The book that Nicholas Carr wrote, “The Shallows:What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains“, has enlightened me about how much the internet and the advancement in technology have impacted our society and culture. Nicholas Carr made me realize how our society is relying on technology too much and I can’t disagree with him, because the technological advancements became a reliable tool for us to do almost anything. So in my belief, seeing how my generation is heavily impacted with the internet, the internet has become almost an essential tool for us to live within the society since it has almost become a universal tool.
Now when I was reading chapter four of The Shallows, I liked how Nicholas Carr started to give us a historical background of how written works was such a technological achievement that influenced the society of that time. From clay tablets to scrolls then books and typewriters, etc… (to present), written language has allowed us to spread ideas or conceptions and put the writers’ perception into the readers. Now that I’m talking about conceptions it reminds me of my philosophy class. Anyhow, Nicholas Carr explains within all these technological steps of the book, the invention of computers completely made a different approach on reading. He talks about how the internet reading and writing is different from the physical way. With physical reading (reading from a book) the reader gets to concentrate on one idea, become physically active reading the book and be able to be in their “own world”. (thinking world) While on the other hand, reading online is fragmented which means that we skim through the text or we find the summarized version of the text so we save time, and get distracted from the internet by advertisements and other applications/software.
The transition that Nicholas Carr does with the chapters was clever because in chapter four he shows the function of a book or reading text, while on the next chapter he starts to talk specifically on the effects the computer has started. He examines how the computer is becoming more of a universal tool which in return makes other tools such as newspapers, films and etc… to become obsolete, since it is becoming available online. In addition, he emphasizes that the internet helps connecting people which makes the internet a place where people can interact and socialize to each easier. For instance, Facebook, Twitter, AIM, MSN, etc… would be a place where people would socialize through online.
In the end, I liked that Nicholas Carr started to mention other technological tools such as the phone, newspapers, laptop, smart-phones, etc… to show the evolution of how the computer became more universal tool. These chapters made me wonder, since the computer is slowly replacing the other tools and becoming the universal tool, would we be so dependent on the computer to do everything for us? Even though the internet has both positive and negative impact on us, will it change the person’s identity? And are video games and Youtube-ing just a way of socializing with others and to spread a concept like a book or is it just a distraction to see or to do?