Maybe not all but most of us start our days off by checking our phones: what time is it? Who texted? What’s happening on social media? Then throughout the day we have our phones on us and check/use them frequently. Along with having our phones most of us probably have some other sort of device around us whether it be a computer, tv, etc. Technology is around us all the time now. It’s changing everything for us, the way we think, write, conversate, connect, and act. Sherry Turkle, with a doctorate in sociology and personality psychology, wrote the book “In Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age”. The intro to her book is called “The Empathy Diaries” where she writes about why she believes technology is an oncoming issue to how we empathize and connect, along with the effects on our reading, writing and thinking. Turkle focuses more on the impacts of our connections and ability to empathize. Whereas in Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” He focuses on the loss of our attention span and human potential, which is our ability to push ourselves to the highest standard. Our standards can be based on social and personal opinions but with technology I feel we are not pushing ourselves to reach our full potential. With the number of distractions always around us from technology it’s taking away time we could be using for more important things, like bettering ourselves, finding hobbies, and learning to balance our use of technology and how we allow it to distract us.
Conversing and connecting with people are surface level and less empathetic now that we have technology. Every day I use my phone, whether it’s to text my friends, family, watch social media or movies. I never really saw or even thought about the effects it could have on my ability to connect/converse with people, until I read “The empathy diaries” and have come to be more aware of my decrease in these abilities. It seems to be “we have embarked upon a voyage of forgetting. It has several stations. At a first, we speak through machines and forget how essential face-to-face conversation is to our relationships, our creativity and our capacity for empathy” (Turkle 352). Face-to-face conversations are what make our connections stronger as it allows you to see/learn body language, social cues and how to empathize with someone. It teaches a lot of personal development skills, and I have begun to realize that our problem is effort. No one puts effort into anything anymore if they don’t have to because of the abilities technology acquires. We have come to a point where most people would rather take the easy route and avoid making an effort for everything: conversations, thinking, reading, and writing. We like the comfort a virtual world brings us, somewhere where we don’t have to respond right away or actually think like we would being face-to-face with someone. But this is a problem, without conversations or connections an important characteristic would be missing from us, which is empathy.
The media is designed at a fast pace that shortens our attention span and changes the way we read and think. It supplies all different kinds of information at once, usually in short spurts. Making it so that when it comes time for us to read a book or “long” essay we find it hard to concentrate the whole time, as our attention span is being altered by this new type of reading media brings us. I am in this position and have noticed my attention span is shorter than it should be. The internet knows what it’s doing “as people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media has adapted to the audience’s new expectations” (Carr 5). We seek quick and easy access to information, where we don’t really have to think. The internet has learned what we expect and gives it to us with an overload of info. When I go on Instagram reels or Tik Tok the videos are usually short and if they are long or I’m not interested I can just swipe to the next thing. I easily get all different sorts of information thrown at me in such a short time span. I sometimes fall into the trap of doom scrolling, which is when a person continuously scrolls through the internet for hours on end. It can be easy to doom scroll, I will go on Tik Tok at night and be tired but then I end up staying up really late without noticing. I know this is a problem, and I see the effects myself. It’s taking away my sleep, my time, and how my brain is functioning. I do feel something we could all work on is our use of technology and the effects of it can be fixed if we learn balance and self-control.
Distraction, like many other things, has evolved over the years. It is only natural that while humans evolve, modes of distraction and our responses to them evolve simultaneously. Today, the main mode of distraction is technology, and most people are just starting to form their own opinions about it. Since it is a highly debatable topic, it is only natural that people can have perspectives from the opposite ends of the spectrum. Nicholas Carr, a journalist who mostly writes about the effects of technology, laments that it is stealing his ability to think deeply in his article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? On the opposite end of the spectrum, Sam Anderson, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, talks about how he has noticed technology affecting people, and then “defends” it in his article, In Defense of Distraction. While Carr feels that technology is reducing our human complexity, Anderson argues that it actually increases it, because it forces our brains to change. While I understand where Carr is coming from, I believe that Anderson’s view is more compelling. Since evolution is a natural part of life, I don’t believe that technology will always have the effects that Carr describes, though I do realize that it is an issue now.
The brain is the most complex part of the human body, and consequently isn’t 100% understood now. What we do know is that it is very elastic and therefore has the ability to adapt to many situations. I believe technology is therefore adaptable, even within one’s lifetime. Anderson shares the same view. While he discusses the fact that there is currently an attention crisis, he doesn’t necessarily see this as a bad thing in the long run, arguing that, “More than any other organ, the brain is designed to change based on experience, a feature called neuroplasticity. London taxi drivers, for instance, have enlarged hippocampi…a neural reward for paying attention to the city’s streets. As we become more skilled in the 21st century task Mayer calls “flitting,” the wiring of the brain will inevitably change to deal more efficiently with more information.” Here, Anderson describes neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to learn and adapt during one’s lifetime. He believes this ability can also be applied to the use of technology, and therefore, the attention crisis will not always be such a crisis. Carr thinks the opposite will happen. He believes that technology will eventually stretch our minds way too thin, sacrificing the complexity of human minds. Specifically, he argues “As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “pancake people”-spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.” Carr believes the evolution of technology will only serve to hinder the human race. I believe both opinions, in their opposing views, have their merits. I agree with Carr in that right now it may seem like technology is just making people more flat, but I believe this will change with time. As we learn to coevolve with technology the longer it is around, I believe we will become used to it, and once again be able to function as we did before. The human mind is so amazing in its ability to adapt to new situations. How could technology, which is just a new thing to evolve with, not apply in this case? And so, my opinions line up more closely to Anderson’s.
While I understand the apprehension people have towards technology, it is a fact that it is now intricately woven into our lives. Anderson brings up a great point when it comes to this concept, saying we have come to rely on technology to a point where we can’t easily go back. His argument is, “…the virtual horse has already left the digital barn. It’s too late to just retreat to a quieter time. Our jobs depend on connectivity. Our pleasure-cycles, not trivial matter, are increasingly tied to it.” While it is a common opinion that we spend too much time on technology, it is also a fact that, in some ways, it is needed in order to function in today’s society. But do we really know everything about technology? Carr argues that we don’t fully know what technology does to our minds. In a way, he agrees with Anderson, but he also adds on his own worries: “Never has a communication system played so many roles in our lives-or exerted such a broad influence over our thoughts-as the internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.” While Anderson points out that we can’t just abandon technology because we may have come to wholly depend on it, Carr points out that we don’t know the effects of technology. In this way, we are sort of stuck. We can’t go back, because we need technology, but we also can’t move forward too fast because we don’t know the true effects of it. Society has become so obsessed with producing the newest technology, like Apple with their yearly new phones. Obsession with the new is, ironically, a very old concept, but technology isn’t something that should be rushed all the time. Speeding along new, beneficial technology has its perks, but along with it comes the other companies, most looking for profit, developing new technologies that we just don’t know the full effects of yet. Slowing down the production of technology could reduce the pressure of this stalemate we are in: we can’t go back, but is the future any better? Slowing down technology would allow us to study more closely not only the effects of technology on our minds, but also the effectiveness of technology in the role it was made for.
Humans have so much intelligence but sometimes it gets ruined with the little devices in our pocket. Nickolas Carr wrote this paper called “ is google making us stupid”. In this paper it really brought my attention to how much technology is changing us for mostly the bad and how we aren’t seeing it fast enough or if we are seeing it we are putting a blind eye towards it. Also Sherry Turkle who is a phenomenal writer wrote The Empathy Diaries about how our phones and technology are shaping us to need things fast and how we don’t have much patience anymore. Technology isn’t making us stupid, it’s just not letting us challenge ourselves.
In Nicholas Carr’s paper he talked alot about how as a society we have lost patience because of google and how fast technology is. He explained “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages”. ). I agree with this because Google is making us so stupid and less patient. Because when we type in something to google it just takes seconds to come up with an answer so when we go and read and try and find answers that way our brains hate how long it takes so we just stop reading. Reading is hard as it is so when we find an easier way to find answers and then we go back to reading and finding answers that way it’s very difficult for our brain. I really liked our Nicholas Carr talked about how hard reading is. “ We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand”.( pg3 Paragraph 4). I have never thought about it this way but it’s so true. Letters are just symbols and that’s why it’s so hard for us to read and how it’s so much easier for us to have google do it for us. I very much agree with this because not only are we losing patience but we are losing our writing skills due to always typing on our phones or our computers. When we write on paper no one is offering different words to choose from and if you don’t choose it your words will stay underlined in red so it just makes you switch the word. So google is almost limiting us to think hard and they’re doing all the work.
“Appreciate the work that conversations can do”pg3(Paragraph 2). In The Empathy Diaries By Sherry Turkle this quote really stood out to me because it’s something that is rare and when it’s rare then when you have it it’s good. Alot of times nowadays we use email or text and we don’t get that much face to face action. But I believe you can go much further in life or you will be able to get something that you’re chasing after, a lot better with a conversation. Us humans can get very scared of eye contact or talking to someone higher than us and then we freak out or we just aren’t educated enough to speak that long and not have time to process our choice of words like we do in an email. This is why I believe you will most likely get a better chance at either getting your job or getting what you want if you go and have a conversation and not hide behind google- your screen. “ We say we turn to our phones when we are “board”.pg344(paragraph 3). Having our phones or our devices so close and so easily accessible is very bad for our state of health and growth. It’s very easy for us when we are bored to just think of the easiest thing to do which is right in our pockets and then we stop there because our boredom is fixed. We are allowing technology to take the place of our creativity and our knowledge. If we didn’t have technology we would be critical thinking and it might lead to crafts or going outside and hanging out with our friends which would help our social skills. Having things so accessible and easy is not healthy because our brains need to think outside the box and we need to get challenged but once we “get stuck” we go straight to google. “ what they are sharing is what is on their phones” pg 345 ( paragraph 3). We are letting technology take our stories away and they are creating them for us. Sherry Turkle Explains how when kids come to school all they talk about is what is happening on their tablet or what happened when they were playing video games last night. And how sad it’s because that’s the only way they communicate is through technology or about technology.
Is technology really affecting us all that deeply? Do we have a problem that we cannot see? While I believe something should change, writers Nicholas Carr and Sherry Turkle both wrote about their thoughts on technology. Turkle, an author of 10 books and a professor at MIT, believes that technology is destroying our abilities to make connections. While Carr begs the question “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, believing that our brains are changing and being remapped. These two believe that technology is a distraction, which I agree with. Turkle says it best that technology is not allowing “Students… to be making friendships as before. They make acquaintances, but their connections seem superficial.” (Sherry Turkle 345) We are all so caught up in our phones that we cannot connect to each other or stay focused on the conversation in real life without looking at our phones. Carr says that his “concentration often starts to drift” he gets fidgety and begins “looking for something else to do.” (Nicholas Carr 1) I find myself often peeking at my phone in the middle of conversations, making sure I do not miss a text message. I get fidgety and bored quickly, looking around for something else that seems more interesting, which leads me to my phone; scrolling endlessly, playing a game, or just texting a friend. Even while writing only 500 words, I have checked my phone multiple times. Is giving in to boredom and looking at my phone every few sentences healthy? While Carr talks to his friends they believe “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.” (Carr 2), so am I making myself worse off by giving into boredom? In Turkle’s piece she explains an experiment that was done where people were asked to sit quietly without a phone or book for fifteen minutes. The ones conducting the experiment asked if they would shock themselves if they became bored. Although at the beginning they said they would not, they could not stand the boredom, so they decided to shock themselves within only six minutes of being alone. Turkle says we are “Afraid of being alone” (Turkle 348) but has technology actually just ruined our abilities to keep ourselves busy by ourselves? I think we are so used to the constant stimulation of our phones; we have unlearned patience. If you are bored, you whip out your phone and find something to do that interests you until it is time to do something else. Which leads me to the question I asked above “Am I making myself worse off by giving into boredom?” A few months ago, I would have said no, but the more reading I do the more inclined I am to change my answer. Carr suggests that technology is affecting our attention span, leading to the inability to focus on anything. While Turkle talks about the effects it has had on empathy and relationships. They both discuss all the effects it has had on us, leading my opinion to waver a bit. While I know all this information, I still have not made a change. I check my phone often, take it with me wherever I go, and scroll social media. We strive for something to connect to, the phone gives that to us, as Turkle says it gives us “the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship and then, as the program got really good, the illusion of friendship without the demands of intimacy.” (Turkle 346) As she states here, the connection and companionship we all look for, is now just a click away. It is simple, you do not need to do much work to find this “connection”, no needing to please anyone. It is instant, which we as humans have become accustomed to. In Carr’s work he talks about “the clock”, how it decides for us “when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.”(Carr 4) In a way, that just makes things simple or instant, no need to think about when you need to do what; the clock will tell you. He later says “The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best method”-the perfect algorithm-to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.”” meaning that technology will be able to do everything humans can do, but in a faster, “more efficient” way. This allows humans quick and instant access to everything, just at the touch of a button. How does that affect us? I believe this, along with Carr and Turkle, is negatively affecting us. And is doing more harm than good to our generations, and the next ones to come. So, take a second and think about what you have just read, would you want to have someone as your boss, coworker, or friend who is more invested in what is happening on their phone than the people around them? How will you help to change this?
Technology has become a part of our everyday lives. Many believe it’s impacting our human behavior. Nicholas Carr touches on this topic in his essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” He mentions how technology is taking away our ability to think. Similarly, Sherry Turkle, a doctorate holder in sociology and psychology from Harvard, also writes an essay about technology called, “The Empathy Diaries.” She explains how technology affects conversation and our capacity for empathy. Both authors agree that technology is affecting us negatively by distracting us, but Carr focuses more on how it affects our intelligence and concentration, while Turkle focuses more on how it affects our conversation.
Turkle and Carr both agree that we use technology to avoid something. Carr believes the internet has chipped away at his capacity for concentration and as a result, he can no longer focus on long pieces of writing. To improve this argument, he refers to a study of online research habits, organized by scholars at the University College London. The scholars reported that, “It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, content pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense”(Carr 3). Instead of thoughtfully reading through articles, people are just skimming through and browsing to avoid reading the whole thing. Similarly, Turkle thinks we use technology to avoid having face-to-face conversation. She explains that conversation is important for our early development, “But these days we find ways around conversation. We hide from each other even as were constantly connected to each other”(Turkle 344). Technology makes it easy to avoid conversation. There’s so many other ways to communicate now so we don’t have to speak face-to-face. Carr also believes technology is used as an avoidance tool, but he believes it helps to avoid thinking and reading, rather than to avoid conversation. I think they both make very good points and I agree that we use technology to avoid certain things. I can relate to Turkle’s point because sometimes I will text a friend who lives two doors down when I could’ve just knocked on their door. But texting is right at my fingertips and it’s much more convenient. It’s less stressful than having to go ask something in person. I also relate to Carr’s point because I rarely read full articles anymore. I skim over the headings and read some of it, but sometimes I skip over whole paragraphs. I avoid conversing and reading full articles because technology allows me to avoid it.
Along with agreeing that technology is used as an avoidance tool, Turkle and Carr also agree that we can never focus on one thing and be present. Our brains are constantly stimulated so we get bored easily and can’t focus on one thing for too long. Turkle makes a point that, “We say we turn to our phones when we’re “bored.” And we often find ourselves bored because we have become accustomed to a constant feed of connection, information, and entertainment. We are forever elsewhere. At class or at church or business meetings, we pay attention to what interests us and then when it doesn’t, we look to our devices to find something that does” (Turkle 344). Because of the constant stimulation technology provides us, when our brains are not stimulated we don’t know what to do. We don’t know how to just be present with our thoughts. Relating to Turkle’s point, Carr says, “I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle” (Carr 1). Carr can see the effect of technology on himself. We’re so used to ads and notifications that stray our attention so we never focus for long periods of time anymore. I agree with each of their points. I see it in myself and in the people around me. We have become obsessed and feel lost without the constant distraction. It’s a scary thought. We can’t focus enough to read, to listen in class, or to just sit alone in silence with our thoughts.
In a world as interconnected as ours, technology is the standing foundation of our society, It is used to better people’s day-to-day lives, strengthen our communication, promote the probability of learning, and enhance the flow of information. Sherry Turkle is a renowned psychologist and sociologist. She dedicated her career to exploring the intricate connections between technology and human interaction. In her anthology, “The Empathy Diaries,” Turkle deals with paradoxical concepts such as our digital age, and the unprecedented pathways that technology opens up, while still acknowledging that it can be detrimental to human health leading to isolation and superficiality. Through her analysis, she demands the importance of a balance of online activities and, face-to-face interactions, and taking the initiative to do so will breed conscientious empathy. Turkle challenges the readers to reflect and make the self-choice to balance both connections to nurture the younger generations creating a well-mediated society pushing further to connect the world on a common goal. A prominent writer and brain philosopher, on technology and culture, Nicholas Carr, brought forth a thought-provoking essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” argues that using the internet and digital devices too often as a crutch will cripple societies, and reshape people’s brains to bread negativity and toxicity. Carr argues that though technology enriches the knowledge and power technology ensues it diminishes our ability to concentrate, think critically, and engage deeply with complex topics, scrutinizing our relationship with technology. Carr asserts that we must consider the habits our technology has set us on. Forcing a grasp on our true cognitive abilities, and the growth intellectually that could be made with more moderation on technology. However, this essay, my essay, argues that, in light of these facts, technology is the final gear that turns that grandfather clock that hasn’t worked since the ’50s or that final bit of practice you needed to perfect that “thing” you’ve worked years on, or even that answer to the question you never got to ask before they passed away.
To understand and appreciate the use technology can and has had, it is vital to recognize how it has transformed the way we access information and learning. Knowledge and wisdom are more accessible and ever-understandable than in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Not having to get buzzed on a pager, or worry about who else is listening in on the LAN line. Turkle brings up the point that “technology can foster connections, providing a platform for voices that might otherwise go unheard” (Turkle ). Hearing this I agree, there have been so many voices that couldn’t get an outlet before, and I’m sure those of you reading this have felt that crippling feeling, but an outlet to let those emotions out, or that advice your parents didn’t care about, and even those words you never got to say to them. Technology can stop kids from having to be eighteen at nine or ten.
As humans have evolved and developed more technologies and advancements in many stages of life, along with it distractions have evolved simultaneously. There have always been distractions, it is only natural that as times have changed. Humans have adapted to these new distractions in many aspects. Our lives are heavily dominated by the use of technology and consequently these new technologies provide a constant distraction from both reality and from the task we’re trying to focus on. Nicholas Carr, a journalist who mostly writes about the effects of technology, outlines how these distractions are stealing his ability to think deeply in his article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? On the opposite end of the spectrum, Sam Anderson, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, talks about how he has noticed technology affecting people, and then “defends” it in his article, In Defense of Distraction. I think that the human mind is so adaptable and fluid that we will be able tocontinue to adapt with these introductions of newer, technology, and be able to evolve with it as we have time and time again.
Anderon states, “Distraction, it turns out, is a critical component of creativity and insight.” (cite) I would have to agree with this sentiment, this quote is meaningful because it challenges the common perception that distraction is purely negative. Instead, it suggests that distraction can actually aid in the development of creativity and insight. By allowing our minds to shift focus, we might stumble upon new ideas and solutions that we wouldn’t have discovered if we were always strictly focused. This perspective encourages us to see the value in moments of distraction and how they can contribute to our overall growth. As a critical component of creativity and insight, distractions and letting the mind wander has led to a wide array of new concepts that have driven the human race to new levels of intelligence. In tension with this perspective Carr believes that technology will eventually stretch our minds thin, by constantly embedding these new tech technologies into our lives we are harming our ability to think on a deeper level. It is all too easy to look up the answers to any question or problem that arises in our day-to-day lives. In his article, Carr argues “ …we are drained of our inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance”; this quote refers to the deep and complex traditions, knowledge, and values passed down through generations. When we are “drained” of this inheritance, it suggests a loss of connection to the experiences that inform our understanding of the world and ourselves. I find there to be credibility in both of these perspectives.
Distractions have always existed as time has gone on as humans have adapted, so to have the distractions that are so prevalent in our everyday lives. Distractions have evolved significantly over time, adapting to the changing landscape of technology and society. In the past, distractions were often limited to the immediate environment, such as conversations, physical activities, or simple entertainment like books and radio. However, the nature of distractions has transformed. Today, we are constantly bombarded with notifications from smartphones, social media platforms, and a myriad of digital content always demanding our attention. Sam Anderson explains that”Distraction, it turns out, is a critical part of the creative process. It’s only by letting our minds wander, by giving them the freedom to roam, that we allow ourselves to stumble upon the unexpected connections and insights that lead to true innovation.” Humans need distractions in a world where we are forced to work and study and constantly be made available, distractions allow us to take a step back and take a moment to ourselves and get lost in a day Dream. It’s many of these distractions that actually provide us the time to think about and develop new ideas and concepts. Distractions drive creativity and influence thought in many ways. Carr Would argue that this constant bombardment of distractions only further limits our capacity to be able to provide deep thought. Carr argues, “The constant distractions and interruptions of the Internet, I believe, are turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers.”Yes, today it almost seems as though there is no escape from distractions. But I think that this perspective doesn’t give attribution to the fact that distractions have always existed and that they’re a crucial part of human nature distractions have taken many forms over the past decades, and to say that they Are making us superficial thinkers on their own doesn’t have much credibility in my own opinion.
Sherry Turkle is a sociologist and author of “The Empathy Diaries”. Nicholas Carr wrote the essay entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Both have concerns in regards to how technology impacts communication and learning. Both authors note that technology today does interfere with our basic human skills. Carr believes that the rapid pace of the internet doesn’t allow for us to stop-and-think about anything or have the awareness of things. He even goes so far as to ask the question, is the internet making us less intelligent. Turkle holds a somewhat different view when she says, “Technology challenges us to assert our human values. With enhanced connectivity through gadgets, we have to try much harder to develop empathy and maintain emotional connectedness.”-(Turkle) The use of technology is making interactions less deep, which makes it harder to understand and connect with others. The Internet has changed how our brains work and think. People, in large measure, now pay less attention to “deep” thinking but more to the simple task of navigating a website. Carr and Turkle are not alone in their views. New technology is increasingly affecting key aspects that maintain vital values. Both Carr and Turkle say that technology often leads to shallow interactions, especially with the use of digital ways of communication and the internet. Carr discusses how technology, especially the use of the internet, affects thinking skills in terms of focusing for a long time and critical thinking. He says, “My mind isn’t going—at least, as far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking like I used to. I can feel it the most when I’m reading.” (Carr par 2). Turkle points out, “We have sacrificed conversation for mere connection. We have traded real-time interaction for the illusion of companionship, which, in turn, weakens our capacity for empathy” (Turkle). This means that relationships made through technology are not as strong as those made in person, which is what really helps people understand and care about each other. Technology isn’t just a way for people, especially teenagers, to get information quickly; it can be that friend that affects how they act and who they are. No matter if it’s social networking, text messaging, or online gaming, technology is always there to keep one entertained, connect you with others, and hide from the real world.
In contrast, some negative impacts are brought about by overusing it. For example, Carr says that the internet reduces one’s ability to focus and read long texts “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (Carr, Para 5). Think about how you quickly become distracted from reading that school assignment and open Instagram or TikTok to see what is the latest. That’s what Carr means by that: Technology changes the way our brains work, making it difficult for us to concentrate and fully comprehend items. Turkle sees things more through an emotional viewpoint. She talks about how people’s social interactions are evolving due to advances in technology. Sending a short text or clicking the “like” button on a social network post is easier than ever before. These exchanges are empty and superficial. “Real people demand responses to what they are feeling, not just a response” (Turkle 346).A text message can never substitute a real-life conversation when it comes to understanding how someone is feeling. When one is having a difficult day, would he or she rather have a friend send a fast ‘hope you are okay’ text, or would one prefer to sit down and discuss in person? However, the second option might be preferred because it allows people to more fully express their emotions and understand one another, which is something that technology tends to get in the way. The more we rely on technology to communicate, the less we can have sincere, meaningful discussions. Technology also creates a place online where people try out different sides of themselves, often showing a different side of who they are. Turkle says, “people are using technology as a virtual area to develop themselves” (Turkle 345).When people talk to each other online, acting makes it look like their conversations aren’t as real, which makes the person feel more isolated. Others, like Turkle, have said that technology has made it easier to avoid situations that are embarrassing or boring. “We use our phones when we’re “bored”, (Turkle, 344) Picture how many times a day you want to pull out your phone right away while you’re waiting in line, in class or have some free time. When you’re bored, your phone keeps you from thinking too much about your thoughts and losing interest in what’s going on around you. Grabbing your phone when you’re bored can make it difficult to learn how to be patient or figure out how to fix a problem. For an 18-year-old living in a world filled with distractions, this is especially important. In the fast-paced, highly computerized environment of today, it might be too easy to get distracted. However, it pays to take a breath and sit down to help real-life friendships flourish with useful communication that will greatly improve one’s mental and emotional state. Remember that Carr and Turkle would advise you to fight that temptation the next time you feel yourself wanting to go for your phone or computer merely out of boredom. Rather, spend a minute observing your surroundings or, better still, strike up a discussion with someone close by.
As a society, we often forget to look back into our past. We are so focused on the future that the past becomes just a whisper in our memories. Technology is at fault for this. It not only weakens our connection to the past, but our connection with others and our ability to think. This idea is elaborated upon in Sherry Turkle’s “The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir” and Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making us Stupid?” Turkle believes that technology negatively impacts our relationships with others since better communicative technology results in less empathy. Likewise, Carr believes technology affects society, but in a different way. He thinks that the convenient information provided by the internet is making us dumber. The web gives us our answers in a very convenient, shallow way. Overall, both authors believe technology is a negative form of communication and thinking that leads to a lack of reasoning, and doesn’t give us a chance to think deeply about information given to us.
Technology hinders our ability to think and communicate, weakening our connection with others. Sherry Turkle, author of “The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir,” explains throughout her work that technology is ruining empathy in both older and newer generations. She begins the passage with the sentence, “…we turn to our phones instead of each other” (Turkle 343). This means that instead of having social interactions with others, we tend to prefer the safety behind a screen. It is easier to communicate over the phone, but it is often shallow and lacks meaning. Face-to-face interaction is necessary, because “It’s where we develop the capacity for empathy” (Turkle 344). Likewise, Nicholas Carr’s essay displays the idea that having convenient access to online information is negatively affecting our ability to think deeply and it is a distraction in our lives. He explains that “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (Carr 2). Carr believes that the internet has affected his own mind, making him less capable of analyzing large pieces of literature and resorting to the Net for quick, correct answers. Although he is finding the answers he is looking for, he isn’t improving his ability to think and comprehend large pieces of information. Both passages referenced above help prove that technology does not teach deep thinking or communication skills, but is a convenient distraction from real-life interactions.
Technology is also a way for us to escape reality and create a false environment of safety and certainty. As Sherry Turkle puts it, “We say we turn to our phones when we’re ‘bored.’ And we often find ourselves bored because we have become accustomed to a constant feed of connection, information, and entertainment. We are forever elsewhere” (Turkle 344). Turkle believes that our phones are not just an outlet to cure boredom, but a source of certainty. The internet provides us with all of the answers we are looking for and endless entertainment to feed off of. The statement “we are forever elsewhere” suggests that Turkle has also gotten lost in technology herself. She believes society is being pushed apart because of technology, and that everyone’s minds are somewhere else doing their own thing. Nicholas Carr has a similar issue with technology, stating “When I mention my troubles with readings to friends and acquaintances–literary types, most of them–many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (Carr 2). He goes on to describe this as a “phenomenon” with fellow bloggers. Like Turkle, Carr believes that excessive use of technology results in a lower attention span and capacity for learning and deep thinking. Both Carr and Turkle highlight the positive and negative aspects of technology. While it conveniently connects us with a vast source of knowledge and answers, it isolates us from each other and as a society. It is necessary to adopt a balanced use of technology in our lives, so as to not distract us from our lives.
As both Sherry Turkle and Nicholas Turkle illustrated, technology offers a variety of guidance and knowledge in an easily accessible format. This degrades intellectual skills and social connections. Both authors believe that our future generations are in danger as technological advancements continue to appear. It is imperative that we recognize these trends and treat them to become a stable, connected society.
What has the internet done to people? This is a question that many people wonder about because of the effects the internet or technology as a whole has had on us in recent times. Our lives have been changing and evolving with the “new modern technology”. It is strange that this is the way we talk about the internet and technology. We just are living in a world where the internet is everything and does anything. Technology has continued to grow everyday, and everyday we adapt to that and it is taking over and becoming a part of our lives. The way it is affecting how we behave and act brings up some major concerns and it is something many people talk about. Although the growth technology has can and is certainly a great thing for the world it can also be a negative. I believe that technology has had some impacts on us in our lives both negatively and positively, that are both good for some people but for others it is bad. For some people they grow too fast with technology and they cannot control themselves and they fall into the trap of technology. They use technology and only use technology, they fail to have the simple life skills everyone needs. Technology as a whole is changing us and causing us to behave, think and even have conversation all differently both positively and negatively.
Modern technology is causing us humans to not only not be able to think for ourselves but also is causing us to lack skills like having and holding a conversation. Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT, wrote her “Empathy Diaries” and in that writing she discusses the effects she believes technology has had on us. She mainly focuses on how technology has had a negative impact on conversation and empathy in humans. Technology has changed the way we can talk to people, “But these days we find ways around conversation. We hide from each other even as we’re constantly connected to each other. For on our screens, we are tempted to present ourselves as we would like to be” (Turkle 344). Turkle is explaining how our conversations are changing because of how technology has affected us. It is causing us to think differently and affects our ability to have conversation. Similarly to what Turkle discusses, Nicholas Carr in, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, talks about what google has done to us. He states how he believes the internet and google more specifically is taking away from us doing any thinking on our own. “I can feel it too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone or something has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going–so far as I can tell–but it’s changing.” (Carr 1). The way they state that we hide from conversation and that our minds are being messed around with is the cause of what technology has on us and not in a good way. We should be able to do these simple life skills like have a conversation and not feel like our mind is changing. Technology is increasing in power and is changing us.
Are we doomed? For years, society has disagreed upon digital technology and its impacts on humanity. Some believe that it will cause the downfall of life and society as we know it, whereas others believe it is one of the finest modern day tools. Obviously, everything has pros and cons, but when you really get into it, digital technology is not as bad as some make it out to be. The “crisis” the doomsayers speak of is really just our failure to adapt to technology and the internet, not necessarily a problem with the technology itself. Sam Anderson, New York Times Magazine book critic and author of In Defense of Distraction, dives into the real problem with technology and how it is not actually the technology but how we use it. He says that the question is “how successfully we can adapt” (Anderson 2), not how to reverse some terminal distraction or cognitive plague brought on by technology. Nicolas Carr, a Dartmouth and Harvard graduate and author of Is Google Making Us Stupid, discusses some of the same ideas, however, he also dives into the negative effects technology has been shown to have on the brain and behavior. Carr does say that technology is the root cause of many issues, but that simple moderation and learning how to effectively use digital devices and the virtual world could be the answer. I agree with both Anderson and Carr. There is not an actual crisis, but rather a temporary lack of adaptation and the answer to how we can adapt to the everchanging of the digital world lies in moderation and self-discipline.
The brain’s plasticity and ability to constantly adapt allows us the capacity to learn to adapt to digital technology. The brain is what allows us to think and feel and process information, and the way the neurons fire can be altered by experiences in our lives. This is why a traumatic experience will alter the way our brains function, however, in that case, it is usually not a positive impact. In this case –the case of digital technology– we currently do not understand the full impact of it on our brains, but we do know there is some kind of impact. Carr addresses this in his work, stating that the brain is so malleable where “even the adult mind ‘is very plastic.’ Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. ‘The brain…has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions’”(Carr 4). Given the ability of the brain to adapt, and the fact that we are still awaiting information on the long-term neurological and psychological effects on cognition, Carr is worried for humanity and our ability to think and function as we have in the past. He says, “what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles” (Carr 2). He says the way we think has gone from a deeper level of understanding to a surface level skimming of information, and this is what worries him. If we are unable to think deeply or critically, how will this change society and the way we function and understand one another? Possibly a bigger question though is: Is the real issue just an overall lack of executive function and attention or is this in fact a shift in how we think? Anderson believes that “[t]his attentional self-control, which psychologists call executive function, is at the very center of our struggle with attention. It’s what allows us to invest our focus wisely or poorly. Some of us, of course, have an easier time with it than others” (Anderson 5). In other words, the issue is not the digital technology itself, but with attention and self-discipline, which some struggle with more so than others. If someone were to master the skill of attention, it could be used as a very powerful tool in many aspects of life. Attention, used as a tool that can be turned on and off, could be the key to relationships, whether that be in the workplace, academia, personal life, or in an intrapersonal sense, as you could easily tune into one task or person speaking and then turn that same attention elsewhere when necessary, but not in the presence of just any old distraction. In the case of digital technology, attention is the root problem, as the internet is designed to hold our attention and constantly change to keep the brain distracted from the outside world. If we were able to get a better grasp on attention and begin to apply it to our lives, digital technology would not be such a vice in our lives. We would suddenly have the ability to be more mindful of how much time we are spending on devices and what we are spending that time online doing. The brain’s ability to constantly change would become an advantage in this case, as it adapts our attention skills to be able to handle the digital world.
11 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 17”
Maybe not all but most of us start our days off by checking our phones: what time is it? Who texted? What’s happening on social media? Then throughout the day we have our phones on us and check/use them frequently. Along with having our phones most of us probably have some other sort of device around us whether it be a computer, tv, etc. Technology is around us all the time now. It’s changing everything for us, the way we think, write, conversate, connect, and act. Sherry Turkle, with a doctorate in sociology and personality psychology, wrote the book “In Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age”. The intro to her book is called “The Empathy Diaries” where she writes about why she believes technology is an oncoming issue to how we empathize and connect, along with the effects on our reading, writing and thinking. Turkle focuses more on the impacts of our connections and ability to empathize. Whereas in Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” He focuses on the loss of our attention span and human potential, which is our ability to push ourselves to the highest standard. Our standards can be based on social and personal opinions but with technology I feel we are not pushing ourselves to reach our full potential. With the number of distractions always around us from technology it’s taking away time we could be using for more important things, like bettering ourselves, finding hobbies, and learning to balance our use of technology and how we allow it to distract us.
Conversing and connecting with people are surface level and less empathetic now that we have technology. Every day I use my phone, whether it’s to text my friends, family, watch social media or movies. I never really saw or even thought about the effects it could have on my ability to connect/converse with people, until I read “The empathy diaries” and have come to be more aware of my decrease in these abilities. It seems to be “we have embarked upon a voyage of forgetting. It has several stations. At a first, we speak through machines and forget how essential face-to-face conversation is to our relationships, our creativity and our capacity for empathy” (Turkle 352). Face-to-face conversations are what make our connections stronger as it allows you to see/learn body language, social cues and how to empathize with someone. It teaches a lot of personal development skills, and I have begun to realize that our problem is effort. No one puts effort into anything anymore if they don’t have to because of the abilities technology acquires. We have come to a point where most people would rather take the easy route and avoid making an effort for everything: conversations, thinking, reading, and writing. We like the comfort a virtual world brings us, somewhere where we don’t have to respond right away or actually think like we would being face-to-face with someone. But this is a problem, without conversations or connections an important characteristic would be missing from us, which is empathy.
The media is designed at a fast pace that shortens our attention span and changes the way we read and think. It supplies all different kinds of information at once, usually in short spurts. Making it so that when it comes time for us to read a book or “long” essay we find it hard to concentrate the whole time, as our attention span is being altered by this new type of reading media brings us. I am in this position and have noticed my attention span is shorter than it should be. The internet knows what it’s doing “as people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media has adapted to the audience’s new expectations” (Carr 5). We seek quick and easy access to information, where we don’t really have to think. The internet has learned what we expect and gives it to us with an overload of info. When I go on Instagram reels or Tik Tok the videos are usually short and if they are long or I’m not interested I can just swipe to the next thing. I easily get all different sorts of information thrown at me in such a short time span. I sometimes fall into the trap of doom scrolling, which is when a person continuously scrolls through the internet for hours on end. It can be easy to doom scroll, I will go on Tik Tok at night and be tired but then I end up staying up really late without noticing. I know this is a problem, and I see the effects myself. It’s taking away my sleep, my time, and how my brain is functioning. I do feel something we could all work on is our use of technology and the effects of it can be fixed if we learn balance and self-control.
Distraction, like many other things, has evolved over the years. It is only natural that while humans evolve, modes of distraction and our responses to them evolve simultaneously. Today, the main mode of distraction is technology, and most people are just starting to form their own opinions about it. Since it is a highly debatable topic, it is only natural that people can have perspectives from the opposite ends of the spectrum. Nicholas Carr, a journalist who mostly writes about the effects of technology, laments that it is stealing his ability to think deeply in his article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? On the opposite end of the spectrum, Sam Anderson, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, talks about how he has noticed technology affecting people, and then “defends” it in his article, In Defense of Distraction. While Carr feels that technology is reducing our human complexity, Anderson argues that it actually increases it, because it forces our brains to change. While I understand where Carr is coming from, I believe that Anderson’s view is more compelling. Since evolution is a natural part of life, I don’t believe that technology will always have the effects that Carr describes, though I do realize that it is an issue now.
The brain is the most complex part of the human body, and consequently isn’t 100% understood now. What we do know is that it is very elastic and therefore has the ability to adapt to many situations. I believe technology is therefore adaptable, even within one’s lifetime. Anderson shares the same view. While he discusses the fact that there is currently an attention crisis, he doesn’t necessarily see this as a bad thing in the long run, arguing that, “More than any other organ, the brain is designed to change based on experience, a feature called neuroplasticity. London taxi drivers, for instance, have enlarged hippocampi…a neural reward for paying attention to the city’s streets. As we become more skilled in the 21st century task Mayer calls “flitting,” the wiring of the brain will inevitably change to deal more efficiently with more information.” Here, Anderson describes neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to learn and adapt during one’s lifetime. He believes this ability can also be applied to the use of technology, and therefore, the attention crisis will not always be such a crisis. Carr thinks the opposite will happen. He believes that technology will eventually stretch our minds way too thin, sacrificing the complexity of human minds. Specifically, he argues “As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “pancake people”-spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.” Carr believes the evolution of technology will only serve to hinder the human race. I believe both opinions, in their opposing views, have their merits. I agree with Carr in that right now it may seem like technology is just making people more flat, but I believe this will change with time. As we learn to coevolve with technology the longer it is around, I believe we will become used to it, and once again be able to function as we did before. The human mind is so amazing in its ability to adapt to new situations. How could technology, which is just a new thing to evolve with, not apply in this case? And so, my opinions line up more closely to Anderson’s.
While I understand the apprehension people have towards technology, it is a fact that it is now intricately woven into our lives. Anderson brings up a great point when it comes to this concept, saying we have come to rely on technology to a point where we can’t easily go back. His argument is, “…the virtual horse has already left the digital barn. It’s too late to just retreat to a quieter time. Our jobs depend on connectivity. Our pleasure-cycles, not trivial matter, are increasingly tied to it.” While it is a common opinion that we spend too much time on technology, it is also a fact that, in some ways, it is needed in order to function in today’s society. But do we really know everything about technology? Carr argues that we don’t fully know what technology does to our minds. In a way, he agrees with Anderson, but he also adds on his own worries: “Never has a communication system played so many roles in our lives-or exerted such a broad influence over our thoughts-as the internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.” While Anderson points out that we can’t just abandon technology because we may have come to wholly depend on it, Carr points out that we don’t know the effects of technology. In this way, we are sort of stuck. We can’t go back, because we need technology, but we also can’t move forward too fast because we don’t know the true effects of it. Society has become so obsessed with producing the newest technology, like Apple with their yearly new phones. Obsession with the new is, ironically, a very old concept, but technology isn’t something that should be rushed all the time. Speeding along new, beneficial technology has its perks, but along with it comes the other companies, most looking for profit, developing new technologies that we just don’t know the full effects of yet. Slowing down the production of technology could reduce the pressure of this stalemate we are in: we can’t go back, but is the future any better? Slowing down technology would allow us to study more closely not only the effects of technology on our minds, but also the effectiveness of technology in the role it was made for.
Humans have so much intelligence but sometimes it gets ruined with the little devices in our pocket. Nickolas Carr wrote this paper called “ is google making us stupid”. In this paper it really brought my attention to how much technology is changing us for mostly the bad and how we aren’t seeing it fast enough or if we are seeing it we are putting a blind eye towards it. Also Sherry Turkle who is a phenomenal writer wrote The Empathy Diaries about how our phones and technology are shaping us to need things fast and how we don’t have much patience anymore. Technology isn’t making us stupid, it’s just not letting us challenge ourselves.
In Nicholas Carr’s paper he talked alot about how as a society we have lost patience because of google and how fast technology is. He explained “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages”. ). I agree with this because Google is making us so stupid and less patient. Because when we type in something to google it just takes seconds to come up with an answer so when we go and read and try and find answers that way our brains hate how long it takes so we just stop reading. Reading is hard as it is so when we find an easier way to find answers and then we go back to reading and finding answers that way it’s very difficult for our brain. I really liked our Nicholas Carr talked about how hard reading is. “ We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand”.( pg3 Paragraph 4). I have never thought about it this way but it’s so true. Letters are just symbols and that’s why it’s so hard for us to read and how it’s so much easier for us to have google do it for us. I very much agree with this because not only are we losing patience but we are losing our writing skills due to always typing on our phones or our computers. When we write on paper no one is offering different words to choose from and if you don’t choose it your words will stay underlined in red so it just makes you switch the word. So google is almost limiting us to think hard and they’re doing all the work.
“Appreciate the work that conversations can do”pg3(Paragraph 2). In The Empathy Diaries By Sherry Turkle this quote really stood out to me because it’s something that is rare and when it’s rare then when you have it it’s good. Alot of times nowadays we use email or text and we don’t get that much face to face action. But I believe you can go much further in life or you will be able to get something that you’re chasing after, a lot better with a conversation. Us humans can get very scared of eye contact or talking to someone higher than us and then we freak out or we just aren’t educated enough to speak that long and not have time to process our choice of words like we do in an email. This is why I believe you will most likely get a better chance at either getting your job or getting what you want if you go and have a conversation and not hide behind google- your screen. “ We say we turn to our phones when we are “board”.pg344(paragraph 3). Having our phones or our devices so close and so easily accessible is very bad for our state of health and growth. It’s very easy for us when we are bored to just think of the easiest thing to do which is right in our pockets and then we stop there because our boredom is fixed. We are allowing technology to take the place of our creativity and our knowledge. If we didn’t have technology we would be critical thinking and it might lead to crafts or going outside and hanging out with our friends which would help our social skills. Having things so accessible and easy is not healthy because our brains need to think outside the box and we need to get challenged but once we “get stuck” we go straight to google. “ what they are sharing is what is on their phones” pg 345 ( paragraph 3). We are letting technology take our stories away and they are creating them for us. Sherry Turkle Explains how when kids come to school all they talk about is what is happening on their tablet or what happened when they were playing video games last night. And how sad it’s because that’s the only way they communicate is through technology or about technology.
Is technology really affecting us all that deeply? Do we have a problem that we cannot see? While I believe something should change, writers Nicholas Carr and Sherry Turkle both wrote about their thoughts on technology. Turkle, an author of 10 books and a professor at MIT, believes that technology is destroying our abilities to make connections. While Carr begs the question “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, believing that our brains are changing and being remapped. These two believe that technology is a distraction, which I agree with. Turkle says it best that technology is not allowing “Students… to be making friendships as before. They make acquaintances, but their connections seem superficial.” (Sherry Turkle 345) We are all so caught up in our phones that we cannot connect to each other or stay focused on the conversation in real life without looking at our phones. Carr says that his “concentration often starts to drift” he gets fidgety and begins “looking for something else to do.” (Nicholas Carr 1) I find myself often peeking at my phone in the middle of conversations, making sure I do not miss a text message. I get fidgety and bored quickly, looking around for something else that seems more interesting, which leads me to my phone; scrolling endlessly, playing a game, or just texting a friend. Even while writing only 500 words, I have checked my phone multiple times. Is giving in to boredom and looking at my phone every few sentences healthy? While Carr talks to his friends they believe “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.” (Carr 2), so am I making myself worse off by giving into boredom? In Turkle’s piece she explains an experiment that was done where people were asked to sit quietly without a phone or book for fifteen minutes. The ones conducting the experiment asked if they would shock themselves if they became bored. Although at the beginning they said they would not, they could not stand the boredom, so they decided to shock themselves within only six minutes of being alone. Turkle says we are “Afraid of being alone” (Turkle 348) but has technology actually just ruined our abilities to keep ourselves busy by ourselves? I think we are so used to the constant stimulation of our phones; we have unlearned patience. If you are bored, you whip out your phone and find something to do that interests you until it is time to do something else. Which leads me to the question I asked above “Am I making myself worse off by giving into boredom?” A few months ago, I would have said no, but the more reading I do the more inclined I am to change my answer. Carr suggests that technology is affecting our attention span, leading to the inability to focus on anything. While Turkle talks about the effects it has had on empathy and relationships. They both discuss all the effects it has had on us, leading my opinion to waver a bit. While I know all this information, I still have not made a change. I check my phone often, take it with me wherever I go, and scroll social media. We strive for something to connect to, the phone gives that to us, as Turkle says it gives us “the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship and then, as the program got really good, the illusion of friendship without the demands of intimacy.” (Turkle 346) As she states here, the connection and companionship we all look for, is now just a click away. It is simple, you do not need to do much work to find this “connection”, no needing to please anyone. It is instant, which we as humans have become accustomed to. In Carr’s work he talks about “the clock”, how it decides for us “when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.”(Carr 4) In a way, that just makes things simple or instant, no need to think about when you need to do what; the clock will tell you. He later says “The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best method”-the perfect algorithm-to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.”” meaning that technology will be able to do everything humans can do, but in a faster, “more efficient” way. This allows humans quick and instant access to everything, just at the touch of a button. How does that affect us? I believe this, along with Carr and Turkle, is negatively affecting us. And is doing more harm than good to our generations, and the next ones to come. So, take a second and think about what you have just read, would you want to have someone as your boss, coworker, or friend who is more invested in what is happening on their phone than the people around them? How will you help to change this?
Technology has become a part of our everyday lives. Many believe it’s impacting our human behavior. Nicholas Carr touches on this topic in his essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” He mentions how technology is taking away our ability to think. Similarly, Sherry Turkle, a doctorate holder in sociology and psychology from Harvard, also writes an essay about technology called, “The Empathy Diaries.” She explains how technology affects conversation and our capacity for empathy. Both authors agree that technology is affecting us negatively by distracting us, but Carr focuses more on how it affects our intelligence and concentration, while Turkle focuses more on how it affects our conversation.
Turkle and Carr both agree that we use technology to avoid something. Carr believes the internet has chipped away at his capacity for concentration and as a result, he can no longer focus on long pieces of writing. To improve this argument, he refers to a study of online research habits, organized by scholars at the University College London. The scholars reported that, “It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, content pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense”(Carr 3). Instead of thoughtfully reading through articles, people are just skimming through and browsing to avoid reading the whole thing. Similarly, Turkle thinks we use technology to avoid having face-to-face conversation. She explains that conversation is important for our early development, “But these days we find ways around conversation. We hide from each other even as were constantly connected to each other”(Turkle 344). Technology makes it easy to avoid conversation. There’s so many other ways to communicate now so we don’t have to speak face-to-face. Carr also believes technology is used as an avoidance tool, but he believes it helps to avoid thinking and reading, rather than to avoid conversation. I think they both make very good points and I agree that we use technology to avoid certain things. I can relate to Turkle’s point because sometimes I will text a friend who lives two doors down when I could’ve just knocked on their door. But texting is right at my fingertips and it’s much more convenient. It’s less stressful than having to go ask something in person. I also relate to Carr’s point because I rarely read full articles anymore. I skim over the headings and read some of it, but sometimes I skip over whole paragraphs. I avoid conversing and reading full articles because technology allows me to avoid it.
Along with agreeing that technology is used as an avoidance tool, Turkle and Carr also agree that we can never focus on one thing and be present. Our brains are constantly stimulated so we get bored easily and can’t focus on one thing for too long. Turkle makes a point that, “We say we turn to our phones when we’re “bored.” And we often find ourselves bored because we have become accustomed to a constant feed of connection, information, and entertainment. We are forever elsewhere. At class or at church or business meetings, we pay attention to what interests us and then when it doesn’t, we look to our devices to find something that does” (Turkle 344). Because of the constant stimulation technology provides us, when our brains are not stimulated we don’t know what to do. We don’t know how to just be present with our thoughts. Relating to Turkle’s point, Carr says, “I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle” (Carr 1). Carr can see the effect of technology on himself. We’re so used to ads and notifications that stray our attention so we never focus for long periods of time anymore. I agree with each of their points. I see it in myself and in the people around me. We have become obsessed and feel lost without the constant distraction. It’s a scary thought. We can’t focus enough to read, to listen in class, or to just sit alone in silence with our thoughts.
In a world as interconnected as ours, technology is the standing foundation of our society, It is used to better people’s day-to-day lives, strengthen our communication, promote the probability of learning, and enhance the flow of information. Sherry Turkle is a renowned psychologist and sociologist. She dedicated her career to exploring the intricate connections between technology and human interaction. In her anthology, “The Empathy Diaries,” Turkle deals with paradoxical concepts such as our digital age, and the unprecedented pathways that technology opens up, while still acknowledging that it can be detrimental to human health leading to isolation and superficiality. Through her analysis, she demands the importance of a balance of online activities and, face-to-face interactions, and taking the initiative to do so will breed conscientious empathy. Turkle challenges the readers to reflect and make the self-choice to balance both connections to nurture the younger generations creating a well-mediated society pushing further to connect the world on a common goal. A prominent writer and brain philosopher, on technology and culture, Nicholas Carr, brought forth a thought-provoking essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” argues that using the internet and digital devices too often as a crutch will cripple societies, and reshape people’s brains to bread negativity and toxicity. Carr argues that though technology enriches the knowledge and power technology ensues it diminishes our ability to concentrate, think critically, and engage deeply with complex topics, scrutinizing our relationship with technology. Carr asserts that we must consider the habits our technology has set us on. Forcing a grasp on our true cognitive abilities, and the growth intellectually that could be made with more moderation on technology. However, this essay, my essay, argues that, in light of these facts, technology is the final gear that turns that grandfather clock that hasn’t worked since the ’50s or that final bit of practice you needed to perfect that “thing” you’ve worked years on, or even that answer to the question you never got to ask before they passed away.
To understand and appreciate the use technology can and has had, it is vital to recognize how it has transformed the way we access information and learning. Knowledge and wisdom are more accessible and ever-understandable than in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Not having to get buzzed on a pager, or worry about who else is listening in on the LAN line. Turkle brings up the point that “technology can foster connections, providing a platform for voices that might otherwise go unheard” (Turkle ). Hearing this I agree, there have been so many voices that couldn’t get an outlet before, and I’m sure those of you reading this have felt that crippling feeling, but an outlet to let those emotions out, or that advice your parents didn’t care about, and even those words you never got to say to them. Technology can stop kids from having to be eighteen at nine or ten.
As humans have evolved and developed more technologies and advancements in many stages of life, along with it distractions have evolved simultaneously. There have always been distractions, it is only natural that as times have changed. Humans have adapted to these new distractions in many aspects. Our lives are heavily dominated by the use of technology and consequently these new technologies provide a constant distraction from both reality and from the task we’re trying to focus on. Nicholas Carr, a journalist who mostly writes about the effects of technology, outlines how these distractions are stealing his ability to think deeply in his article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? On the opposite end of the spectrum, Sam Anderson, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, talks about how he has noticed technology affecting people, and then “defends” it in his article, In Defense of Distraction. I think that the human mind is so adaptable and fluid that we will be able tocontinue to adapt with these introductions of newer, technology, and be able to evolve with it as we have time and time again.
Anderon states, “Distraction, it turns out, is a critical component of creativity and insight.” (cite) I would have to agree with this sentiment, this quote is meaningful because it challenges the common perception that distraction is purely negative. Instead, it suggests that distraction can actually aid in the development of creativity and insight. By allowing our minds to shift focus, we might stumble upon new ideas and solutions that we wouldn’t have discovered if we were always strictly focused. This perspective encourages us to see the value in moments of distraction and how they can contribute to our overall growth. As a critical component of creativity and insight, distractions and letting the mind wander has led to a wide array of new concepts that have driven the human race to new levels of intelligence. In tension with this perspective Carr believes that technology will eventually stretch our minds thin, by constantly embedding these new tech technologies into our lives we are harming our ability to think on a deeper level. It is all too easy to look up the answers to any question or problem that arises in our day-to-day lives. In his article, Carr argues “ …we are drained of our inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance”; this quote refers to the deep and complex traditions, knowledge, and values passed down through generations. When we are “drained” of this inheritance, it suggests a loss of connection to the experiences that inform our understanding of the world and ourselves. I find there to be credibility in both of these perspectives.
Distractions have always existed as time has gone on as humans have adapted, so to have the distractions that are so prevalent in our everyday lives. Distractions have evolved significantly over time, adapting to the changing landscape of technology and society. In the past, distractions were often limited to the immediate environment, such as conversations, physical activities, or simple entertainment like books and radio. However, the nature of distractions has transformed. Today, we are constantly bombarded with notifications from smartphones, social media platforms, and a myriad of digital content always demanding our attention. Sam Anderson explains that”Distraction, it turns out, is a critical part of the creative process. It’s only by letting our minds wander, by giving them the freedom to roam, that we allow ourselves to stumble upon the unexpected connections and insights that lead to true innovation.” Humans need distractions in a world where we are forced to work and study and constantly be made available, distractions allow us to take a step back and take a moment to ourselves and get lost in a day Dream. It’s many of these distractions that actually provide us the time to think about and develop new ideas and concepts. Distractions drive creativity and influence thought in many ways. Carr Would argue that this constant bombardment of distractions only further limits our capacity to be able to provide deep thought. Carr argues, “The constant distractions and interruptions of the Internet, I believe, are turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers.”Yes, today it almost seems as though there is no escape from distractions. But I think that this perspective doesn’t give attribution to the fact that distractions have always existed and that they’re a crucial part of human nature distractions have taken many forms over the past decades, and to say that they Are making us superficial thinkers on their own doesn’t have much credibility in my own opinion.
Sherry Turkle is a sociologist and author of “The Empathy Diaries”. Nicholas Carr wrote the essay entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Both have concerns in regards to how technology impacts communication and learning. Both authors note that technology today does interfere with our basic human skills. Carr believes that the rapid pace of the internet doesn’t allow for us to stop-and-think about anything or have the awareness of things. He even goes so far as to ask the question, is the internet making us less intelligent. Turkle holds a somewhat different view when she says, “Technology challenges us to assert our human values. With enhanced connectivity through gadgets, we have to try much harder to develop empathy and maintain emotional connectedness.”-(Turkle) The use of technology is making interactions less deep, which makes it harder to understand and connect with others. The Internet has changed how our brains work and think. People, in large measure, now pay less attention to “deep” thinking but more to the simple task of navigating a website. Carr and Turkle are not alone in their views. New technology is increasingly affecting key aspects that maintain vital values. Both Carr and Turkle say that technology often leads to shallow interactions, especially with the use of digital ways of communication and the internet. Carr discusses how technology, especially the use of the internet, affects thinking skills in terms of focusing for a long time and critical thinking. He says, “My mind isn’t going—at least, as far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking like I used to. I can feel it the most when I’m reading.” (Carr par 2). Turkle points out, “We have sacrificed conversation for mere connection. We have traded real-time interaction for the illusion of companionship, which, in turn, weakens our capacity for empathy” (Turkle). This means that relationships made through technology are not as strong as those made in person, which is what really helps people understand and care about each other. Technology isn’t just a way for people, especially teenagers, to get information quickly; it can be that friend that affects how they act and who they are. No matter if it’s social networking, text messaging, or online gaming, technology is always there to keep one entertained, connect you with others, and hide from the real world.
In contrast, some negative impacts are brought about by overusing it. For example, Carr says that the internet reduces one’s ability to focus and read long texts “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (Carr, Para 5). Think about how you quickly become distracted from reading that school assignment and open Instagram or TikTok to see what is the latest. That’s what Carr means by that: Technology changes the way our brains work, making it difficult for us to concentrate and fully comprehend items. Turkle sees things more through an emotional viewpoint. She talks about how people’s social interactions are evolving due to advances in technology. Sending a short text or clicking the “like” button on a social network post is easier than ever before. These exchanges are empty and superficial. “Real people demand responses to what they are feeling, not just a response” (Turkle 346).A text message can never substitute a real-life conversation when it comes to understanding how someone is feeling. When one is having a difficult day, would he or she rather have a friend send a fast ‘hope you are okay’ text, or would one prefer to sit down and discuss in person? However, the second option might be preferred because it allows people to more fully express their emotions and understand one another, which is something that technology tends to get in the way. The more we rely on technology to communicate, the less we can have sincere, meaningful discussions. Technology also creates a place online where people try out different sides of themselves, often showing a different side of who they are. Turkle says, “people are using technology as a virtual area to develop themselves” (Turkle 345).When people talk to each other online, acting makes it look like their conversations aren’t as real, which makes the person feel more isolated. Others, like Turkle, have said that technology has made it easier to avoid situations that are embarrassing or boring. “We use our phones when we’re “bored”, (Turkle, 344) Picture how many times a day you want to pull out your phone right away while you’re waiting in line, in class or have some free time. When you’re bored, your phone keeps you from thinking too much about your thoughts and losing interest in what’s going on around you. Grabbing your phone when you’re bored can make it difficult to learn how to be patient or figure out how to fix a problem. For an 18-year-old living in a world filled with distractions, this is especially important. In the fast-paced, highly computerized environment of today, it might be too easy to get distracted. However, it pays to take a breath and sit down to help real-life friendships flourish with useful communication that will greatly improve one’s mental and emotional state. Remember that Carr and Turkle would advise you to fight that temptation the next time you feel yourself wanting to go for your phone or computer merely out of boredom. Rather, spend a minute observing your surroundings or, better still, strike up a discussion with someone close by.
As a society, we often forget to look back into our past. We are so focused on the future that the past becomes just a whisper in our memories. Technology is at fault for this. It not only weakens our connection to the past, but our connection with others and our ability to think. This idea is elaborated upon in Sherry Turkle’s “The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir” and Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making us Stupid?” Turkle believes that technology negatively impacts our relationships with others since better communicative technology results in less empathy. Likewise, Carr believes technology affects society, but in a different way. He thinks that the convenient information provided by the internet is making us dumber. The web gives us our answers in a very convenient, shallow way. Overall, both authors believe technology is a negative form of communication and thinking that leads to a lack of reasoning, and doesn’t give us a chance to think deeply about information given to us.
Technology hinders our ability to think and communicate, weakening our connection with others. Sherry Turkle, author of “The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir,” explains throughout her work that technology is ruining empathy in both older and newer generations. She begins the passage with the sentence, “…we turn to our phones instead of each other” (Turkle 343). This means that instead of having social interactions with others, we tend to prefer the safety behind a screen. It is easier to communicate over the phone, but it is often shallow and lacks meaning. Face-to-face interaction is necessary, because “It’s where we develop the capacity for empathy” (Turkle 344). Likewise, Nicholas Carr’s essay displays the idea that having convenient access to online information is negatively affecting our ability to think deeply and it is a distraction in our lives. He explains that “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (Carr 2). Carr believes that the internet has affected his own mind, making him less capable of analyzing large pieces of literature and resorting to the Net for quick, correct answers. Although he is finding the answers he is looking for, he isn’t improving his ability to think and comprehend large pieces of information. Both passages referenced above help prove that technology does not teach deep thinking or communication skills, but is a convenient distraction from real-life interactions.
Technology is also a way for us to escape reality and create a false environment of safety and certainty. As Sherry Turkle puts it, “We say we turn to our phones when we’re ‘bored.’ And we often find ourselves bored because we have become accustomed to a constant feed of connection, information, and entertainment. We are forever elsewhere” (Turkle 344). Turkle believes that our phones are not just an outlet to cure boredom, but a source of certainty. The internet provides us with all of the answers we are looking for and endless entertainment to feed off of. The statement “we are forever elsewhere” suggests that Turkle has also gotten lost in technology herself. She believes society is being pushed apart because of technology, and that everyone’s minds are somewhere else doing their own thing. Nicholas Carr has a similar issue with technology, stating “When I mention my troubles with readings to friends and acquaintances–literary types, most of them–many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (Carr 2). He goes on to describe this as a “phenomenon” with fellow bloggers. Like Turkle, Carr believes that excessive use of technology results in a lower attention span and capacity for learning and deep thinking. Both Carr and Turkle highlight the positive and negative aspects of technology. While it conveniently connects us with a vast source of knowledge and answers, it isolates us from each other and as a society. It is necessary to adopt a balanced use of technology in our lives, so as to not distract us from our lives.
As both Sherry Turkle and Nicholas Turkle illustrated, technology offers a variety of guidance and knowledge in an easily accessible format. This degrades intellectual skills and social connections. Both authors believe that our future generations are in danger as technological advancements continue to appear. It is imperative that we recognize these trends and treat them to become a stable, connected society.
What has the internet done to people? This is a question that many people wonder about because of the effects the internet or technology as a whole has had on us in recent times. Our lives have been changing and evolving with the “new modern technology”. It is strange that this is the way we talk about the internet and technology. We just are living in a world where the internet is everything and does anything. Technology has continued to grow everyday, and everyday we adapt to that and it is taking over and becoming a part of our lives. The way it is affecting how we behave and act brings up some major concerns and it is something many people talk about. Although the growth technology has can and is certainly a great thing for the world it can also be a negative. I believe that technology has had some impacts on us in our lives both negatively and positively, that are both good for some people but for others it is bad. For some people they grow too fast with technology and they cannot control themselves and they fall into the trap of technology. They use technology and only use technology, they fail to have the simple life skills everyone needs. Technology as a whole is changing us and causing us to behave, think and even have conversation all differently both positively and negatively.
Modern technology is causing us humans to not only not be able to think for ourselves but also is causing us to lack skills like having and holding a conversation. Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT, wrote her “Empathy Diaries” and in that writing she discusses the effects she believes technology has had on us. She mainly focuses on how technology has had a negative impact on conversation and empathy in humans. Technology has changed the way we can talk to people, “But these days we find ways around conversation. We hide from each other even as we’re constantly connected to each other. For on our screens, we are tempted to present ourselves as we would like to be” (Turkle 344). Turkle is explaining how our conversations are changing because of how technology has affected us. It is causing us to think differently and affects our ability to have conversation. Similarly to what Turkle discusses, Nicholas Carr in, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, talks about what google has done to us. He states how he believes the internet and google more specifically is taking away from us doing any thinking on our own. “I can feel it too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone or something has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going–so far as I can tell–but it’s changing.” (Carr 1). The way they state that we hide from conversation and that our minds are being messed around with is the cause of what technology has on us and not in a good way. We should be able to do these simple life skills like have a conversation and not feel like our mind is changing. Technology is increasing in power and is changing us.
Are we doomed? For years, society has disagreed upon digital technology and its impacts on humanity. Some believe that it will cause the downfall of life and society as we know it, whereas others believe it is one of the finest modern day tools. Obviously, everything has pros and cons, but when you really get into it, digital technology is not as bad as some make it out to be. The “crisis” the doomsayers speak of is really just our failure to adapt to technology and the internet, not necessarily a problem with the technology itself. Sam Anderson, New York Times Magazine book critic and author of In Defense of Distraction, dives into the real problem with technology and how it is not actually the technology but how we use it. He says that the question is “how successfully we can adapt” (Anderson 2), not how to reverse some terminal distraction or cognitive plague brought on by technology. Nicolas Carr, a Dartmouth and Harvard graduate and author of Is Google Making Us Stupid, discusses some of the same ideas, however, he also dives into the negative effects technology has been shown to have on the brain and behavior. Carr does say that technology is the root cause of many issues, but that simple moderation and learning how to effectively use digital devices and the virtual world could be the answer. I agree with both Anderson and Carr. There is not an actual crisis, but rather a temporary lack of adaptation and the answer to how we can adapt to the everchanging of the digital world lies in moderation and self-discipline.
The brain’s plasticity and ability to constantly adapt allows us the capacity to learn to adapt to digital technology. The brain is what allows us to think and feel and process information, and the way the neurons fire can be altered by experiences in our lives. This is why a traumatic experience will alter the way our brains function, however, in that case, it is usually not a positive impact. In this case –the case of digital technology– we currently do not understand the full impact of it on our brains, but we do know there is some kind of impact. Carr addresses this in his work, stating that the brain is so malleable where “even the adult mind ‘is very plastic.’ Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. ‘The brain…has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions’”(Carr 4). Given the ability of the brain to adapt, and the fact that we are still awaiting information on the long-term neurological and psychological effects on cognition, Carr is worried for humanity and our ability to think and function as we have in the past. He says, “what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles” (Carr 2). He says the way we think has gone from a deeper level of understanding to a surface level skimming of information, and this is what worries him. If we are unable to think deeply or critically, how will this change society and the way we function and understand one another? Possibly a bigger question though is: Is the real issue just an overall lack of executive function and attention or is this in fact a shift in how we think? Anderson believes that “[t]his attentional self-control, which psychologists call executive function, is at the very center of our struggle with attention. It’s what allows us to invest our focus wisely or poorly. Some of us, of course, have an easier time with it than others” (Anderson 5). In other words, the issue is not the digital technology itself, but with attention and self-discipline, which some struggle with more so than others. If someone were to master the skill of attention, it could be used as a very powerful tool in many aspects of life. Attention, used as a tool that can be turned on and off, could be the key to relationships, whether that be in the workplace, academia, personal life, or in an intrapersonal sense, as you could easily tune into one task or person speaking and then turn that same attention elsewhere when necessary, but not in the presence of just any old distraction. In the case of digital technology, attention is the root problem, as the internet is designed to hold our attention and constantly change to keep the brain distracted from the outside world. If we were able to get a better grasp on attention and begin to apply it to our lives, digital technology would not be such a vice in our lives. We would suddenly have the ability to be more mindful of how much time we are spending on devices and what we are spending that time online doing. The brain’s ability to constantly change would become an advantage in this case, as it adapts our attention skills to be able to handle the digital world.