Why Internet

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Jun Tu

  I don’t really want to mention the  cliché ‘Every coin has two sides’, but when it comes to internet, it has undoubtedly two ambiguous sides.

  One is beneficial to us when we use it properly doing legal things. However, the other side can be devastating if we utilize it committing a crime, like hacker stealing other’s credit card through internet.

  For the short run, I think the internet benefits all mankind. It seems the advantages of using internet lhave argely outnumbered the disadvantages. For instance, in terms of the most obvious advantage, it provides us a quick way of doing research, finding data. On the other hand, for the long run, I think the internet is deteriorating our sensibility and perception. Like Nicholas Carr mentions in The Shallows that ‘Our ways of thinking, perceiving, and acting…we change them through the way we live…through the tools we use'(31). It’s true because we as human have placed overwhelming reliance on the internet. Our eyesight and even our ability of concentration, like Nicholas has specified, has been worsen over time as we spend too much effort and time on internet. If we don’t figure out some remedies for this deterioration, we mankind will eventually become the servants of internet.

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What’s Next?

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Randolph Chen

As I was reading Chapter 4, The Deepening Page, I realized what what an amazing invention the printing press was. Well, I always knew it was a great accomplishment, but I never thought about how it actually effected the people during that time. In the past, people had to use plant fibers, goat or sheep hide, and papyrus to write text on. Scrolls were expensive and not very many people could afford to read. However, it was a miracle when books began to be printed! Many people could afford to read books and it was just something they wished would happen. Nowadays, everyone takes that for granted and some do not even enjoy reading.

Books back then were like the computers of this decade. No one even thought about computers that long ago so this made me start thinking, if computers took over books recently, is there something in the future that would replace computers? Honestly, there is nothing on my mind that can imagine that, but no one ever thought about computers centuries before, so anything is possible. Maybe sometime in the future,  we will be able to enter virtual 3-D worlds and do whatever we had always dreamed of doing. Who knows?

A lot of people may have seen this before, but I always thought this was pretty clever. =)

 

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On narrative, attention spans, and aliens

Posted on February 12, 2012 by EKaufman

After last week’s class sessions, I found myself thinking a lot about how our attention spans might be changing, and whether or not the media takes this into account when they produce products for our consumption. As we saw with the halftime show, it seems as though pop culture nowadays just feeds the audience simple narratives and/or an overpowering number of visual stimuli to take in. I’m not sure if t his is a positive or negative phenomenon, and I am not sure I can decide to place judgement on such a huge topic.

I’ve been watching the somewhat “old” tv series Battlestar Galactica lately. I’m not normally a science fiction fan, but too many people told me that I “had to watch it ASAP.” To oversimplify the show’s premise: There was a big war between the humans and the “cylons” (robots) and now it is over, but new adventures abound. I’ve noticed that it takes a lot of my attention to really watch this show, even though I love it. Ron Silliman describes the “narrative style” of it as:

“Battlestar was a show that, as a rule, took no prisoners. Whereas virtually every other television series with an overarching narrative structure has been forced into episodic structures of self-contained plots that enabled the show to build its audience from scratch regardless of where in the overall story line one came in – something that had a disastrous effect on West Wing post Aaron Sorkin – BSG took the opposite route, choosing to come to a conclusion after four seasons, more or less.”

So, what Silliman points to, is the idea that a tv show can be created that privileges the art of the show instead of the seduction of a fan base. He also hints at the idea that the plot is not easy and not episode contained. For me, that means that the plot is a bit more complex (and more interesting) than House or Star Trek even. But, could a show like that exist today, in 2012?

In Chapter 5, Nicholas Carr raises a lot of interesting questions about the difference between mass media and the Net–mainly that “it’s bidirectional. we can send messages through the network as well as receive them” (85). But, I am not quite sure how to make sense of the fact that despite how much time we spend on the Internet nowadays, we also spend just as much time in front of the TV…does this mean that we’re on the Net and “watching” tv at the same time? Does this mean that we don’t know what to do with silence? Or, how to sit still and really focus on one thing at a time?

 

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The Shallows

Posted on February 11, 2012 by james.selig

Reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows has been an interesting experience for me because I can identify with what he writes about. I first started using a computer when I was about eight years old, and in retrospect, I must admit that computers and the Internet have changed the way I think and live. I used to be an avid reader of physical books, but once I got my hands on the Internet I became hooked and basically stopped reading altogether. I guess I would now classify myself as a “marginal reader,” because I skim things and probably miss out on a lot of valuable information. Nevertheless, I feel like the Internet is more useful and life-changing than any book will ever be.

Even though Carr consistently “disses” the Internet, it’s hard to argue that the Internet essentially took the world and made it into one small community. Thanks to the Internet, we can now stay in constant contact with friends, relatives or even strangers regardless of whether they are across the country or across the globe. In my opinion, the Internet provides a channel for people to live and enjoy life together. About a year ago, I saw a story on the news that compared the divorce rate for World War II soldiers with the divorce rate for soldiers in Iraq. The story claimed that World War II soldiers got divorced three times more often than U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The reason for this dramatically lower divorce rate (according to a university study), is the Internet. Thanks to the Internet, soldiers in Iraq are now able to do things like Facebook and Skype their spouse, and this fosters stronger long-distance relationships that are less prone to divorce.

One of my favorite songs (called “Swing Life Away” by Rise Against) has the following line: “Are we getting closer, or are we just getting more lost?” Even though I love the Internet, Carr has forced me to wonder: IS the Internet bringing us closer, or IS it just getting us more lost?

 

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Reading Log Blog

Posted on February 8, 2012 by mt129963

The internet has forever changed our lives once it was introduced to our every day lives. It has been in our lives while growing up in our generation. We do not know how it was without the internet…We don’t know how people survived without the internet. In Carr’s book, it taught me to do a little introspection and question myself and my relationship with the internet. I came to realize how truly are dependent on the Internet.

The Internet is accessible anywhere, from our computer, library, and even our phone. We are constantly doing something on these devices while we are attempting to do something else. We can never truly concentrate on one task like Carr says. I thought it was pretty interesting how one person said that they rather research on the internet rather than pick up a book because it was more efficient. That is true, however, it makes me question, where does books have place in the future? Will they still exist? Nicholas Carr’s book continues to make me realize many numerous things that I would not have thought much about earlier. His book is truly insightful and I want to continue reading it and find out what else he has to say.

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