Page 14
“By the mid-nineties, I had become trapped, not unhappily, in the “upgrade cycle.” I retired the aging Plus in 1994, replacing it with a Macintosh Performa 550 with a color screen, a CD-ROM drive, a 500-megabyte hard drive, and what seemed at the time a miraculously fast 33-megahertz processor. The new computer required updated versions of most of the programs I used, and it let me run all sorts of new applications with the latest multimedia features. By the time I had installed all the new software, my hard drive was full. I had to go out and buy an external drive as a supplement. I added a Zip drive too-and then a CD burner. Within a couple of years, I’d bought another new desktop, with a much larger monitor and a much faster chip, as well as a portable model that I could use while traveling. My employer had, in the meantime, banished Macs in favor of Windows PCs, so I was using two different systems, one at work and one at home.”
This passage from Carr really got me thinking. Why do we have such a thirst for the latest, most cutting edge things in life? More specifically though, why in the technological field do we must have the newest gadgets? Ever walk into a supermarket and not be tempted to by the item with the most colorful, up to date packaging? I know that for me I usually don’t fall for gimmicks and am not one to throw money out the window on bigger and better but with technology I do. Carr goes on to describe his thirst for the best. He even went to the extreme of using two different systems-Why? Is it really worth it to throw away thousands of dollars and hours of time learning the intricacies of new models and modes of technology when the older versions can do us just fine?
Page 63
“The natural state of the human brain, like that of the brains of most of our relatives in the animal kingdom, is one of distractedness. Our predisposition is to shift our gaze, and hence our attention, from one object to another, to be aware of as much of what’s going on around us as possible. Neuroscientists have discovered primitive “bottom-up mechanisms” in our brains that, as authors of 2004 article in Current Biology put it, “operate on raw sensory input, rapidly and involuntarily shifting attention to salient visual features of potential importance.” What draws our attention most of all is any hint of a change in our surroundings. “Our senses are finely attuned to change…Our fast paced, reflexive shifts in focus were one crucial to our survival..For most of history, the normal human thought was anything but linear.”
I love this passage! Contrary to what mom and dad always told me about technology being to blame for our shift of focus and lack of attentiveness, Carr here quotes neuroscientists who explain that “human never had a linear path of thought”-we always had gazing eyes and were always looking around us. How many times does one find themselves gazing their eyes as someone speaks to them directly. I know that this bad habit occurs quite frequently to me and I blame it on the computer. When online, I am unable to focus on one page; I am constantly “surfing the web” and going up and down the waves of the Internet. So when talking face to face with someone unable to keep eye contact with them, I was always taught to assume that it was due to my Internet obsession that I had trouble focusing. As Carr explains, it is only in human nature to wonder our eyes and to always be alert for what’s going on in our surrounding environment.
