Response to Carr and ThompsonReadings

In the reading, “Hal and Me”, Carr expresses the feeling of his mind changing, developing a new way to process information. Carr used to enjoy reading long books and only concentrating on the written work in front of him. However, Carr finds himself only interested in articles and snippets of information that he can clearly and quickly understand within only a minute or two of reading. He finds himself caught between whether computers and the internet has influenced his life in a good way or not. Throughout the text Carr gives us examples from professors and bloggers that explains how the concept of instant information is changing the way people learn. With the fastest browser at everyone’s fingertips, people are starting to find reading useless and out of date. Carr also explains how he found himself uninterested in books through his story of living through the advancement of computers and the internet. Overall, the feeling of the text is that, Carr, finds himself wanting to be able to not just be able to process information quickly, but also be able to want to read as another way of researching.

Key words throughout the text:

• Changing
• Quick
• Thought
• Time
• Machine

Overall my interpretation of the main point of this passage was to not repress the quality of information you can obtain from reading long texts, not just articles.

In the Thompson reading, he analyzes the creation of centaurs, a human and computer collaborative team that competes against other centaurs teams in a game of chess. Before the centaurs were developed they only had man versus computer. With this they realized that only very few people would be able to beat the computer, with its endless set of moves. Thompson goes over the skill sets of each part of the centaurus. The computer part analyzes every possible outcome in a matter of seconds, however it lacks intuition. The human aspect brings the intuition and insight. Together they make the ultimate chess team. Thompson eventually connects the centaurs to our everyday lives. Working together with technology to develop the best possible outcome.

Key words throughout the text:

• Together
• Intuition
• Analyse
• communication

Overall Thompsons passage was about how working together with technology we can enhance the qualities we already possess with the example of computer and human chess teams.