The Web provides a convenient and compelling supplement to personal memory, but when we start using the web as a substitute for personal memory, bypassing the inner processes of consolidation, we risk emptying our minds of their riches.” Throughout history technology has changed the way people see the world. As the internet is becoming more and more demanding and our primary source for information, it is also affecting our ability to read any sort of medium. In Carr’s article “Is Google making us stupid?” he believes just that. Carr introduces his idea of how the internet is changing our lives by having us heavily rely on the internet rather than us using our brain. Carr opens the article with a description of “Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey”. Carr no longer enjoys reading books of any sort of length because he can no longer concentrate. He feels and acknowledges that the more time he spends online affects his mental capabilities. Carr refers to the net as a “conduit for most of the information that flows through his eyes, ears, and, mind”. Carr believes that the internet makes us less profound due to its simplicity and, elaborates on how we can just ask a simple question and don’t have to go through the tedious process of finding it out. Carr says we no longer have to analyze and understand information, but heavily rely on the internet to give us answers. “The simplicity and easiness of finding an answer is changing deep thought, to shallow thinking”. Carr goes on to describe how our critical thinking skills and attention span is degrading. He wraps up his argument by telling us that as we rely on the internet our own intelligence becomes artificial intelligence. The world has become fond with all sorts of technology, from the internet to television, but does technology cause more harm than good? In our culture now, technology is beginning to become very popular, everyone is participating in using these devices to make our everyday lives easier. We see that technology can either help or harm brain development depending on how we use these ways of technology. According to Huffington post “Child obesity and diabetes are now national epidemics in both Canada and the U.S., causally related to technology overuse unintelligible speech, learning difficulties, sensory processing disorder, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders are associated with technology” I strongly believe that technology causes more harm than good. For example, before 1972 when the E-mail was invented people would have to meet face-to face to talk. “A Jan. 2012 Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School study found that the percentage of people reporting less face-to-face time with family in their homes rose from 8% in 2000 to 34% in 2011”. The growth of technology has negatively influenced our generation and will continue to do so. I worry that someday we will completely rely on the internet thus making us more robotic or perhaps not human-like anymore. Someday we might be able to get to the stage where flowers can be planted electronically, microchips instead of bulbs. We live in a world where we have come so accustomed to the practicalities of processing rather than “doing” anything manually. I believe that there are benefits and how technology helped us with, advancements to medicines and healthcare, but
