Response

Carr starts out by stating his opinion and then backing it up with numerous statements. I agree completely with Carr’s essay.  I have found in the last few years that my attention span has shortened when it comes to reading.  Just like Carr, I used to get lost in books and could read for hours on end.  Now it seems I can hardly get through the first chapter, let alone the first few pages without finding myself bored.  The Internet is all about instant gratification.  When information is needed just type it in and instantly you get 89,000,000 hits. It is no longer absolutely and completely necessary to go to the library and spend time researching through many books and spend time reading articles.  In today’s world all a person has to do is scroll through a few websites and they have all their research.  I myself even found it hard to not get distracted and move on when reading this article.  Face book notifications popping up, adds on the side, all contributed to my distractions. I agree with Carr when he says how helpful the Internet has been with research. All I have to do is just skip around to a few other sites scroll around and you have your answer. Subjects that used to take years of research now take a few days of surfing the Internet.

An interesting fact that I found in this article was when Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University, stated that reading is not instinctive. “It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains.”- Maryanne Wolf.  This was very interesting to me because it makes sense.  Language comes so easy to humans.  It’s a natural way of communication.  Reading and writing had to be studied and practiced and learned. Internet chat has altered how we write and read also.  I can admit that if I get an instant message longer than a few sentences I am more likely to not answer or read it.  This is because I am so used to short instant messages.  Now that I am in college reading has become a necessity and I still find myself flipping through the pages of my textbooks and when I get an online assignment it takes me a long time to get through it because of all the distractions.  I guess you could say it really just depends on the person but and their ability to concentrate but I know people relate to having their attention spans shortened by instant information. 

Online articles are especially hard for me to concentrate on because staring at a computer screen for so long without it moving hurts my eyes.  I always end up scrolling up and down the page and clicking on other things.  I don’t necessarily agree with Google making us stupid but I do think that we have become lazy because of the Internet.