Carr & Thompson
Brent J. Hochrein
Dr. Ross
ENGL110–105
12 February 2018
In both Carr and Thompson’s respective works, each are trying to shed some light on the advancement of technology and its effects on the plasticity and functioning capacity of the human brain. Carr does this by telling his own personal journey throughout the development of technology and he even went as far as contrasting his brain before the internet and advancement in technology to his brain now. In the end of the article he states, “…I became more accustomed to and dependent on the sites and services of the Net. The very way my brain worked seemed to be changing.” In fact, the impact that technology, and it’s accompanying social networks, have on an individual can be a bit overwhelming at times. For someone like me, who has grown up in an era that requires one to have a digital footprint on almost all social media sites, networking online is inevitable. Our generation has never experienced the change in our brain that Carr has experienced. Our brains have simply always been this way. Looking for facts and dates in physical libraries and books are now ancient scary stories that our parents tell us while sitting around the television in our living room. Finding a fact or date doesn’t take hours or even minutes anymore, now it takes seconds to pull out your phone and google the answer. The only downside to this, and I’m sure my fellow peers will agree, is that we forget that fact and that date just about as fast as we learned it. But with the advancement of technology, does that even matter? Will technology take over our brains?
Thompson insinuates that this isn’t necessarily the case, “Which is smarter at chess-humans or computers? Neither. It’s the two together, working side by side.” Thompson shows us multiple scenarios where technology assisted ordinary chess players, beat grand master chess players, and even corrupted one of those grand masters. Therefore, the reader can see that the integration of technology can greatly launch society forward, but if you tip the scale either way society will ultimately be slowed down or even crumble. Letting technology be a crutch for our minds could weaken us, much like a broken hand in a cast. Once the cast is removed the hand is far weaker than before the bone was broken. The only way to get that hand back up to full strength is through rehabilitation. If we suddenly were devoid of all technology society would be that broken hand after the cast, weak and unusable. It would take great efforts for society to get back to full strength. On the other hand, we could tip the scale the other way. We could very well advance our technology so far that we would become slaves to our devices. Your eyes would never leave the screen. We would turn into the people from the Disney movie Wall-E, who can’t walk anymore because they have been carted around by robots for their whole lives while they eat food and watch movies on the monitor inches from their face.
In conclusion, Carr and Thompson make it blatantly clear that we may use technology for advancement all around. Your brain can be shaped into a wonderful work of art this way. But when you rely too heavily on technology you could very well be harming your brains ability to function and preform simple every day tasks. So all in all one must work hand in hand with technology for optimum brain advancement.
