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Friday, September 4, 2015
wk4 - SHALLOWS – summary - FIVE
In a topic-driven, well-organized, and
well-substantiated paragraph, SUMMARIZE Carr’s argument—his “they say”—in
chapter “Five: A
Medium of the Most General Nature.”
NOTE: After posting on the blog, open up the CANVAS assignment (by the same name) and DO copy and paste the URL address into the CANVAS "WEB URL" text box so that I have record of your submission on Canvas. Thanks.
NOTE: After posting on the blog, open up the CANVAS assignment (by the same name) and DO copy and paste the URL address into the CANVAS "WEB URL" text box so that I have record of your submission on Canvas. Thanks.
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Chapter 5 The Shallows Summary
ReplyDeleteNicholas Carr states that the usage of internet has grown tremendously over the past couple years leaving people to be less attentive and use books and other paper materials less and less. He gives examples of how much the internet usage has gone up, and he shows that many people are relying less on paper and more on the internet. Carr states, talking about the Web, that “It also influences the degree of attention we devote to it and the depth of our immersion in it” (90). Carr explains that there are many benefits that go along with the internet like unlimited information and communication, but he also explains that the internet has taken away the ability to focus on a task, like a book makes a person do, and be attentive to the text. The society today wants things to be better and faster, and technology is doing that. According to Carr, the internet is an amazing thing, but it is controlling the life of most people and shaping the person they are.
Carr, once again, starts off the chapter by stating some facts about the past. He states that, "It's becoming our typewriter and our printing press, our map and our clock, our calculator and our telephone, our post office and our library, our radio and our TV." (83), speaking about the Net. Apparently people don't spend as much time reading newspapers, magazines, or other printed works as much as they used to before the Net. The Net disrupts our concentration by placing multiple pieces of information on a single screen. Computers are becoming a huge part of our life because of all of their amazing new abilities.
ReplyDeleteIn chapter five of Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows" Carr describes the progression of the computer/internet and the affects it leaves on its users. He informs his audience of the initial creation of the computer, which was slow and unrealistic to perform actions with that we can now do with computers. No one imagined that the internet or computers would evolve into such a tremendous part of today's society and everyday life."What he could not have anticipated was the way his universal machine would, just a few decades after his death, become our universal medium", (82) Carr states in reference to Turing's invention of the computer. Carr has experienced the realization that the internet has caused the computer to evolve so powerfully, while the written word has done the exact opposite. Books, newspapers, and even magazines have withered out of many peoples' lives in society. We have become so attached and accustomed to the computer and internet being in our lives that we can not fully focus on reality, conversation, or written word without them.
ReplyDeleteNicholas Carr begins chapter 5 of The Shallows by introducing the history and evolution of the modern computer. People believed it would never replace previously established, more common methods of doing things. Carr continues this, then leads into a discussion on computers replacing more common or outdated forms of media. Carr credits a lot of the computer's evolution to the internet's ability to connect people and ideas. He points out that while early websites aimed to look like print media, it has now had the adverse effect, where print media is trying to look like internet sources.
ReplyDeleteIn chapter five Carr says “The internet, like the personal computer before it, has proven to be so useful in so many ways that we’ve welcomed every expansion of its scope” (88). The internet has been proven to help people in their everyday y life and it is a source that we cannot go without. Without the internet we wouldn’t have expanded much with technology. We use the internet to do homework, job work and to answer anything we would like. It is like our way of using the easy way out of things than looking through a book which use to be the first thing we always went to. As he says on page eighty nine that many old technologies such as, Yellow Pages, CDs, and etc. lose their economic and cultural force and they become progress’s dead ends. This is a way of saying that all the old technology we use to rely on is getting pushed to aside and now we use the new technology to solve our problems. Our life is evolves everyday by the simple things that come in our way. We spend a lot of time on technology than looking through a normal book. We would rather rely on the thoughts of others than rely on our own thoughts. Eventually it will all catch up to us and who are we going to look to for help, our technology?
ReplyDeleteIn “A Medium of the Most General Nature”, Carr details the internet’s effect on existing physical media sources, both in the way that it overtakes them and in how they attempt to become more like the Net in order to stay relevant. He describes the Internet as a “thoroughfare”, “meeting house”, and “all-purpose tool”, something ideal for business and social interactions and entirely capable of absorbing and becoming all media quickly and effectively. Although the sprawling “ecosystem of interruption technologies” (97) does not entirely remove all other medias, it drains them of their economic and cultural influence and in turn drives people’s perception, consumption, and behaviors (94-95). Newspapers, for example, in an effort to match the internet’s way of providing quick, constant information, “have over the last few years moved to trim the length of their articles and introduce more summaries and navigational aids to make the scanning of their contents easier” (100). Although the results of such attempts were less than successful, there are many similar adaptations being made by magazines, television segments, and even churches. Carr’s most poignant illustration of this, however, can be found in libraries, where computers and the clatter of keyboards replace the silence of readers patiently turning pages in long books. Noticing this, and that the new fast paced Net takes the place of books in the physical heart of many libraries today, Carr concludes that “the library’s layout provides, as well, a powerful symbol of our new media landscape: at the center stands the screen of the Internet-connected computer; the printed word has been pushed to the margins.” (103)
ReplyDeleteIn Chapter 5 of Nicolas Carr’s The Shallows, he describes the evolution of how computers and the internet are beginning to take over books. The Internet now provides everything we need at our fingertips. The old ways of reading a book did not lose their way; they just got pushed back in the “economic and cultural force” (89). However since the Internet provides an easy access to what we need, Carr says that reader’s patience and attention span have dropped dramatically. Before the Internet people only would read books, but now we have the Internet and its easy access. Therefore that makes the reader not wanting to sit down and read 50 pages for an hour, so they Google and 5-minute summary on the section.
ReplyDeleteIn Chapter 5, Carr discusses and reveals the evolution of the computer in the lives of people from what was originally a simple, yet complex machine to the vital resource it serves in our lives today. Before the days of the computer, people obtained their knowledge through the words printed on paper. There were no shortcuts, and finding information or getting the latest news story took actual work. Now, our minds have adapted to having instant sources of information that the ability to search through printed resources efficiently is rapidly diminishing and becoming more of an inconvenience. Not only has the internet affected how our minds think, it has also impacted the printing business itself. As more and more people steer away from the actual text and turn to online sources, industries such as magazines and newspapers have begun to change their formatting and styles to resemble that of websites and popular media sources to try and attract more readers. As time continues and technology continues to advance, the internet is, Carr states, “…becoming our typewriter and our printing press, our map and our clock, our calculator and our telephone, our post office and our library, our radio and our TV.” (83), in other words, the internet has replaced the human brain.
ReplyDeleteIn this chapter Carr is telling us the tale of how the computer and the Net were created and evolved into what we are so familiar with today. From Alec Turing’s idea and his machine to the pocket sized mobile phones that we can do pretty much anything on of today, the evolution of technology has progressed so quickly and progressively we use it in our daily lives. “The Internet doesn’t change our intellectual habits against our will. But change them it does.” (92) The way it’s change how businesses run because they had to adapt to everything being digital or on the Web. Newspapers having no more articles that are pages long but summarized onto one page for the reader can scanner quickly over. Just like magazines that have changed their imagines to be more “web” like with bold headlines that catch the eye and little summaries/articles filling the pages with glossy photos along side them. This technology’s evolution has had such an impact and it continues to do so. Carr told us how it began and how it continues to develop.
ReplyDeleteChapter five, “A Medium of the Most Nature”, begins with discussing the coming up of the computer and the internet, while slowly diving in to the overall point that cellphones and other sources of technology have completely taken over society and replaced most things. Carr says, “We replace our special-purpose tools with an all-purpose tool.” (88) Referring to this quote, I believe Carr is right, why would people continue to use clocks or read newspapers when we can do it all, using just one source? The new technology advances of today is what shapes our behaviors and our daily life, rather than books and hard print items. Carr even comes to say, “..future of knowledge and culture no longer lie in books.” (89) The future of society lies in technology now. Almost everything we need to know or do in some way, includes some sort of technological device.
ReplyDelete