Carr and Thompson Blog Post

We live in a day and age where technology is an integral part of our lives. No matter where we turn, technology is all around us and most people that make up the world’s population would not know how to function without it. It has been so important to the success and development of our lives within the past 30 years, but nobody really realizes the negative effects that it has on our minds. There have been many neurological studies that show how looking at screens late at night releases a chemical in your brain that keeps you awake and is unhealthy, but another important issue that is rarely touched upon is the fact that surfing the web, using social media and other things significantly decreases our ability to hold our focus and retain information. People aren’t thinking the same as they were 50 years ago, technology is changing our brains in a negative way. It prevents us from being able to read articles completely, and if we’re able to then we do not fully retain all of the information and have to go read through it again. Whenever we are on the Net and searching something we always see new links or popups and get distracted to go look at them. The Net is impacting our brains and how we think. However, one of the positive effects is the fact that it cuts down a lot of research time, and gasoline emissions from driving to and from places to gather information. It allows for more work to be completed in a more timely manner.

In, Hal and Me, Nicholas Carr states, “Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or the pithy quote I was after..”(pg. 6). Carr is detailing the advantages he finds as a writer by using the Net, such as how he used to have to spend days searching for one piece of research and now he is able to complete that task within minutes just using the internet. Carr also goes on to describe the fact that he is able to shop, do banking, pay his bills and schedule appointments among many other things all within a few simple clicks of the mouse. Clive Thompson also details in The Rise of the Centaurs, how computers are a positive influence and are superior to humans because, “a chess-playing computer has no intuition at all. It analyzes the game using brute force; it inspects the pieces currently on the board, then calculates all options.” (pg. 2). Thompson was describing his earlier claims as to why computers have greater capabilities than humans and can interpret things that not even our own brains can. He used the example of the chess-playing computer by describing how in the game of chess is you do eight moves it creates more possible outcomes to the game than there are stars in the galaxy and how the human brain can’t process all of that information but a computer can. However, Carr also describes the negative effects of technology and the web by saying how, “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.” (pg. 7). This point is relating to the fact that the more people use the internet, the more their brains change and the less attention they have. It is destroying people’s ability to stay focused and retain information. In conclusion, both Carr and Thompson believed that the internet and technology have both negative and positive effects on the human brain.