There are approximately 6.8 billion people on the planet and a little something called technology makes the world seem small.
In Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, he explores whether the Internet has positively or negatively affected society?
The answer to this depends on whom you ask. University of North Carolina’s Professor Napoleon Byars has an interesting take on it.
“There is a dark side to the Internet,” Byars said. He noted that is sometimes used to promote pornography and other illegal activity. However, Byars recognizes the good, too. “The Internet gives people knowledge and power. too.”
Santana Jackson, 17 and a Chuck Stone scholar, believes the good outweighs the bad.
“I think it’s more positive than negative,” Jackson said. “Our generation is always connected and the Internet provides the tools to be educated. As a whole we are a more informed generation.”
Carr does a thorough examination in his book on the effect of the Internet. Most everyone agrees that technology has changed society. It is much easier to send a text message or post to a social network than to physically contact someone.
It also takes a lot less time find information or reading a book.
“Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words, now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski,” Carr said.
Carr appears to under appreciate how much the world has changed or the digital perspective of younger generations. Digital natives like myself were born into technology. We’ve never lived without it. Therefore, it is difficult to make the claim that technology is changing our brains.
Essentially young people have become the “Google generation.” The answer to any question can be found at the click of a mouse. Do I believe this is a tragedy? Not at all. Yes, it’s a nice thought to go to the library and read a book. Also, decades ago mom would be in the kitchen cooking dinner while dad was just returning home from work. Today, computers and the Internet have changed the way we live, work and interact with other.
Carr questions whether we are really thinking for ourselves or are computers thinking for us?
“I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain,” Carr said. He doesn’t blame the Internet for the moral collapse of the world. Carr believes the Internet has allowed him a platform to share his work. That is the greatest gift of technology.
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Gerty Joseph is a rising senior at Springfield Central High School in Springfield, Mass. She writes for her local newspaper, the Republican as well as contributing to the Huffington Post.