The Shallows Summary

The internet has changed the way we live our daily lives. It changed the way we socialize and has impacted the way we communicate. In the New York Times article, “Addicted to Distractions” by Tony Schwartz, it discusses how the author realized that his addiction to the internet prevented him from creating personal goals that will benefit him. For example, our author found himself one evening reading the same paragraph repetitively before concluding that he just can’t simply focus on the content of the book. This horrified the author because he once found pleasure in reading books, and now instead of reading them he finds himself spending countless hours on the internet. A large percentage of Americans are indeed addicted to the internet,

Do we depend on the Internet to answer all of our questions? Nicholas Carr, an American author, wrote “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” published in 2008 in The Atlantic, and he argues about the effects of the Internet on literacy, cognition, and culture. Carr begins his argument with the ending scene of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Carr believes that we depend on the Internet more than just looking up the answers in the book ourselves. He is trying to prove that our generation is consumed by the Internet. In addition to this, I feel his argument is effective because he builds credibility with personal facts, using statistics, and making emotional appeals throughout the essay. He gives many details and examples to backup and support his argument.

Carr opens up his argument with his personal struggle to focus on reading the text. Unlike the past when he enjoyed reading lengthy articles easily, he acknowledges that his mind constantly drifts away from the text and that he looks for something else to do. “I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet....Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes… Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets”(Carr 348). He realizes that the increasing amount of time spending on the Internet has caused his intellectual pain. By exposing his personal experience and analyzing it, he successfully points out the issue he faces.

Imagine being in a room full of people, but no one talks or looks at each other. In fact, each person is plugged to a machine. This is how technology has affected society. Some people believe that technology has begun to manipulate our brains, while others claim it is taking intimacy from our relationships. The writers, Nicholas Carr and Sherry Tunkle, explain in their articles how internet use is affecting the way humans think and feel.

Carr also comments that the internet makes people more shallow –thus the title of his well-known book. This is because the internet takes away from attentive thinking. The internet constantly bombards its viewers with a lot of varying information and because of this the viewer is forced to multitask and loses focus of any original, contemplative thoughts. This multitasking effect is a key element to the very design and business model of the internet, as Carr suggests in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The faster a computer user can read and click, in other words the more the user can multitask, the more he/she gets to see, and the “more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements.” Thus, in the end, internet multitasking negatively affects users but positively benefits the inventors and marketers. William Badke expounds upon this very idea in his article “How Stupid Is Google Making Us?” According

The article “Mind Over Mass Media”, written by Professor Steven Pinker, describes the impact of media on human lives and brains. Pinker illustrates the benefits people gain from using the worlds quickly increasing technology and media. Pinker suggests that today’s technology such as, PowerPoint, Google, and other forms of social media can actually enhance and bring more intelligence to the mind, instead of being detrimental. Critics believe that the many different forms of media can lower intelligence. However, Pinker declares that scientists are using all of this technology everyone else is using, and are still discovering new things. In his article, Pinker explains that there can be negative effects with the use of the wide range of technology.

When Carr discusses how the internet has affected people close to him he discusses their experiences by saying, “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing”. This phenomenon is quite evident in "Fahrenheit 451" with Mildred, the programing she views has reduced her attention span to nearly nonexistent as she doesn’t fully comprehend what Montag says in their discussions. A con of the internet would have to be the fact that information is readily available, it allows us to consume lots of information in a shorter amount of time. In the past information took time to find and was mostly found in written books, "Fahrenheit 451" is a society in which this concept has been brought to an extreme. Print literature/any form of physical writing is extremely important according to Maryanne Wolf, an author referenced in the article, “The media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains”. If we become too dependent on technology the way our brains develop is changed drastically, technology is good for us, however, if we become too dependent on it there could be

Nicholas Carr made quite a few of points in his book The Shallows. Car made a point in his book, the internet is making us more smarter. (Carr; 40) “ One click on a link led to a dozen or a hundred more” “ online articles are seen faster than print editions” “ Books are great, but the net is faster and won’t waste paper” Our IQ since the internet became the most used source, got higher. The internet has affected us as well. When we face a question that we have no clue about we don 't go to our

Carr explains to us that the internet is a tool used every single day in today’s society, but also makes most of us complacent with the ease of having the world at our fingertips. He starts his argument by telling us the effect the internet has had on him and others he has come across. The internet has changed his train of thought and his ability to focus and concentrate. He believes our brains have been reprogramed over time to adjust to the speed and convenience of the internet. Our ability to retain and digest traditional media has also been compromised since we are used to receiving information so rapidly. This is a strong opening argument for his essay.

Nowadays, the internet is the biggest marketing and media tool that people can use today. It can have various effects on people’s daily life ranging from bad to beneficial. In the essay “Is Google making us stupid” by Nicholas Carr writes about how internet usage in the 21st century is changing people’s reading habit and a cognitive concentration. Particularly, he emphasizes on Google’s role in this matter and its consequences on making people machine like. Carr also stated that the online reading largely contributes to people’s way of reading a book. He is extremely focused on the online reading’s distraction that most affects people’s mind.

In the book The Shallows author Nicholas Carr explains how he believes that technology is taking over everything and changing the way we think and process information. As a reader I also believe that technology is changing the way we process information because of all the examples he uses to prove his point. In the different chapters he gives examples from past historians and psychologists to explain why he believes the things he does, Carr also interviews college professors and doctors to see if they have noticed a difference in themselves or in patients of theirs with the same problem, and lastly throughout the book and on the internet there are multiple reviews on the opinions of the technology.

When using the internet often we tend to get addicted, and when we are away from the internet all we wonder about is what we are missing out on. “We want to be interrupted because each interruption brings us a valuable piece of information. To turn off these alerts is to risk feeling out of touch, or even socially isolated," wrote Carr. I am addicted to the internet, and when I am away from it can get tough. When I do my homework I turn off my phone, and put it in another room or else I get distracted and cannot get anything done. When I am at work I see coworkers, managers, janitors, and everyone around me on their smartphones. Now there is a rule that if we caught on the floor with our cell phones we get written up, or suspended from work because instead of working people were paying less attention to the customers and more to their social media. Every day people around us get into severe, and deadly accidents because of the internet. We have the internet on our phones and that access' us to social media. At stop signs, stop lights, freeways, and school zones I see at least one person who drives with one hand, and has their cell phone in the other. Our attention span is so short that we are willing to risk the lives of ourselves, and our peers to the

In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr discusses the internet’s effect on human thought. This is perfectly shown in Chapter Nine which is titled “Search, Memory.” Carr speaks on how the internet effects long term memory. The chapter quotes one of the smartest minds in the history of Western Civilization, Socrates. Socrates is quoted, “Writing down their thoughts and reading the thoughts of others had written down, they become less dependent on the contents of their own memory.” (The Shallows, Pg. 173) Socrates was onto something, just not in the right in the right part of history. With all of the knowledge available online and just a few key strokes away, there comes a loss of the long term memory. Why retain any knowledge if it just a hyperlink away?

Internet is developing day to day. Internet and networks are binding us in new ways. As Rheingold argues, “There is a huge social issue at work in digital literacy, one that goes beyond personal authority. Every intercourse creates new association in a child’s brain, every email, tweet, search, or post is contributing and nourishing connections in our global brain, changing the shape of the Internet that we billions of people are progressing together. Young child brain or an internet brain both are always trying to make connections. Internet is changing our lifestyle which includes work, producing and consuming. The creative potential release by digital technologies is also boosting questions about rules and ethics, as well as social benefits

Humanity has changing every day. People affect these changes and sometimes changes affect people’s life. However, there are a big conflict about historical changes. Some philosophers and a part of human population say that changes are unstoppable and no one know how history is changing. On the other hand some people say that history is changing with some reasons. Although opponents of this idea claim that governments shape their countries with war because history can only change with militarism, some people say that there are some other reasons which are changing history: technological development and world economy system.