Nicholas Carr The Shallows Summary

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In The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, the author, Nicholas Carr gives an in-depth description of the advances in technology and what effect these advancements have done to our society. Carr gives examples of the effects of several different types of modern technology but concentrates mostly on the effects of the Internet. This book is particularly persuasive in the way Carr argues and backs his idea with personal experience and opinions. In this paper, I will apply Carr’s idea of the Internet as a medium way people read and process information to my own experiences as a reader. I will focus, specifically, on my reading process; how it is changed, for better or worse, depending on such things as genre and the impact of the…show more content…
Though the Internet is the main subject of his argument, Carr provides insight on other developments as well. By touching on the inventions of such inventions as the map and the clock, he explains that both “changed the way we saw ourselves and the way we thought” (55) and provides example of his idea that the modernization of technology changes our thought process. He illustrates through historical references, the progression of how we read and write. Such examples include: writing on stones and wood, upgraded to papyrus, to tablets, to paper, to typewriters, to computers. Growing up in a time that was predominately print rather than computer, Carr is quick to favor print reading. While he provides ample support for his argument, I don’t necessarily stand beside him, solely because I was raised in a different time then him. This, of course, meant we were raised with different experiences. While he was learning to read books in print in his time, I was learning to read both books and Internet sources in mine. I don’t, however, dispute his argument; in fact I agree with some of things he says. With such technology as the kindle, iPad, etcetera, I predict in the future the near extinction of books all together. But as of now, I currently live in a world that is still fairly divided. While Car may disagree, I believe that living in a world revolving around technology could be beneficial to our
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