The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains By Nicholas Carr

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Essay #4 3/31/14 Cause and Effect A book is something that might be taken for granted, due to the Internet and computers. Some people do not have patience to read books fully and they either use the Internet or just skim through books. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr is a novel that explains some of the things that have helped reading to evolve. Many things like the printing press, books, maps, the typewriter, the Internet, and the Greek alphabet have helped reading to evolve. The printing press is what caused books to become popular. Another great thing about books that made them popular is that they were more compact and easier to carry around, as compared to a scroll. Books became cheaper because…show more content…
The invention of the phonetic alphabet caused writers to start using rules while writing. According to Carr, “The advances in book technology changed the personal experience of reading and writing” (Carr66). A map is something we don’t think of as being a technology. Reading a map caused us to have a more abstract mind. The Internet is a technology that changed the way we read. The Internet causes us to loose focus or to just skim through information really quickly. The need to get information quickly, rather than spending the time to read a book, is due to the Internet. When I need to read something for a class I would much rather go to Spark Notes on the Internet, rather than read a complete book. The Internet has helped reading to evolve. Who would want to wait around for a newspaper or a magazine to come out when clicking on just one link brings the latest news up with in seconds for reading pleasure. Carr says, “It was Hungry” (Carr16).What he is trying to say is that after using the internet his brain is constantly searching for new information. The more he used the internet to gain information or to read, the more his brain wanted new
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