Eyes glued to the iPod screen in your hands, you pry away for a couple minutes to watch the episode that’s running on HBO. Behind you, your mom is typing away on her computer and a couple steps away, your sister is texting her friends with her earphones in, blasting the awful music she has on her own iPod. Upstairs your dad is tending to a conference call on his computer. It’s the average Saturday morning. Nobody even gives it a second thought; that’s the way it works in the digital world we live in today.
Nicholas Carr in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” expresses his concern for the future of the digitalizing human race. The fast-moving, vast pool of information that is the internet offers knowledge at its users’ fingertips, but with convenience comes consequence. The internet simplifies this knowledge to make it faster for the reader to consume at a glance. The way this type of information is presented – in short pieces – is what causes Carr’s worry. As internet users become more and more used to the idea of quick and easy information, the way they think becomes affected. When reading the traditional ink and paper, their ability to process the excess details on the page and interpret the deeper meaning is hindered. In Carr’s case and most of his other colleagues’ cases, the internet also affects their attention span. Concentration becomes difficult. Memory deteriorates. The Net has taken over the way they think in the real world.
I partially agree with Nicholas Carr, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the internet is affecting the minds of its users to the point that their ability to interpret and understand something is weakened. Undoubtedly, the Net is needed to move forward. Just like science would take forever or wouldn’t even be possible without the latest technology, learning and innovation wouldn’t be able to take place fast enough in our modern age without the internet. Using the internet should be encouraged, but not so much that we abandon the books and sources of the past. The internet should not replace the world we live in, but rather, it should complement it.
As a supplement, the internet can keep us from falling behind. Although part of Carr’s argument is right, the internet is still important to the daily lives of the people. We can’t discourage the continued use of the internet simply because of the small negative effect it has on us. In this case, the upsides of the internet generally outweigh the downsides. Without it, information would take hours or even days to find, talking to your friends would be rather inconvenient, etc. It should have the effect of adding to our lives, but not such that it makes us forget the other things we have around us.
I think that technology is, in the lives of people like the members in my family, taking over and becoming the daily life of the average American family today. According to mashable.com, a blog that posts about new social networks and websites, the average person spends about 68 hours online per month. That’s more than 10% of our lives spent clicking away on the computer. Maybe even more than that. Just think of what one could have been doing during that time: exercising, hanging out with friends, or even spending time with family. How much more will we give up to the clutches of the worldwide web in the future?
The internet does have its advantages, don’t get me wrong. Its capability to place the world of knowledge at one’s fingertips is unmatched by any other technology. Jamais Cascio gives his opinion about the importance of the Net in his article “Get Smarter.” He explains that the internet is simply a tool we must take advantage of as humans, and it is our key to becoming smarter in the future - smarter in a way that lets us survive in the ever-altering world. If we decide not to use it, we are at a loss. Technology is constantly developing, and the knowledge we have as a result is constantly expanding as well. Once you fall behind, well, then it’s hard to catch up.
Cascio points out that the internet is the key to the future of our human race. He argues that in order to survive in the ever-changing world of today we must utilize the latest tools like the internet to, as he puts it, “get smarter”. Falling behind is not an option. If we don’t smarten up, it’s over. Cascio is an avid technology supporter, a believer in the forward progression of humans. The internet is simply a way to keep up and keep going. The distribution of knowledge and information is important these days, he explains, and without the speed that the Net provides, it would be hard to get moving anywhere.
As people we need to be careful about how much of our lives we allow the internet to be. Sure, it makes life easier, but we must learn to control ourselves. It can only be helpful up until a point. Past that, it’s called an addiction. As a society, we should learn to view it as an addition to our current lives, not as a way to live them.
By now we must know that slipping away into obsolescence is not an option in modern-day society. Clay Shirky, in his article “Does the Internet Make You Smarter or Dumber?” poses the idea that perhaps the internet is not fully developed yet. At the moment, there is some pretty dumb stuff out there, and some pretty dumb people. The internet is what provided them the ability to spread that stupidity. Now obviously, this is a flaw. But this is all part of the process. There will be dumb people, and there will be smart people. Filtering out the bad stuff and leaving the good stuff is all part of the development. Without the internet, the dumb ideas wouldn’t be out there, but neither would the smart ones. The internet is a way to express ourselves and establish our position in the society. It is a medium that allows the sharing of all kinds of opinions, and gives the common people the capability to fully utilize their freedom of speech. The internet, as Shirky states, is somewhat similar to the introduction of the printing press a long time ago. The printing press allowed for the circulation of propaganda, mockeries of the Bible, and other unworthy pieces of literature. But without it, we wouldn’t have been able to spread information and most likely would never have been able to distribute the books, newspapers, etc. that resulted in an intellectual flourish at the time. The internet is similar in that it is crucial to the forward movement of human intelligence, but it is still a work in progress.
My view on this aspect of the internet is completely in line with Shirky’s. With where we are at this point in time, the internet can only get better. It has definitely provided convenience for its users. Although Carr’s statements are rather extreme, one cannot deny that the internet can have negative effects on the mind. Thus we must refrain ourselves from the overuse of it. Again arises the idea that the internet should be a convenience, not a lifestyle. Imagine the world of tomorrow, filled with the plugged in teenagers and people of today. As the internet grows to be a larger and larger part of our lives, we have to be careful not to let it cross the line and become the way we live.
No comments:
Post a Comment