In an article published by Pew Research Center, and written by the associate director Kristen Purcell who carries a Ph.D. in Sociology, she states, “The Internet and digital technologies such as social networking sites, cell phones, and texting, generally facilitate teen’s personal expressions and creativity, broadening the audience for their written material, and encouraging teens to write more often in more formats than many have been in the case of prior generations,” (Purcell). Our lives have been greatly affected by technological advances, and we may not realize how much we really utilize the benefits that technology provides us with. Technology has been beneficial to our society in the field of education, in our social interactions, and continues to advance as time goes on. The benefits that it provides to the world definitely outweighs any obstacles that it may hold.
Technology has had a positive impact in education. The development of technology provides educators and students with tools that allow for more advanced and helpful learning techniques. For example, in a study by Pew Research Center where Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers were surveyed on how today’s digital tools affect student writing, it was found that “96% agree that digital technologies “allow students to share their work with a wider and more varied audience,” 77% agree that these tools “encourage greater collaboration among students,” and 78% agree that digital technologies “encourage student creativity and personal expression,” (Purcell). The combined impact of these outcomes produced from using technology shows that there is a greater investment among students in what they write, and allows for greater engagement in the process. Technology opens up a broad selection of sources and tools that make it easier to learn, and in my opinion as a student myself, more motivation to want to succeed. Throughout my time of schooling, technology has made things like creating presentations more interesting, studying more useful and easily understood, and learning more exciting.
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Technology allows for us to be able to easily communicate with people around the globe. Being able to have the opportunity to communicate with others at our fingertips makes for a wider audience to view writings, and to be able to engage and collaborate with others. For example, the development of social networking has allowed easily accessible ways of communication, and through that, we are allowed the access to more content and material for personal use and use in the classroom. In an article published by The Atlantic, and written by Nicholas Carr, an American writer who has published books and articles on technology, business, and culture, he states that “Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets ‘reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link… the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded,” (Carr). There is clearly a greater ability to keep up with learning tools and techniques, as well as to stay up-to-date with things happening in the world around us.
Often, technology gets a bad rap, but it actually provides us with a more broad and advanced way to teach, learn, and communicate. For example, Carr states, “The easy assumption that we’d all be “better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measures, and optimized,” (Carr). Carr brings up the frightening thought of technology basically taking over. However, Carr’s skepticisms, and skepticisms such as Socrates’ concerns about written language and the 15th-century editor, Squarciafico’s concerns about printed works failed to anticipate the benefits that technology might hold for human knowledge.
Technology has been, and will continue to be beneficial to our society in the field of education, in our social interactions, and continues to advance over time. Technology has opened doors for both teachers and students, and has contributed many good things to our day-to-day lives. We are given things like ore social interaction through social networking, tools that make teaching and learning more interesting and understandable, and has made us eager to see what else technology will have to offer. Despite some challenges technology causes us to face, the benefits that it provides to the world definitely outweighs any obstacles it holds.
Works Cited
- Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 13 June, 2018, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/.
- Thompson, Clive. “Public Thinking.” Smarter Than You Think, The Penguin Group, 2013, pp.45-83.
- Purcell, Kristen, et al. “The Impact of Digital Tools on Student Writing and How Writing Is Taught in Schools.”
- Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, 12 Feb. 2014, www.pewinternet.org/2013/07/16/the-impact-of-digital-tools-on-student-writing-and-how-writing-is-taught-in-schools/.
How Internet Impacts The Way We Absorb And Retain
The invention of the global connection network system is seen as one of the most important in the history of mankind. It connects people through phones, satellites, and cables. It seems clear that the internet and its astonishing availability of information has become firmly established in our life. The internet is a huge part of our society and has a profound effect on our life. If we are connected to the internet, we have the access to huge amounts of knowledge at our fingertips. Nicholas Carr, in his essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” says that the internet is not only shaping our lives, but physically altering our brains. The internet impacts how we absorb and retain information by rewiring our brain. The more we browse webpages and check social media, the less focused we become on a simple task. This paper will try to examine how internet affects our ability to focus, depletes our ability to memorize, and makes us lazy.
There is no doubt that the internet is changing the way our brain absorbs information. This is because the internet and its distractions give us bad habits that affect the way we take in information. As such, the more we browse webpages and check social media, the less focused we become on a simple task. Carr says: “the net seems to be chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation” (413). Maurer Hermann, in the article “Does the Internet Make Us Stupid,” says that the internet is reducing our ability to concentrate and our cognitive ability, much as our physical fitness has been reduced by all kinds of machinery for physical work and locomotion (48).
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This is because the availability of so much distracting information on the internet has weakened our ability to concentrate. Such distractions include: headlines, advertisements, videos, games, and others that come with online sources. As such people tend to find themselves flipping through tabs to see what they have opened, checking their e-mails, following Facebook updates, watching videos, or reading advertisements because the need for constant updates has been rewired into our brains. Despite these distractions, the net is the best place to look for topics of interest as it allows us to gain understanding of topics we are not familiar with.
It is seemingly clear that our ability to memorize is depleting. For instance, when reading an article, we might come across word that we will have to look up. This process usually leads us into a different direction. Then, after about 30 minutes, we have completely forgotten what we were originally searching because of many the tabs that we have opened. Carr uses his personal experience of the usage of internet to show the way the internet has affected his brain and the way he thinks and retain information: “over the past few years,” he writes, “I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural-circuitry, reprogramming the memory” (412). Sparrow says: “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips,” and also says that, “when we face with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have low rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead of where to access it” (4). This is because people tend to rely on the internet as a primary form of memory where information is encoded, stored, and can be retrieved. We feel less pressure to memorize information because we know it is all archived on the internet. Despite this, I think the net has made accessing of information easy. We no longer must spend long hours of research in the library to find things, instead we just google it.
The advent of net and its astonishing availability of information has made us lazy in the sense that we do not have to remember anything because we have google and we do not have to use a paper map for directions because we have GPS navigation. Carr describes how Bruce Friedman, a blogger, lost the ability to read books: “even the blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb, I skim it” said he (414). This means that the easy accessibility of internet has proved us quick and easy to read information about any topic. This has caused us to be skimmers of information. It has rewritten our brain in such a way that our mind has begun to conform to the thought process of the Internet, rather than think independently and critically about specific ideas and topics. However, I think the internet can be blamed for the development of this kind of habit. It is by human nature to simplify things and make clarify easy as possible where ever they can.
In conclusion, the advent of the internet, just like any previous inventions, had some negative impact on the society. For example, the invention of the printing press had a great impact on the Renaissance of literature and culture. Carr says that when the printing press was invented, “the Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making man less studious and weakening their minds” (422). In addition, Brenton says in “Feeling Mediated: A History of Media Technology and Emotion in America” that just like in ancient Greece, “new forms of technologies bring with them both fear and hope, on one hand allowing us deeper emotional connections and the ability to forge global communities, while on the other prompting anxieties about isolation and over-stimulation” (68-69). Even though, the internet might have depleted our ability to focus, memorize, and make us lazy, it is still highly regarded as Godsent. It has enhanced our abilities and increased our processing speeds for acquiring knowledge. It has made our brain smarter and efficient in multitasking. It is the most useful tool today that connects us to the rest of the world in a flash and drives our society into the future, making all our lives easier.
Works Cited
- Brenton, Malin. Feeling Mediated: A History of Media Technology and Emotion in America. NYU Press, 2014. PP. 33-69.
- Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Little Norton Reader, edited by Melissa A. Goldthwaite, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1979, PP. 149-159.
- Maurer, Hermann. “Does the Internet Make Us Stupid?” Communications of the ACM, vol. 58, no. 1, Jan. 2015, PP. 48 – 51. Doi: 10.1145/2629544.
- Sparrow, Betsy et al. Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. Science. 2011. DOI: 10.1126/science.1207745
