constant usage and reliance of our phones or mobile devices.

Smartphones have become a necessity to people all around the world, especially me. I take my phone everywhere, such as: the bathroom, school, restaurants, and even the shower. I am always anxious to whether I have received a text message or even a social media update. Technology is making many advances to communication levels through smartphones and social media, but these advances may start causing problems. Christopher Bergland, April Glaser, and Kurt Wagner put together two different articles about technology. Christopher Bergland wrote “Are Smartphones Making Us Stupid?” which was about our learning abilities with the use of technology nearby, while April and Kurt wrote the article “Facebook is developing a way to read your mind” that talked about the new and improved Facebook. In these articles, there are many similarities with technology arguments, but they are both very different in how these new arguments are being made.