"Wow. Don’t you know what self-control is?” My brother
asked, irritated that I was asking my mother to hide my IPod Touch from me. To
me, it was an attempt to focus on school work; to him I was just proving my
parents’ opinion on technology correct. They always nagged about how
electronics were distracting us from school, and now I was giving in. However,
in the midst of all this buzz about how bad the internet is, I still can’t help
but feel unconvinced by it all. My
brother always made it clear to me that he felt self-control was the key to
prevent the internet from “taking over our brains”, and I agree. In the first
couple pages of The Shallows, Carr mentions that this exact thought is a common
excuse, but that it is not true. I’ll admit, this does sound like an excuse,
and yes I am myself addicted to the internet and everything it offers, but at
the same I strongly feel that this is because I have no self-control. I’ve known so many top students that are definitely not dumb, but
constantly use the internet. Ada Hui and my brother are just two of those
students. Both constantly browse and enjoy the internet (in fact more often
than what you would expect), but they still get things done. Both students take
more than the typical amount of AP tests every year, and most of those courses
are self-taught. Okay, true, both kids are not normal students, but they teach
themselves year-long college courses in a matter of weeks. This requires the
self-control and focus that both students maintain; regardless of how much they
use the internet. Given this point, let's debate, is Carr actually
right? Is our attention and self-discipline decreasing really the internet’s
fault, or our own?
I don't think anything you do or read can affect your own self-discipline. Right there in the word it refers to yourself. If I eat ice cream for 100 consecutive days, it's still up to me if I want it the next day. I think self-disipline is brought up because some people fail to realize a lot of times we mindlessly use the internet. I'm sure if you actually tried and focused on not using the your iPod, it wouldn't be a hard task to overcome. Self-discipline is an important part of life when you begin to work and study independently. You're mother isn't going to be there with you in college to take away your iPod the night before your final.
ReplyDeleteYou make an excellent point in this post. The way you describe the aspect of self-control is definitely intriguing, since Carr basically blamed all of our problems on the increasing abundance of technological innovations. I agree with you on this one. Technology should not be entirely blamed when it comes to our issues of self-discipline.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do believe that Carr's observations are correct. Although technology should not be blamed for the entirety of our issues, they are influential to some degree. His constant insertion of evidence through conducted experiments persuaded me that technology does have quite an amount of influence on this problem. I realized, however, that if we could have controlled ourselves from using technology in the first place, this would not even be an issue. Technology definitely was not the originating cause of our self-control issues, but they sure are contributing to it now.
I would blame myself for much of the procrastination I did instead of doing my homework. Instead of focusing on my upcoming AP homework I was sitting around watching TV. Self-control is something that has to be slf-taught the same way as an AP course. We have to do it ourselves and cut the crap.
ReplyDeleteEverybody has the power of self-control. We make the choices we want to make. It is definitely possible to close our laptops or shut down our computers long enough to finish our homework assignments, but we rarely do. Or at least I don't, which can be a bad thing. Yet that is my decision to make, and if I am willingly letting myself suffer, it's my fault not the computers'.
ReplyDelete