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Summary Of Pearls Before Breakfast By Nicholas Carr

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In life, there are thousands of things vying for people’s attention. With all of these distractions, many people miss out on art, music, and many other aspects of culture. Though they are vastly different, Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and Gene Weingarten’s “Pearls before Breakfast”, both address what we miss when we rush through life. “Pearls before Breakfast” is the story of Joshua Bell, a famous musician who assisted in a social experiment by the Washington Post. On a cold January morning, at the L’Enfant Plaza, Bell played classical pieces for nearly an hour. During that time, 1097 people walked through the station. About twenty people gave him some money, but walked on without listening; only six people …show more content…

In his essay, he writes “once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (Nicholas Carr 227). He also states that as the internet becomes our primary source of information, we are distracted, and it begins to affect our ability, or at least our willingness, to read books and long pieces. In his piece, Carr refers to a 5-year study in the UK, which found that people visiting sites "exhibited 'a form of skimming activity, ' hopping from one source or site to another, and rarely returning to any source they 'd already visited." Carr acknowledges that people read more because of the Web, but deplores that "our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged." He states that the way we read on the internet is changing the way we think and making us less contemplative. Similarly, in “Pearls before Breakfast”, Weingarten notes that “the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences.” We live in a time when technology can be used to replicate reality, augment reality, and create virtual reality. Technology obviously has its place, but at the same time, it can be potentially suffocating and suppressing. It is common knowledge that a significant number of people waste countless hours, forfeiting vocational and academic achievement due to digital distractions that have little or no lasting

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Carr believes that the Internet is alternating the way our brain functions. It is addictive.

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Summary One Nicholas Carr in his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” states that the internet is causing deficiencies in reading and has caused people to have brief attention spans while reading a book. Carr immediately goes into explanation on how he can no longer sit to read without becoming “fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do.” Carr then uses the rhetorical device of ethos by using creditable sources to back his claim. He uses a claim from scholars at University College London that stated, “It is clear that users are not reading online in traditional sense,” therefore stating people are skimming and scanning for information.

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Carr’s essay is not biased because he appreciates some points of the web as a writer, and he says “The web has been a godsend to me as a writer” (57). He explains his idea briefly about how we read by using ethos to show his audience that he is a credible source. For example, he tells his past reading ability by telling the reader that his mind would engaged in the narrative or the argument, he would give much time in reading long articles. To expand his idea, he said “That is rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages” (57).

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Brainless.com: Rhetorical Strategies in Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” 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.

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Carr says that the internet is the reason behind this, especially for him as a writer. He states that the internet makes research much easier and it has been a “godsend to him as a writer.” He argues that internet use affects cognition and how it is becoming everything that we

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In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr is saying that when the internet becomes our primary source of information, it negatively affects our reading ability and our attention span. Using Google and the internet dulls our brain’s experience in the learning process and makes it hard to focus on reading. Carr gives a researched account on how using the internet is supposed to be fast and rewarding to the user. He explains that we go on the internet because it is easier and less time consuming than using something like a book or a magazine. Carr exclaims that we now use the internet as our main source for information.

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By doing this the evidence from the other writers keeps the reader drawn in to show the effects the internet has on us. Carr says that the articles he gained information from said, “It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense”; that the way we read now is what you would call ‘skimming’ or reading “horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins”. When reading on the internet, people have stopped reading entire articles, instead we bounce from site to site until we gather the information we need. Carr puts this information there so the reader can relate to it. In the article, he uses to support his argument, he agrees how people, lose attention rather rapidly when reading on the internet, and it is causing people to lose concentration when looking at physical readings.

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In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Carr argues that the Internet is causing our reading skills to deteriorate. Conversely in Trent Batson’s article “Response to Nicholas Carr’s ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’” , Trent argues against Carr saying that the changes in our reading habits are actually positive. Both writers have valid points within their essays but Batson’s article makes more sense logically. Carr sees only the negative aspects of the Internet on people’s reading and not the positive ones.

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"The net is designed to be an interruption system, a machine geared to dividing attention," - Carr argues that the internet is designed to distract us and prevent us from engaging in deep and focused thinking. "The more we use the Web, the more we train our brain to be distracted... we’re losing our ability to concentrate," - Carr suggests that the constant distractions and multitasking involved in using the internet are making us less able to focus and concentrate. "The depth of our intelligence hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory to long-term memory," - Carr suggests that the constant bombardment of information and lack of deep focus on any one topic is hindering our ability to remember and retain information. " The Web's cacophony of stimuli short-circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively," - Carr argues that the internet's constant barrage of information and distractions is preventing us from engaging in deep and creative thinking. "We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration,

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In today’s society, technology plays a very important role in its ability to function, it helps people find information, communicate with others far away and provides entertainment. In “Fahrenheit 451”, a book written by Ray Bradbury, a dystopian future where books have been made illegal is presented. In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, raises many questions about technology and its effects on society. It’s quite evident that we have become quite dependent on technology due to our overconsumption of it.

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Our way of thinking is beginning to change to the way that computers do. Advancements are made everyday. These new advancements are attempting to make life in general easier for everyone. Nicholas Carr makes the claim that, “as the internet because our primary source of the information it is affecting our ability to read books and other long narratives.” Carr suggests that using the internet is altering the way that our minds operate.

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According to this statement the readers can conclude that the main reason for reading concentration disturbance is the internet. In terms of the scientific research, the article provides the research by the British Library and U.K educational consortium which states “They found that people using the sites exhibited ‘a form of skimming activity,’ hopping from one source to another rarely returning to any source they’d already visitied” (Carr, 2008). From this statement we can understand that there are numbers of attractive information piled on one page, people have a hard time choosing which one to read, resulting them to skim and jump to one another. From these couple examples, it can be concluded that the author of this essay is strongly attempting to convince the readers in his idea of internet disturbing people’s concentration. However, the essay itself is extremely biased, because of the fact that there is no information about benefits of using the internet and reading online.

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The Influence of Technology In the essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr argues that utilization of the internet has an adverse effect on our way of thinking and functioning in everyday life. Whether it be reading a newspaper, or scrolling through Facebook, internet media has forever stamped its name in our existence. 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.

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"The price we pay to assume technology 's power is alienation. The toll can be particularly with our intellectual technologies. The tools of the mind amplify, and, in turn, numb the most intimate, the most human, of our natural capacities -- those for reason, perception, memory, emotion." (Carr 221) Ultimately, I agree with what Carr author of "The Shallows" has stated in this quote.

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Can beauty transcend at an inconvenient time? In the article, "Pearls Before Breakfast", Gene Weingarten, a writer for the Washington Post, analyses an experiment conducted by the publication to determine whether busy commuters at the popular metro station L 'Enfant Plaza notice a world-renowned musician, in this case Joshua Bell, be playing some of the world 's greatest written music on one of the most valuable violins ever. The article received the highest accolade an article can receive and that 's the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Gene Weingarten known both for his humorous style as well as his serious style in writing received the National Society of Newspaper Columnists ' Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award.

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