“Over the last few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think” (5).

This passage reminds me a lot of the papers we wrote on our experience with the Internet, and my topic in particular. I titled it “The Internet Is Melting My Brain” and talked about how my mind felt very much affected by the Internet. This passage struck a chord with me because I immediately thought, “Yes! Exactly!” The scary part is, though, that Carr is a grown man with more extensive experience with life without the Internet. When I read this, I realized that there isn’t much “memory to reprogram.” Since I was very young, media has been molding the way I think, and that is both terrifying and fascinating. Who would I be had I grown up without the Internet? I’m not sure there’s any way of knowing.

“Every technology is an expression of human will. Through our tools, we seek to expand our power and control over our circumstances—over nature, over time and distance, over one another” (44).

This reminded me of something I once saw (online, of course) that said, “Time doesn’t exist. Clocks exist.” Although not exactly true, it’s sort of a chilling statement. Time is a concept we have always had, yet people have not always necessarily perceived the way we do today. It’s interesting to think that technology is the human race’s exertion of power. Carr talks about how all of these technologies—maps, clocks, books, the Internet—have a lasting impact on how we think. The Internet affecting the way we think, then, is in no way a new phenomenon. It’s been happening from the beginning, and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing; change is the only way in which we expand intellectually.