A response to the articles

According to Nicholas Carr in his essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, “what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.” His evidence for this statement is all about how he used to be able to read long books such as War and Peace and be able to really get into the story. However, he claims that now he cannot keep reading one story or article that is over a certain length because he is used to the way you receive information over the internet, in short concise statements. People today use the internet every day and while adults can remember before the internet was created, kids these days are absolutely devastated if they are not allowed on the computer or cell phone. At the same time that I believe this, I also believe Jamais Cascio when he states that the internet could actually be making us smarter. The internet is a source of an extraordinary amount of information. This allows us to store more information that our minds cannot hold at the moment to use for a later date. The internet is basically a never-ending sheet of paper that we can write on and refer back to at any time. As living beings, we change to fit the environment around us. Before we had paper, people used to remember many more things than we do today because there was no other way to store the information. When the Printing Press was invented, Hieronimo Squarciafico thought that it would lead to men becoming lazy and it would do no good for the human race. He did not have the foresight to see the potential benefits of such a device. It spread ideals, ideas, religions, and all kinds of information around the world, enlightening many more men to what a few others knew. The same limited foresight is being applied to today’s technology which in a few years will seem to be out dated. Even if one did think that the internet was detrimental to one’s self, there is almost nothing you could do about it. Every day more and more people and businesses require you to go online for one thing or another. The internet is an extremely useful tool and while it might cause a few minor problems in the way humans act, is worth it in the end for the sheer amount of information that it holds and ability it has.