Summary Of Hal And Me By Nicholas Carr

The Internet provides individuals with an abundance of information, from searching a specific recipe for a home cooked meal to building a worldwide empire like Facebook. Information has brought us the comfort of having everything at the tips of our fingers; but as one enjoys the Internet’s bounties, is the ability to read and think deeply affected? In the excerpt, taken from The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, “Hal and Me” by Nicholas Carr, the Internet alters its users minds in ways that are both subtle and profound. This idea expresses how the amazing simplicity of searching information on the Internet, uses the concepts of symbolism, irony, and nuance to demonstrate how the web can easily backfire in regards to one’s

One of these “friends” is Philip Davis, a doctoral student in communication at Cornell. He had similar reactions as he exclaims,

“I read a lot-or at least I should be reading a lot-only I don’t. I skim. I scroll. I have very little patience for long, drawn-out, nuanced arguments, even though I accuse others of painting the world too simply” (350).

Earlier, in the text, Davis was showing a woman how to use a Web browser. He said that he was “astonished” and “even irritated” at the fact that the woman paused to read the text on the sites she stumbled upon. He even scolded and told her, “You’re not supposed to read Web pages, just click on the hyper-texted words!” (349). This is ironic as Davis “accuses others of painting the world too simply,” but does not fully read complex articles. Instead he “skims and scrolls” without actually understanding and analyzing the article. The irony that is brought when Davis exclaims his thoughts, expresses how “simple living” doesn’t necessarily show the “bigger picture.” Relating this back to technology and how skimming articles and reading the hyper-texted words can leave out important necessary information needed for deep thinking and thought process. The influence of advancing technology is beginning to “transition the readers between two very different modes of thinking”

His relationship with technology began in the eighties where he started to utilize the Internet in ways of business and lifestyle, but as bigger changes began to happen, so did his ways of using the technology. Carr’s transformation draws the reader’s attention to begin questioning whether their actions have “changed” in response to the Internet. The connection that occurs starts shifting the reader to a more contradictory or pessimistic view towards the Internet. The use of nuance brings awareness to his conflicting expressions toward the change he’s going through and what he is feeling. The subtle hints that Carr gives off throughout the end on how the Internet is so wonderful, but at the same time has changed him. “I missed my old brain,” (357) states Carr in the very last sentence of the excerpt, which infers there is something wrong with how he currently “thinks” (357) and acknowledges the readers to reflect. In my mind, Carr’s conflicts convey a genuine feeling of “missing his old brain” and how he was “turning into something like a high speed data-processing machine, a human HAL” (357). Personally, I can reflect on how the Internet has changed my brain in different ways. Growing up with the benefits of having the Internet has made reading easier and faster than reading a long, detailed book. Going back to the scene that is used at the beginning