Why do we crave what harms us?

I still am struggling to find the evidence that I really want to support my topic, but I’m also still very passionate and dead-set on the topic that I have. So yeah, Im in a bit of a tough place.

As far as a thesis goes, I imagine mine being along the lines of: “The development of the Internet and other communication technologies has dramatically impacted the way in which we write and express ideas. This change was taking place before the Internet, but its development has significantly altered its course.

I’d like to explore this argument in the following three ways using these three supporting claims:

– Writing and idea expression was already shifting towards a more simplistic and accessible standard prior to the introduction of the Internet.

– The Internet’s ability to share information made authorship a less exclusive title and diluted the talent of the general writing population.

– People’s desire for quick bursts of information has seen idea expression in the form of videos and pictures blossom on sites such as Tumblr, Instagram, and YouTube, while traditional writing (newspapers, novels) have largely struggled.

Suggestions for modification are greatly appreciated!

So I’m head-over-heels in love with The Shallows, but I’ll try to put that aside and look for some passages that I don’t just heap praise on. Because, in all honesty, this is the first book I’ve actually highlighted and enjoyed it.

Passage #1: “But the news is not all good…the more difficult it becomes to turn back.” (34-35).

Passage #2: “To read a book was to practice an unnatural process of thought…It was a literary brain.” (64-65).

The experience that I have had reading this book is honestly unlike any other book that I have read in the last several years. Picking individual passages to highlight wasn’t easy, I found so many of them rich with connotations. However, as per the requirements, I selected two different passages from the first section of required reading. The first passage is filled with powerful, bold statements like “the possibility of intellectual decay is inherent in the malleability of our brains.” Carr attacks our human pride and forces us to accept the fact that as a species, we are still prone to making bad decisions. We inherently think that the human race is smart enough to realize all of its mistakes. Carr says not so fast- we are subject to bad decision-making as a species, too.

The second passage captured the essence of the book’s effect on the human mind in a mere page. In it, Carr claims that book reading was an “unnatural” process of thought, an “anomaly.” While I see his point, I wonder why humanity would ever make an “unnatural” switch? Surely, if the pros seemed outweighed by the cons, we should have left reading behind? It is hard for me to convince myself reading’s unnatural. Maybe it is because I’ve grown up surrounded by books and academia. I’m not sure. If the switch to reading was unnatural, why did we make it, and if it is indeed unnatural, why did we stick with it for centuries? There must have been some sort of transitional period where people’s brains were in between the scattered mind and the literary mind. I wonder if there was  a conflict of interest or some sort of internal tug-of-war going on.