The Internet's Role in the Creation of Idiots

So, I just finished reading the first few chapters of The Shallows by Nicolas Carr and I really enjoyed it.

Carr claims the internet is making us stupid. Hard to imagine right, after-all the internet is this all knowing entity and since it has become a part of our lives, one would assume we know almost as much as it does—wrong. Carr argues that the internet is stunting our “intellectual maturation” (Carr 40) and I agree.

Comparing my younger self to the way I am now is all the evidence I need to see how the internet is stunting my brain development. When I was younger I was not allowed to watch television, play video games, or even use the internet starting at 12pm Sunday to 2:20pm Friday (when I got out of school). My only source of entertainment was reading books. Although, this may sound crazy to some it was pretty helpful. In fact I was able to look deeper into the text and get a better understanding of what I was reading; it was so helpful that I was able to recall a book in perfect detail from beginning to end (no I am not exaggerating).

As I got older, the wall my mother built grew weaker and slowly started crumble; eventually allowing me to fully explore television, video games, and you guessed it--the internet. By the time I got to high school the internet became my own personal medium no longer did I read books that were not mandated by my teacher, and even then I was not able to sit and read. The internet recruited me into its world wide webbiness of mystery; teasing me with the ability to get information fast with little to no effort. As a result I developed the loss of concentration, the fidgetiness, and the urge to find something else to do whenever it was time to read (Carr  5). Even more interestingly, I was overcome with the same urges/feelings as I read the chapters due for class tomorrow.

The internet has done a great job at prepping us to read things fast enough to get a general idea of what the subject/text is about. However, with that fast reading comes a sacrifice; our ability to contextualize and understand the meaning of what we are reading. Carr is concerned that we could possibly be losing ourselves, turning into the brainless, mindless, and sometimes unaware human robots you see in sci-fi movies. Carr understands the importance of the internet, he says so himself. However, he is concerned that we are consuming what the internet feeds us in a state of distraction and are blinded by the various things such as surfing, chatting, and emailing; which is cleverly described as multi-tasking. It is for this reason Carr wants us to maintain what is left of our brains before it is lost in this new technological era of diversion.