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

508 Words3 Pages

Society's perception of the world has changed as a result of the new options provided by digital technology. In his book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, Harvard-educated writer Nicholas Carr analyzes how contemporary technologies are affecting how people think. He offers insight into the psychological ramifications of each technological advancement throughout history and how culture has influenced how society goes about its daily business. In order to demonstrate how negatively digital technology is affecting our brains, he contrasts its impacts with those of earlier technologies like reading, writing, books, and calculators. Due to their over-reliance on the internet, people have allowed themselves to become cognitively …show more content…

It is not a natural process that humans visually interpret symbols to have significant meaning. It was developed to lessen some of the burdens on early firms by keeping records of financial transactions to avoid forgetting crucial information. Carr uses this data to demonstrate how even the first inventions changed how human minds formed connections, supporting his claim.When talking about the earliest ways to write, he claims that even seemingly insignificant actions like ascribing meaning to symbols led to the development of vital neural pathways that linked the visual cortex to other regions of the brain in order to help people recognize every shape, which has been shown to significantly increase the number of connections sent and received in the brain. Carr writes, "Interpreting even such rudimentary markings required the development of extensive new neural pathways in people's brains, connecting the visual cortex with nearby sense-making areas of the brain" (52). People started to get smarter and thought more deeply as reading and writing skills improved because their brains had been conditioned to handle billions upon billions of connections. These technological developments benefited society and contributed to the general population's mental

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In Nicholas Carr’s news article. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”(2008), he expresses his concerns on how technology is changing the mental abilities of our minds. The author first provides anecdotal evidences by giving relevant quotes from reputable sources, he then introduces notable historical events as examples for his claim, and to conclude he challenges his readers to rethink their views of the internet. His purpose is to inform the reader on the altering effects of using technology. He seems to have a younger, tech savvy audience in mind because they are an easy group of people to connect with, since they are exposed to technology more than others.

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In his essay Is Google Making Us Stupid, Nicholas Carr argues that our dependence on the Internet changes the way we read and think. He includes his own personal testimony to support this claim, as well as others’ descriptions, including several friends, and bloggers that Carr quote. While he lacks scientific proof supporting his claim, multiple testimonies support his claim that the internet has changed the way people think. However, Carr views this negatively, saying that “I’m not thinking the way I used to think… my concentration often starts to drift… I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text” (633-634).

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Nicholas Carr, a writer and literature major, took the time to write his opinion about the new technologies and how they are shaping us today. He did this in his work “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”. Carr explores the changes technology has on the world and the way people think. He argues that “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding

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He asserts the different ways and examples on how the internet has had effect in our brain and our way of thinking. First, in agreement with the author’s argument about the how the internet is fundamentally changing our lives in the way we think and process information. He is right because the internet has been the main source of information that most people use nowadays to make their work more easier and faster. People tend not to think straight anymore to do things right because of the internet which brings more easier information than for us to use our brain. According to carr, he gives the example of Friedrich Nietzsche’s typewriter to show that the prolonged use of such a new medium could have a possible result of an overall

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He notes that the development of writing and the printing press led to significant changes in the way people thought and communicated. By comparing the internet to these historical developments, Carr suggests that the digital age is simply the latest iteration in a long line of technological advances that have fundamentally altered human cognition. In addition, Carr appeals to expert testimony to support his argument. He cites studies and quotes from prominent neuroscientists and researchers who suggest that the internet may be negatively impacting our ability to concentrate and process information.

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The internet has a lot of control on the way we think, while some are positive and some are negative. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr talks about how the internet shapes the way we read. The purpose of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr is to bring light to how the internet is changing our brain’s behavior and function. He does this by using anecdotes, scientific studies, and historical evidence throughout his article.

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The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains is a non-fiction book written by American writer Nicholas Carr published in 2010. The book follows Carr’s argument that the invention of new technology leads the networking of the brain to significantly change, lowering our attention span and concentration. Carr’s novel became a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. Carr utilizes chapter two of his book to explore the history of theories of the brain relating to the topic of brain plasticity. He starts the chapter by introducing Friedrich Nietzsche, who suffered various health problems relating to an incident where he fell off a horse.

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The Net is the most powerful tool that exists, it is mind-altering technology and without it, people think they are not able to reach their full potential, but people are losing their social skills in the process, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. In the book, The Shallows, the author explains how the internet is ruining our minds Carr explains how the internet is mind-altering technology. The internet pollutes our society.

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Reading is harder, focusing is difficult, books are a thing of the past. In an intriguing article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” Nicolas Carr explains how the internet is affecting people’s cognitive ability to function. Since the creation of the internet, information has become more readily available, but at the cost of the human brains cognitive ability. Carr states that artificial technologies have an effect on the brains cognitive ability because its causing us to change our habits for the artificial technology. He writes about Friedrich Nietzsche a writer “[who’s] vision was failing, [who couldn’t keep] his eyes focused on a page [without it] becom[ing] exhausting and painful” (Carr 3).

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Over generations and generations the world has seen many changes that has impacted the world and the lives of people. Some of those changes include the printing press, computers, and the smartphone. Have you ever realized that the internet might be affecting your brain? Well Nicholas Carr thinks the internet is bad and has an impact on our brain. In the book The Shallows by Nicholas Carr he claims that over many generations new technology has been created and it has been affecting our brains.

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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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