Growing up in a world without all the technology we have available to us today was very different. Nicholas Carr points out in his essay “is google making us stoopid?” He is referring to how many of us are so tuned into the world of media and how for him the focus is not always there. Carr states that he is not thinking the way he used to think. He has been an online user for more than ten years and says that it has helped him incredibly as a writer and how research was much more time consuming combing through stacks of periodical rooms of libraries and now the same process is done in a matter of minutes online by clicking and searching on Google and some other quick search hyperlinks. (510)
He state that most of the information that is going into is brain is coming from some sort of internet source. He goes on to say that all this information at our fingertips is shaping the process of our concentration and how we contemplate it. He describes the way he used to read as being a scuba diver in the sea of words and but now reading is like zipping along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. This issue he states is not unique to him that other have conveyed the same issue and reasoning is that the internet is causing people to get information in pieces. So many “blinking ads and other gewgaws” as he puts it, are affecting the way our brain process and learns. He is saying that the internet is reprograming us. (514)
The Term Paper on Electronic Publishing Information Internet Book
... Another important development is PICS, the platform for Internet content selection. This system allows information on the Web to be labelled and ... data and put it back to its original form. This process is effective and safe as if the data is intercepted ... such as newspaper archives. 5. 22 Duplication and updating of information As stated above, electronic documents can be easily duplicated should the ...
Steven Pinker the author of “mind over mass media” seems to have a dissimilar view. As a psychology professor at Harvard University, Pinker is recognized for his research on language and cognition. This essay appeared in The New York Time June 2010. In it he says how people have always been alerted or panic stricken to new forms of media. Change in the mode and the way people receive or obtain information have been criticized in the past. Pinker goes on to say how in the 1950’s comic books where accused of kids into juvenile delinquents. ( 525) What Pinker is pointing out is that the panics are not well founded that people are reacting to the change and are using these new introduction to society as a copout to unfamiliarity and lack of exposure. As for today’s media frenzy and the claim that some people are making as Carr did in “is google making us stoopid”, Pinker gives the reality check of the work of scientist and how they are making benchmark discoveries yet their emails are always at their fingertips and they can never give a lecture without a PowerPoint.
The point being, if technology where so detrimental to our brains, how could these highly qualified scientist is making such intelligent discoveries. What Pinker is saying is that the effect of consuming electronic media are more likely to be less effective than people are making it out to be for the same reasons as in the 1950’s with comic books unfamiliarity and change. In addition he states how the constant arrival of information and messages can be a distraction especially to those with attention deficit disorder it is nothing new. The media is not to encourage intellectual depth that is what Universities are for Pinker conveys. People will always be distracted in one way or another. If distractions are being guided by the internet and information technology those distraction are far from making us stupid. (526)
Much like Pinker, Christine Rosen the author of “in the beginning was the word” views the cultural shift of the printed word to techno word as irrelevant to a reduction in literacy. Rosen is a senior editor of The New Atlantis and resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. Rosen writes on history of genetics, bioethics ant eh fertility industry and the social impact of technology. She points in this essay in Wilson Quarterly in 2009 that Reader’s Digest filed for bankruptcy protection. The magazine was created in 1922 as an experiment in abridgment that offered Americans condensed versions articles from other periodicals. The idea was very successful and Readers Digest became a publishing empire. This was the beginning of skimming. It was not a magazine in the usual sense. The Readers Digest offered what they deemed a time saving device.
The Report on Money Is Making People Maniac
This obsession, passion, dedication, action and addiction for money is making people maniac. Is that right??? Who is bad? How can you judge anyone? How can you decide about one’s nature and there character? How can you be so much sure about any person? Well some say that we decide and judge in the first move, popularly called as first impression is the last impression. But I guess the situation is ...
Daniel Boorstin a late historian and a Liberian of congress was not in favor of the new found magazine and was quoted ad labeling it “a whiff of literary ectoplasm exuding from print” and plainly a waist of a reader’s time. The idea Reader’s Digest created was desired by the American public. It gave people a quick read or a quick view into the unabridged version or breadth of something they might rather never been exposed to. Boortin labeled these people as observers rather those participants, the “common reader”. (206) Today the internet is much like Readers Digest skimming full version novels in a snippet version for the convenience of the reader. Boorstin feared this would allow people to be a broader but shallower reader. The digital revolution as Rosen states has also transformed the experience of reading making reading more consumers oriented in the same way Readers Digest is in 1922.
The arrival of electronic readers and cell phones the book is no longer something you purchase. It is a continuous consumer commitment. Rosen states that we are in a “perpetual state of potential consumerism”. We are always in a position for distraction and but the internet makes those distraction are difficult to resist. (205) Rosen compare the transition from print to screen as an increased reliance on images just as Boorstin first identified in his writings and the claim that “we have fallen in love with or own image and with images of our making which turn out to be images of ourselves and that we are observers rather than participants”.
The Essay on Change In Tone Reader Image Paragraph
The first chapter presents a very oppressive and negative view of the surroundings in which the narrator lives. A prison-like image of the scene is created through use of descriptive imagery to describe the 'Aunts' and 'Angels'. Whilst it is not clear as to the purpose of the imprisonment of these women, we are given a few clues within the first few paragraphs. This makes it a very effective ...
Works Cited
Nicholas Carr, “is google making us Stoopin” Exploring Language, Gary Goshgarian, thirteenth edition
Steven Pinker, “mind over mass media”, Exploring Language , Gary Goshgarian thirteenth edition Christine Rosen, “in the beginning was the word”, Exploring Language, Gary Goshgarian, thirteenth edition
