Upon finishing Nicholas Carr's The Shallows, I have become intrigued
by Carr's mentioning of the change our modern society is undergoing due
to excessive usage of technology. I, among others, is guilty for
constantly using and being dependent upon technology due to its almost
infinite amount of information. I spend much of day, besides doing AP
work and studying for the SAT, text messaging my friends, watching
movies, playing on my computer, iTouch, or iPad, without realizing how
dependent and addictive technology has become on my life.
Technology
has somewhat relinquished our ability for "deep reading", which allows
us the ability to stay focused on certain tasks for an adequate amount
of time. Technology's takeover upon our concentration is shown nearly
everywhere, from person to person, one will observe each person
constantly checking their smart phones to respond to a text message,
email, or post something on Twitter or Instagram. This constant
distraction prevents one from concentrating on certain tasks, thus
prevents individuals from doing certain tasks in a sufficient amount of
time. Like Carr mentions, technology promotes cursory writing and
severely limits one's concentration, thus it seems we as a society lack
the drive to develop self-thoughts and conclusions when stumbling upon
perplex questions because so many of us resort to finding the answers in
record-time through our smart phones.
Technology
"rewrites" one's brain and makes the brain something that has countless
pieces of information flowing through it, instead of allowing it to
process individual thought or conclusions, thus making the brain that is
constantly exposed to technology a robot. Is technology turning our
society's citizens into robots due to technology's effects of severely
lowering our concentration and development of self-thought? Or is
technology beneficial because it exposes us to countless information
about nearly everything the world has to offer?
I think that technology today is beneficial to both our minds and our entertainment, but it does have its downsides. For example, without today's technology we would have to search the library for the information we need. It also helps us with home remedies if we are ever sick. Although as Carr mentioned, the internet today does make us more distracted. The entertainment the internet has to offer is obviously entertaining. It can amuse us for endless hours although we do lose track of time and we might even end up forgetting to do important tasks like walking our dogs or doing our homework. In short, technology is beneficial to all of our lives today.
ReplyDeleteI agree as we live our lives, we are not noticing how addictive and dependent we are to technology. Living in this generation, connecting with one another is so easy! I'm not going to complain, i'm absolutely dependent on technology whether if its a flashlight during camping or internet at home for research instead of textbooks. Most likely during research anyway, i would be switching on and off between my research page and maybe an online game. Our minds have differentiated so much from recent generations because of our ability to use this new technology. We use this technology as a distraction and which beneficial to our own satisfaction. As "Robots" we use technology back to back switching from one another, not focusing on the point that it is what we're depending on.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, it all creates procrastination and gives us the insurance that we will get the work done in a quick an easy style.
I agree that technology is making it harder to do certain activities and it makes us become more distracted. Like Carr, I noticed that technology made it hard for me to read long passages and really understand what I'm reading, so some times I had to re-read it. So instead of the lengthy, descriptive paragraphs, we tend to favor the short and sweet ones. We also just skim through the web pages instead of actually reading them and processing ideas like a robot, so in a sense we are like a robot. And like Carr said, “Too much information can be less”. However, because of technology, it increased our problem solving and multitasking skills and we can look up tons of information in just one click. And in all, technology has made work, school, and communicating with others easier and faster.
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