Nicolas Carr's Summary

Carr has a more negative opinion about new technology than Cascio. Carr believes the internet and previous technological advancements have caused many changes in society, including reducing people’s ability to focus. Carr says, “What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.” This is just one of the many times that he blames the internet for the changes that have occurred in the past decade.

In Nicholas Carr’s essay “All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machine’s” he brings up the ethical problem of technology. Technology is all around today, but people are starting to wonder if this surplus of technology is starting to make the world less smart. Carr’s primary argument is as technology becomes more prevalent, people are losing knowledge to do certain tasks. Carr claims this is bad because people are putting their lives at risk and dying due to this lack of knowledge. People are starting to get lazier because of technology. They start to care less and think they are gaining something extra by using the technology, when, in fact it is the exact opposite. Carr states, “most of us want to believe that automation frees us to spend our time on higher pursuits but doesn’t otherwise alter the way we behave or think. That view is a fallacy” (5). This fallacy is affecting how people think and how current children are being taught in schools. Children as young as preschoolers are now starting to use tablets and computers for learning instead of having a teacher doing their job fully and actually teaching them. Instead of adding something to a task or helping to get it accomplished technology, “alters the character of the entire task, including the roles, attitudes, and skills of the people taking part” (5). Throughout his entire essay, Carr argues mostly why he believes too much technology could be harmful in the long run, but also states

For example, Carr writes about how the clock causes us to stop “listening to our senses” and start “obeying the clock.” Even though the clock is not the Internet, such an example still strengthens Carr’s argument. Carr focuses on the notion that new technological innovations can drastically change a person’s way of thought. Focusing on this does not restrict Carr to speak only of the Internet. The clock was once a technological innovation. Therefore, by using it as an example, Carr shows that new technology really does change the mind. Since the Internet is a new technology in present time, it would be logical that it would change the way people think as

Carr mentions his personal experience with technology and how it has affected him. He points out his “concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages” (961). Carr isn’t the only one who has been affected by technology; he tells us that even his “acquaintances” have had similar experiences. His acquaintances say, “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (962). What once used to come natural to us has become difficult. People used to rely on books for multiple reasons when it came to research but now that technology has been used more frequently books are not that common. Carr says “Research that once required days . . . can be done in minutes” (962). Carr is mentioning the benefits of the Internet, for his argument he is using both sides so that the reader can relate to his article and understand where he is coming from. Carr quotes Marshall McLuhan when he points out that “the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation” (962). Although fast research is great and easy to access it has its flaws. Carr mentions that

In this essay Carr explains thoroughly how things have changed over time, he provides examples that directly correlate the transition from modern day society to a time before technology was prominent before today. His noted efforts show the attention to detail he implemented into his writing to ensure it suited his audience and his purpose. The impact of Carr’s essay on readers can be attributed to his use of simple language and vocabulary along with direct and prominent examples. The language and text he used made it easy for a reader to stay tuned for the entire essay and also feel involved in

Draw Conclusions: What does Carr suggest about the effect the Internet is having on us? What evidence from the text supports your conclusion?

Nicholas Carr, posed the question, “Is Google making us stupid”, and asks his readers to give it some thought. The article made suggestions such as the internet changing the way the mind works and that the internet has negative consequences on the human brain. Carr wants everyone to be cautious of the internet because of the many different ways it has affected and will continue to affect the way we think. When I think about this article, I can see the many different tactics Carr used, such as fact vs fiction, cause and effect, and the clearly stated argument.

One of Carr’s main points is that the internet is actually bad for society as a whole because constantly using the internet will lead to a dumber society. This is just a way for Carr to say that someone who uses the internet is not as smart as someone who uses it less often. He later states that humans are losing some of their cognitive thinking abilities making us act more robotic and if everyone will eventually become this way if we keep using the internet. This idea is used to scare people into stop using the internet and is an effective method for Carr to get his point across. Another way he scares people is he mentions a future where kids don’t read in class but will instead watch videos and won’t know how to spell due to spellcheck and this will lead to a decline in our education system.

The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds. Others argued that cheaply printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery. The change in technology seems to have had a lasting effect on human beings. Carr goes back as far as the 19th century to back his argument of the internet affecting the brain. He strategically states all the negatives aspects but none of the

Despite the obvious difference in their approaches to argue, Nicholas Carr, Sherry Trukle and Clive Thompsom have a common focus: The effect of shared information. Nicholas Carr mainly focus on sharing of objective information, the information that is related to science and fact. In the meaning time, Sherry Turkle writes about sharing of subjective information, the personal and emotional messages that we deliver on social media. Clive Thompsom talks about the sharing of both kinds of information. However, their views about sharing of information are totally different. The similarities and conflicts between their arguments can actually help us to compare and crystallize those different points of view on sharing information.

do in the home and labor market. Also, he states that when their marriages deviate

Carr also uses a quote from Maryanne Wolf to show that the way people now read and think have changed. Wolf states that the importance placed on productivity may be weakening the greater value

Are humans facing the degeneration effect due to our reliance on technology? Carr would argue in chapter four that yes, we are losing creativity and knowledge of work because we are not actively using our memory and cognition. When humans typically learn a new skill, the generation effect

E.H. Carr- Carr approved totalitarianism. He regarded Soviet totalitarianism as a “success” because it built a modern economy and aimed to serve the interest of their people.

What is History? This is the question posed by historian E.H. Carr in his study of historiography. Carr debates the ongoing argument which historians have challenged for years, on the possibility that history could be neutral. In his book he discusses the link between historical facts and the historians themselves. Carr argues that history cannot be objective or unbiased, as for it to become history, knowledge of the past has been processed by the historian through interpretation and evaluation. He argues that it is the necessary interpretations which mean personal biases whether intentional or not, define what we see as history. A main point of the chapter is that historians select the facts they think are significant which ultimately