Technology Friend or Foe?

1435 Words6 Pages
In Nicholas Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” the main focus is not that Google is making us stupid but that technology is slowly taking over where books used to be. That the mind is being transformed into something completely new. To compare this to Clive Thompson’s piece “I’m So Totally, Digitally, Close to You” is difficult. Thompson has a much different view on how technology is shaping our future. The difficulty comes in seeing both authors points of view and excepting them both as being valid. Both essays can shape the readers viewpoint on the subject matter. With them both being so different it makes it a challenge to analyze these pieces. In the movie 2001: A space Odyssey a robot is slowly being turned off. In a scene that takes the viewer into the mind of a ‘computer’ the astronaut in the movie is slowly cutting the wires to the circuit. Carr compares his own feelings to that of the robot “I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuit, reprogramming the memory”(533). In this section it’s noticeable that Carr is experiencing a negative effect from the modern day internet. Something isn’t feeling right to him about the modern age technology. With the use of technology, many people are becoming more aware of casual relationships they hold. Thompson states, “This rapid growth of weak ties can be a very good thing”(549). By creating weak ties people are creating new opportunities for themselves. This is because when someone asks a close friend a question about a job or themselves they get a less thought out answer mainly because the friend is so much like themselves. But if someone asks a not so close friend about a job or about a personal question they get a much more objective, useful response. In a world where
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