irma villarreal
Professor Werry
RWS 100
11/17/15
What Should We Think?
Society’s opinion about what are the side effects that the Internet may have in our brains is becoming an issue. Many people think that it is becoming a matter in question in our daily life because it consumes our time; others argue that it helps us to open our thoughts and develop new ideas. In the articles “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, “Its Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens” by Danah Boyd and “Public Thinking” by Clive Thompson, both authors Thompson and Boyd are in the same position about how technology have helped us to improve. On the contrary, Nicholas Carr states that the Internet does not help us at all, his reason to believe that is that we do not concentrate on one thing at a time. Carr argues that while being around cellphones connected to the Internet and different types of mobile technologies people abilities to concentrate and contemplate are chipping away. Carr completely disagrees with both of these authors, and said that the Internet is ruining our brains. In this paper I will challenge Nicholas Carr argument to demonstrate how the Internet is actually doing positive things in our lives, I also will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these three articles.
The Internet encourages public thinking and resolves multiple tasks in a shorter amount of time. Nicholas Carr statement is that “The more we use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.”(2) If people cannot focus on what they are reading because of their cellphones or other type of technologies around them, they cannot simply blame the Internet about it. If they really need to get focused they should just shut down that distraction so they can fully understand their reading. Thompson states, “People who are talking and writing and working on the same thing often find one another, trade ideas and collaborate.”(61) He states as an example of his argument that on the seventeenth century scientists intuited the power of resolving multiples and they began publishing journals and setting standards for citing the similar work for other scientists. This example shows how instead of making us unable to focus on more than one thing while connected to the Internet; it really helps us to develop new ideas. In the article “Mind Over Mass Media” by Steven Pinker the author stated “These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint.”(1) This statement agrees with Clive Thompson’s argument while saying that instead of making us struggle the Internet is actually getting out the best of us.
Social media is making our lives easier and it is not necessary to learn technical skills that the early Internet adoption requires. Carr on the other hand argues, “It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense…it almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.”(2) People can read fast with the purpose of finishing an assignment, but this is not just a matter for reading online, this issue continues when reading a book or a long article posted on the Internet. In the article “Talking With Your Fingers” posted by John Mcwhorter, the author asserts “Just as humans can function in multiple languages, they can also function in multiple kinds of language.”(15) Mcwhorter agrees with Danah Boyd argument while stating that when someone texts or reads in a different form of writing, does not mean they are unable to use the formal writing. Now it is normal for us to have two kinds of writing, the formal context which is the one we have learned at school, and the informal context which is, after all the most used. Boyd argues, “Teens acquire many technological skills through extensive experimentation with social media and curiosity-driven exploration. Because teens turn to these services to socialize with peers, they often gain the skills that are part of informal social learning” (197) This is an example of how people can be formal and informal at the same time, writing with grammatical errors does not mean that we are not capable of learning or that the Internet is making us struggle.
irmavilla 