Essay question 6: Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows” argues that the internet is not only shaping our lives but physically altering our brains. Do you agree or disagree with this claim?
The internet has revolutionised communication to an extent where it has made many social, cultural and economic changes. The digital world we live in has transformed the way we live, think and communicate. The internet has radically changed our world; it is an essential need in everybody's life, without it we feel a sense of isolation, a sense of being disconnected. However, is the internet affecting our wellbeing? Can the internet affect our cognitive thoughts as well as our ability to think more critically and abstractly? According to Nicholas Carr, he …show more content…
You then have your long term memory where you have your facts and experiences stored, basically no limits to what it can hold. Whereas you’re short-term memory is extremely constrained. Carr states “what’s necessary is to move the working memory to the long term memory” (Carr, 2010) The working memory is your concentration for instance, if you are experiencing things through multimedia and all sorts of things coming at you at once things come in and out of your working memory very quickly and will never make the transition to long term …show more content…
(Bimber 2015). Technological determinism refers to the belief that technology is the agent of social change (Murphie and Potts, 2003).The advances on the new technologies have had a huge impact on society just like Thorstein Veblen witnessed in the 1920’s when industrialization and converging technologies were being introduced.
Veblen concluded that a successful technical innovation if implemented on a sufficiently wide scale will generate a new type of society hence the steam age and the age of electricity. (M & P, 2003, p 12) Carr’s book the shallows looks on how the internet’s information rise, came in a hurry to distract thinking but superficial learning, unlike the age of book where people were encouraged to think and be creative (Harris, 2010). A world without it is a world no one likes to imagine. Carr’s book shows that our values, traditions and qualities became unimportant and useless because a digital life is here to change all the rules (Harris,
The internet has revolutionised communication to an extent where it has made many social, cultural and economic changes. The digital world we live in has transformed the way we live, think and communicate. The internet has radically changed our world; it is an essential need in everybody's life, without it we feel a sense of isolation, a sense of being disconnected. However, is the internet affecting our wellbeing? Can the internet affect our cognitive thoughts as well as our ability to think more critically and abstractly? According to Nicholas Carr, he …show more content…
You then have your long term memory where you have your facts and experiences stored, basically no limits to what it can hold. Whereas you’re short-term memory is extremely constrained. Carr states “what’s necessary is to move the working memory to the long term memory” (Carr, 2010) The working memory is your concentration for instance, if you are experiencing things through multimedia and all sorts of things coming at you at once things come in and out of your working memory very quickly and will never make the transition to long term …show more content…
(Bimber 2015). Technological determinism refers to the belief that technology is the agent of social change (Murphie and Potts, 2003).The advances on the new technologies have had a huge impact on society just like Thorstein Veblen witnessed in the 1920’s when industrialization and converging technologies were being introduced.
Veblen concluded that a successful technical innovation if implemented on a sufficiently wide scale will generate a new type of society hence the steam age and the age of electricity. (M & P, 2003, p 12) Carr’s book the shallows looks on how the internet’s information rise, came in a hurry to distract thinking but superficial learning, unlike the age of book where people were encouraged to think and be creative (Harris, 2010). A world without it is a world no one likes to imagine. Carr’s book shows that our values, traditions and qualities became unimportant and useless because a digital life is here to change all the rules (Harris,