Essay about Who's tweet is it anyway?

Kyle Callahan
Professor Michael Blancato
English 802
February 16, 2014
A Life in 140 Characters Common topics among adults making small talk are usually the weather, the government, and children. As they begin to converse about the younger people of their lives, they usually start talking about how they are always ‘plugged in’ and the noticeable differences between what life is like now, in comparison with their own childhoods. Generation X’s cognitive abilities are not developing as in the past due to the constant need for technology. Many different and distinguished authors who have published essays or articles on this topic are; Nicholas Carr, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of The Shallows, Tyler Cowen, a professor at George-Mason University and author of Three Tweets for the Web, John Naughton, senior research fellow in the center for research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge University and author of The Internet: Is It Changing the Way We Think?, and finally Kris Axtman, the up and coming author of r u online?: The Evolving Lexicon of Wired Teens. The similarities in these essays are obvious, but where they differ may be surprising.
In the chapter “The Juggler’s Brain”, Carr introduces himself to the reader(s), and cleverly finds a way to introduce his own thoughts and experiences into the writing. He says that regular Internet usage may have the effect of diminishing the capacity for concentration and contemplation. He prefaces his argument with his speculation that today’s youth is not able to maintain the same amount of information as its predecessors, and that “Dozens of psychologists, neurobiologists, educators and Web designers point to the same conclusion: when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning.” (Carr, 115-116). Carr raises the point that unlike speech, which is an ability hardwired into the human brain, the ability to read has to be taught in order for the brain to rearrange its original parts for the task of interpreting symbols into words. The Internet is offering a shortcut to anyone with access to it, one may be looking for a specific piece of information, but instead of reading the whole digital article they hit “CONTROL+F”. This allows the operator of the computer to search for a specific word, read about that word, and moves on. Therefore, Carr states that the natural way we develop is being changed by regular Internet usage can also be expected to be different from that shaped by the reading of books and other page-based written material. The capacity at which our brains are being trained to read is ever shrinking, due to how readily the information is available.
Even though these shortcuts are becoming more evident in the way young people think, Naughton’s article is another in the long line of answering the question of, “How is the internet changing human behavior and thought?” Carr argues that our habitual practices can change the very structure of the human brain and Carr’s fear is that this practice is leading to a dumbing down of society. Naughton states that neuroscientists have proven that people’s minds do alter with increasing use of the Internet, however, that could also be said about people who read. Reading is not a function, which is passed on through genetics, it is a learned behavior and scientists have stated that when human beings learn to read our minds get altered in much the same way as when human beings learn to use the internet. Naughton is worried that getting direct answers from the Internet is deteriorating our ability to read through information and locate what we need in more than immediate, one-word answers. Naughton finds this statement a little alarming, but not truly destructive. He says that the Internet is almost becoming “powersteering for the brain”, which essentially just means that the internet is making things easier, and that it may

Show More

Related Documents: Essay about Who's tweet is it anyway?

Managing Information Technology (7th Edition) Essay