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Why The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains

1745 Words7 Pages

Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print.

Nicholas Carr is an author who writes and researches on topics about technology and culture. Carr has written multiple books on topics of technology and its effects on the human race. Carr has written for many credible sources such as The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Wired, Nature, MIT Technology Review, and many others. He holds a bachelor 's from Dartmouth College and master 's degree in English and American Literature and Language, from Harvard University, it definitely tells us how much of an education Carr has worked for.
The book likes to challenge what we think is true and backs up its statement with sufficient research and evidence. Carr goes on a lot about how many of the technologies we use and including technologies from the past have molded us into how we think a certain way and act a certain way. Carr argues why everything we do is becoming much harder to focus on with all the distractions the internet has. …show more content…

The book has multiple chapters that focus on something that I am focusing on and that is our memory and mind. There is a chapter that mainly focuses on Memory, I feel that I could benefit the most from that one specific chapter.
This source contributes more on the psychological side of why we are affected by technology. This is my one resource that challenges ideas instead of actually talking about actual facts. Carr talks not only how it is affecting us but also some ways to stop ourselves from actually becoming too immersed in our technology. My other resources don’t really challenge anything unlike Carr. The reading makes me think very deeply and I must really try to think and make meaning of what Carr

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Carr is effective in his argument by sharing his fears and personal experiences to have an effect on the audience utilizing pathos and ethos. Not only does he include his own experience, but he also includes other people’s point of views. He goes on to support his claim of how technology

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As the reader, you can tell that Nicholas Carr is looking at the bigger picture. He is thinking about how this will affect us in the future, and does more than just talk about why Google is making us stupid. He goes back and gives examples of other devices that have had the same effect on many different generations. This makes us wonder, how can we use technology to better ourselves, without letting it control us? Because we rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, Carr leaves it up to us; the audience.

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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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More so the fear it portrays. The reader is left with the notion that technology does more harm than good. From experience, being born in an era of which I and technology grew together, the internet and technology has progressed society in many ways. Carr did say access to information is now quick and efficient, but it also does so much more that he fails to mention. Personally, I learn from this technology more than I have in the books any class has given me.

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Nicholas Carr, What the Internet is doing to Our Brains The Shallows (2010) asserts that, “The price we pay to assume technology’s power is alienation.” He supports this assertion by saying, “They both ultimately achieve their mental and behavioral effects by shaping the synaptic organization of the brain.” Also by, “ We long to keep it activated.” The writer concludes in order for people to improve their thoughts, they will have to cope with the new technology and how they think. Carr believes that technology is taking over how people interact with each other.

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