Free choice blog

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Elizabeth Lee

The internet has a huge impact on our brains and the question is whether it is good or evil. I think as of now its good since there has been many advances in our technology that aids us in our homework, research, and entertainment. However many people also believe that the internet has damaged our brains. We have become slower thinkers and our ability to work on ourselves has decreased.

One time during a dinner with my friends, one of my friends suggested to play this game. It’s a game where everyone stacks up their phones in the middle of the table and whoever picks up their phone first during the time we eat loses. Then he explained that the loser will pay for the bill. The purpose of the game was to prevent everyone from looking at their phones and support actual conversations with each other while we eat. For us, this ultimately failed because of our strong urge to look at our text messages or our Facebook notifications.

I guess the internet has done a lot during the past few decades. I see the negative side of it growing and growing as time goes on. We need to have self-control in order to win this battle between the internet and humans. As humans we are easily tempted to do what pleasures us, but in order to be successful in maintaining human relationships and other social aspects, we must learn how to not get addicted to the internet.

 

 

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Two Shifts

Posted on February 13, 2012 by raul.torres

What I found interesting was the shifts Carr spoke about. The first shift he spoke about happened around 750 BC, with the development of the Greek alphabet. Being able to write down ideas and stories changed the way we thought and communicated, Carr even says that that changed “intellectual history: the shift from an oral culture, in which knowledge was exchanged mainly by speaking, to a literary culture, in which writing became a major medium for expressing thought.” This shift probably seemed like the better of the two, it has its obvious advantages but many stood against it. Such as Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus, who believes “writing threatens to make us shallower thinkers…”

The second shift Carr speaks about began in the middle of the 20th century. We began focusing our time and attention on electronic media. “”the printing press and its products are being pushed from the center of our intellectual lives to its edges” This shift also has major advantages but we are becoming more aware of it disadvantages and how we are being affected.

My point is that I think its interesting how Carr tell us about these two shifts, and clearly states when they happen, I thought it was a slow continuous process, but it clearly has points where the process happens at an alarmingly fast rate.

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The Internet

Posted on February 13, 2012 by michelle.persico

While reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, I am realizing that he is right in a lot of what he says. At this moment, I have my Facebook page open and I am going back and forth between tabs. He is correct when he says that attention spans and being able to focus is being ruined by the internet. I grew up with computers, but I can remember a time when I didn’t have or use one. I don’t recall a time when I realized my ability to focus was altered however. I have never thought about the internet as being harmful in that way before reading Carr’s book.

The internet is causing people to lose touch with humanity. Although it keeps people connected, it is also becoming the number one source to communicate. It is rare that I meet someone who does not have a Facebook or other similar website. If you don’t have one, people look at you oddly. I find myself using less and less of my Facebook though. It is filled with people I am not close to, so I really don’t care what they are doing. The reason I keep my Facebook is to see what my friends are up to in college, share pictures, and connect with those who live far away.  I can’t text or talk on the phone with people I know in other countries, so it is a good source to be able to.

Facebook is also used for the wrong reasons, and it is part of why I don’t want to use it anymore. About a month ago, a 15 year old girl from where I am from killed herself by throwing herself in front of a bus because of Facebook bullying. Even after she died, anonymous people harassed her Facebook page with pictures of buses, or saying that she deserved to die. I think it is wrong that a page like that is allowed.

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Distractions

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Anna Mai

There are both positive and negative aspects to using technology but lately, we’ve been focusing on the latter. We talk about how technologies such as smartphones, laptops and social networking sites are taking over our everyday lives and the negative impacts they have on us. Our generation has become very dependent on technology and the question at hand is, “Is that necessarily a bad thing?”

Carr mentions beneficial technologies that are available to us in The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. When we hear the word “technology”, we think of the examples that were mentioned previously and forget that we are not only limited to those. We forget that something as simple and helpful as a newspaper is also considered a technology. Some people prefer to read a newspaper over reading news on the Internet, and it is their only source of information about the world around us. Technology doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, but it just all depends on what you view as a “technology”.

I do agree that some technologies are taking over our lives, which is why I believe that self-control is key. Smartphone and Facebook usage have soared and are big forms of distraction from our work. We are constantly checking our phones for new emails and texts and our Facebook profiles for new notifications and messages-habits that cut into our focus. After reading the first few chapters of Carr’s book, I decided to change my habits. I use to constantly check my email or be on Facebook whenever I was bored or didn’t feel like doing work. Carr was right. I forgot how it felt to hold a leisure book and realized that I had become too dependent on distracting technologies and needed some self-control. I made a promise to myself to only go on Facebook once a day during the school week to focus on schoolwork more. Self-control is an important thing that we all need to learn and use.

Self-control: don't eat the whole jar of cookies!

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Free Choice Internet

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Maura

The world as we know it, humanity needs technology to survive. Humanity are so dependent on the latest thing, that without it, they feel hopeless. The internet is like door to the quickest update about the world around us. If someone isn’t up to date with the latest, they are considered “slow”. Everyone at least spends two hours on facebook, twitter, and youtube. They waste their lives focus on keeping up with the latest, that they dont get a chance to live their own life.
People are constantly looking to keep an update on other people and events that they don’t get a chance to live their own life. They are stalking other people or following an event that it brings them to an obsession. The life of others and a life that isnt their own brings pleasure of knowing to ones mind, but it waste their time to. Its scary how everyone have access to know what you are doing, when you publish it. Once you publish something on the web, everyone knows about it. You’re life isn’t your own, but it is an universal life. Everyone has a control over it. Just like how technology have a control over your life.
Technology have the power to ruin marriages because people let it. According to WSJ.com, 1 in 5 divorces is because of facebook. People cheat because of the access to other people online. Facebook is like secret life that isnt so secret. Another thing that ruin marriage is computer games, such as Starcraft. 15 percent of divorces are because husbands pay more attention to computer games than they do with their family. It is like a getaway for the husband. An artificial place where one can be anything. The life that is created by technology becomes a life better than the life that they live in.

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Internet Good or Bad ?

Posted on February 13, 2012 by jeremy.durbin

 

Although Carr constantly emphasizes the negative effects the internet has on people, I believe the internet does more good than bad. The reason I am able to type this blog right now is because of the internet. This blog will play an essential role to our english class throughout the semester. Carr mentions that people are now skimming through readings and don’t possess the patience or drive to actually read a full book. When Carr asks these people why they only skim through paragraphs on the internet they all respond in the same way. All of the people interviewed said they can obtain the same, or even more information from skimming one page on the internet than reading a thick 250 page book. Now some may might fight that as evidence that the internet is hurting human kinds attention span but to me the internet is just simply saving people time.

The internet plays a huge role in everyday life for almost every American. We all use Facebook, watch youtube videos, and read articles about our hobbies and interests. How can something that provides us all of that possibly be a bad thing. On one single technology we can connect with family all across the world, talk to friends, gather information, and even find entertainment.

Thats where I would have to complain about Carr. Carr throughout the book has not given the internet much credit for what it provides, rather he is sole based on the negatives. Personally I believe in order for something to be deemed harmful or bad the negatives need to outweigh the positives. For me personally I think the internet’s positives outweigh the negatives by a ton.

Although I have my opinion on the internet, I have promised my self to keep an open mind and listen to Carr’s argument. Carr has many chapters to go to try to persuade me into his beliefs. Good luck Carr.

 

 

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Posted on February 13, 2012 by aaron.yaghoobian

It is clear that the internet has made a huge impact on the lives of many. Billions of people use the internet everyday, whether it’s for their job or just chatting with friends. It’s hard to imagine the world today without the internet.

As I was reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, I thought about the changes that technology has brought upon our society in the past 15 years. I thought about how the internet just shot up and became huge, and rightfully so. The internet offers a multitude of opportunities for people everywhere. People make their living and support their families from using the internet. The internet has become the number one form of advertisement as well. Candidates for the 2012 Presidential election use Youtube to advertise their campaign. The President of the United States even uses Youtube to address the nation. 15 years ago, no one would’ve thought that the President would use the same website such as youtube to promote his campaign.

As I kept thinking about the internet and what it has done for our society, I realized that many bad things have come out of it as well. People across the world use the internet to promote hate and violence. The internet has been the reason for many political and celebrity scandals in the US. Scandals like WikiLeaks have caused controversy throughout our society and have  left impacts on many people’s lives.

Although the internet can be used for both negative and positive aspects, I believe that it has many more positive impacts towards our society than negative ones. Many people’s businesses, funds, etc, all depend on the internet. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if the internet were to suddenly crash..

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Technology

Posted on February 12, 2012 by tszching.ng

In today’s world, I found that technologies are everywhere around our lives. As we can see, computers, smartphones, all other elecrtonic devices are all around us. Almost everyone on the train is holding an iphone, a blackberry or some other smartphones. People who like to read are holding an eBook. Obviously, technologies became an essential part of our lives. Just like if you ask me not to use my computer or my phone for the whole day, it’s impossible, I would feel like something is wrong and something is missing.

I just watched a show yesterday and it was about technologies in today’s world. They interviewed with people who are around 20-30 years old, asked questions like why do you think technologies are important and how do technologies help you. Most of them said technologies are really helpful to their lives, we can do everything on the computter, or even on an iphone. Then, there was a scene like people were having a gathering but everyone was on his iphone, instead of talking. When I was this scene, I have a very stong feeling because I also do the same thing. When I hang out with my friends, I always check my phone every 2 minutes to see if I missed any messages. I really wonder if there are still people in this generation can live or think without technologies’ help or what would happen if the world now goes back to the time when there was no technology.

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Books

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Mimi Lau

For this week’s assigned reading, I would like to focus on Chapter 4 of What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. When I first began reading the chapter, I was confused yet interested in how Nicholas Carr had started. I didn’t understand why Nicholas Carr had spent more than half the chapter explaining how writing and books were first developed, but towards the end I had finally realized why. Nicholas Carr had wanted to stress the importance of books, and explaining how technology and the internet in our society today is slowly taking over. Throughout the chapter, there were many things I had agreed with and found interesting.

The first statement I had found interesting was on page 61 where young children had begun writing by running their words together. The second interesting fact was on page 62 where Carr mentions how reading a book back in the days became “less an act of performance and more a means of personal instruction and improvement.” This today is a problem because I believe that less and less people are beginning to pay attention to reading books compared to the 1900’s. Now people are either paying attention to the internet, their phone, or their computer. Finding people reading books now is much harder than it used to be. Technology now has become so advanced that a book can now be turned into a kindle or nook where you could just download the whole story through the internet. The third interesting fact is on page 63 where Carr mentions how when we read books, we shift our gaze and our attention from one object to another, becoming more aware of our surroundings. This is very true especially when I read a book because I get distracted by noises from outside very easily when I’m reading. I noticed that I give more attention to my surroundings as opposed to the book I’m reading. The fourth fact in the book I found interesting was on page 76 where Carr explains how many momentous intellectual achievements wouldn’t have been possible without reading and writing. I agree with this because reading and writing is what gives us human beings the intellectual thoughts and ideas. Now that people are beginning to pay more attention to technology and the internet today, this could be a problem. Nowadays instead of people going to the library searching for information, everyone just goes straight to Google. I wonder if our future, people are only going to depend on the search engine Google for everything they need to look up.


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Intellectual Technology

Posted on February 12, 2012 by jc127929

Without a shadow of a doubt, the internet, and technology as a whole, has affected the very way we live. When I was only five, my first taste of technology came in the form of the television and video games in which the latter is still part of my daily life. I was then exposed to the internet at the age of nine, much to my parents’, mainly because I eventually became hooked to this once foreign idea. However, I was born to a generation where the internet made everything much easier. Anyone who was born during 1946 to 1959 were known as the baby boomers; the way I see it now, anyone born in from the late 80’s to our current time I would call them “tech babies.”

In chapter three of The Shallows, Nicholas Carr mentions one thing that is still stuck in my head. He mentions that “Every intellectual technology, to put it another way, embodies an intellectual ethic, a set of assumptions about how the human mind works or should work.” What captures my attention the most about this quote is the term “intellectual technology.” At first, I didn’t think too much about, however, after the quote was used during last class it began to burn into my mind. What is this “intellectual technology”? Only two things came to mind when I thought about it: computers and our minds.

I can’t deny that the internet worsen my concentration and my attention span, but at the same time, I want my own mind to work just like it: a mind that is able to gather information without fail and to quickly respond to anything and think things thoroughly. The way I see it, the mind of a tech baby and the internet intertwines as we’re able to adapt with every change that technology and the internet brings us. To me, this “intellectual technology” is our own minds as we use it to think thoroughly and other various things. Technology, in my opinion, is something with the intended purpose to make our lives’ easier. Our minds can do that as well, but in its own special way.

The way I see it, as technology changes, so do our minds.

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