Also there was a time when you had a question, the way to find the answer was to maybe ask an actual human being. Now there is the internet and Google. All the information is right literally at your fingertips and you can get your answers in mere seconds versus making a trip to your local library. Modern technology is making us lazy. Some of us no longer take the time to actually sit and read regular books anymore.
Search engines are rerouting our memory. According to Science, we're not necessarily losing our ability to remember things. Rather, the internet is changing how we remember. "People are recalling information less, and instead can remember where to find the information they have forgotten." (Ars Technica Summary) This is pretty similar to a 2008 report in The New York Times on reading online versus reading in print.
The World Wide Web has changed the way we think and how we live our everyday lives, but is it molding our lives? Carr stated “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print” (Carr 963). In Is Google Making us Stupid? By Nicholas G. Carr, He brings to light our diminishing ability to focus on the printed word, (Books, magazines, newspapers; etc.) changes in our thought process, and the influences the Web has on our brain.
Humans cannot do a lot without a computer; they use it to communicate, socialize, to help each other for their jobs. Humans reduced themselves to a simple mechanism. In Lanier’s “You are not a gadget “book, describes how technology is becoming more humanistic and is taking over our decision making skills because the internet has gotten programmed to make them for us. Lanier writes “The process of locked in is like a wave gradually washing over the rule book of life, culling the ambiguities of flexible thoughts as more and more thought structure are solidified into effectively permanent reality”. What he is trying to say is, a website or a program created online first is an idea that gradually using it and learning it makes you mandated to, it always makes you to use it and your brain so get adapted to and you cannot avoid it.
It speeds up the retrieval and dissemination of information, partially eliminating such chores as going outdoors to the mailbox or the adult bookstore, or having to pick up the phone to get hold of your stockbroker or some buddies to shoot the breeze with. That one thing the Internet does, and only that.” * - Tom Wolfe, from Digibabble, Fairy Dust, and the Human Anthill in Hooking Up (published in 2000) Established only a few decades ago, the Internet itself is a neutral device originally designed for easing researches and studies among academic and military structures. The Internet is a system of enormous technical and social complexity.
What the Heck has Internet Done to Our Brains? Section I: Introduction and Context Imagine going back in time and staying there permanently. Out of all the things that will be missed, there is no doubt that the one thing would be technology. The Shallows: What Internet is Doing to Our Brains is nonfiction book written by Nicholas Carr who asserts and cautions the effects that internet has on everyone to this day and even more so in the future. People nowadays can communicate with people all around the world using many different types of communications such as social networking sites, cell phones, emails, etc.
I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle” (p. 67). Carr believes that if less time were spent on the Internet, one would not be experiencing such difficulties with their passion for reading, or lack thereof. Carr is of the notion that, not only is the web good for reading articles, scanning blog- posts, checking or writing e-mails, watching videos and many other cool things; he also thinks that it is efficient for doing research, which once took hours in the library.
From world news to cooking recipes, there are no limitations. But with all that freedom lies a very large question, how is the Internet changing the way we think? There is an ongoing debate going on with the Internet, I often sit back and think to myself, what effects the Internet has on us? We will look at two authors, Nicholas Carr and Clay Shirky. As well as two of their articles, Carr’s “Does the Internet make you Dumber” and Clay Shirky’s “Does the Internet make you Smarter?
Perfection! David Wolman, in his article “The Critics Need a Reboot. The Internet Hasn't Led Us Into a New Dark Age.” Mentions “The explosion of knowledge represented by the Internet and abetted by all sorts of digital technologies makes us more productive and gives us the opportunity to become smarter, not dumber.” In today’s world everybody wants to work smarter not harder. Google gives us the ability to save a trip to the local library or by purchasing that textbook on World War II by giving us easy access. Let’s
What interest me the most is the search engines. They have made it so much easier for people to look up random information. For example when you are typing something in on Google or any search engine at that when you type the first few letters in there will be a drop box on the bottom giving you suggestions of what you just might be looking for, or what to choose. It’s like the search engine doing the work and thinking for you all in the same sense. We have become so dependent on the internet and Google that if you think about it for the most people, let’s just be honest we as human cannot live without it.