Analysis Of Reading And Thought By Dwight Macdonald

The argument employed in Reading and Thought by Dwight MacDonald is an attack on the new culture of writing embedded into Time magazine. MacDonald goes on to describe the writing to be largely “massed” with many topics, however, these topics simply serve as an outlet to fulfill your curiosity with no other true function. He also goes on to state that the majority of the writing is useless because it does not cause action to be stirred up in a reader to cause them to “make more money, take some political or other action to advance his interests, or become a better person.” MacDonald in return goes on to even proclaim that this new form of writing has developed our thought and minds to be “rapid, purely rational, classifying habit of mind, something …show more content…
Nicolas Carr criticizes the internet in his article Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing Do To Our Brains with the argument that the internet is overwhelmingly changing our thought process. Carr goes on to state the new dependence on the internet as a “universal medium” has led our brains to be rewired, causing our concentration to deteriorate. Our minds, according to Carr, are unable to absorb the information we have just read. The author then goes on to support this claim with many examples of other people who have also felt the grasp of the internet re-wiring their brains. When referring to the net Carr states that “They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought . . . my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it.” From this excerpt, the author is stating that although our minds are gaining information from the internet, this medium is also causing a change in our minds. The author believes the internet has caused his mind to be manipulated into changing the way it obtains or analyzes information to be in sequence with the internet’s behavior. Whether it be a journal entry, a blog, an article, or an argument found on the internet, it will be likely that it will share the same writing style that Macdonald had described. The internet’s text is similar to the description Macdonald describes, because the internet has the largest abundance of information, and a majority of the time, the information will serve no purpose besides useless facts. In his writing, the author cites a five year experiment that the University College of London had conducted. The research applied examined computer logs that documented the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites. The findings exhibited that it was common for people to “use a form of skimming”, read at