Nicholas Carr has recently written an article in the Atlantic about the new age of how society retrieves its information. Carr’s main focus in the article is the internet, particularly the huge company and search engine Google. He describes how the web has become a medium between the people that use it and the info that it channels. One would think that getting info off the web is the same as getting it from books. Carr seems to be pointing to an eerie reality that the web is changing the way that we think. He backs up this idea with a wide array of sources to try and prove his point but ultimately lets the reader decide.
He explains that the web feeds us information in a fashion that makes us intellectually lazy. We are able to get the amount of information that could take days of searching through books in just minutes or even seconds. This ease of information access has given us a lack of brain exercise that has made it hard to concentrate and read long books hard for people that use the web often.
I personally agree with Carr’s idea that the internet is shaping our thought process because I can see the results that the internet has had on our culture and other people, although I haven’t noticed it with myself. I think that we will see even more evidence of this as time goes on because our society seems to only be getting more addicted to the internet.
WELCOME
Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversation Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! I encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! I encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
I like your point of view on this article. I think you might be right in saying that as our society progresses we will be come more addicted to the internet or technology for that matter. I will also add in that the younger generations are more technology savy then the older generations because the younger generations grew up with it where as our parents and grandparents didn't grow up with computers and cell phones etc so we(the younger generation) are having to teach them(the older generation) how to use the computers and the cell phones.
ReplyDeleteI think it's really interesting that you say Carr "let's the reader decide" what to think about this shift in reading/thinking. Because that's what we'll aim to do--rather than having an obvious agenda, we'll want to explore an issue and communicate our thinking about it to our readers.
ReplyDeleteI liked your summary statement, "Carr seems to be pointing to an eerie reality that the web is changing the way that we think..." and would agree that this is the thrust and focus of the article.
ReplyDeleteTo me it's a question of tool mastery. We've seen the proliferation of the internet in terms of the slogan "Faster, Cheaper, Smaller - in a given year two will double." Carr's question, "Can the plasticity of our brains keep up?" was well stated in your blog and I liked your concise summary.