Throughout her career she has gained broad exposure to society and commercial scholarly publishers, librarians and library consortia, funders, and researchers. Additionally, Ann has served as Chief Digital Officer at PLOS, charged with driving execution and operations as well as their overall digital and supporting data strategy.
He contends that the rise of information technology has made good behavior more important because it has become increasingly hard to hide bad behavior.
Dov really helped me understand the behavioral implications of that: You are on Candid Camera, so be good. It is very interesting to note the latent, harnessable power of individuals in the Web community to observe, react to, and profoundly impact major businesses.
The new potency lies with those who have the vision to connect the dots and mobilize the teeming masses—individual collaborators. I think there are fundamental problems with the logic here, because it confuses technological change abundance with ceteris paribus all else remaining the same abundance.
So the printing press had unforeseen consequences, which is a common experience with technological change. An example of ceteris paribus abundance would be an exceptionally good crop, or growing season.
The consequences of this are well known, because the topic has been studied at depth, because it happens cyclically. Last modified June 25, Accessed November 11, The Nieman Journalism Lab is a collaborative attempt to figure out how quality journalism can survive and thrive in the Internet age. June 25, , 11 a. By Megan Garber megangarber June 25, , 11 a. Clay Shirky. Cognitive Surplus. Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf. Here Comes Everybody. Jeff Jarvis.
Neil Postman. People magazine. Pink Shaddi. Steven Berlin Johnson. Show comments Hide comments. Show tags Hide tags. Our daily email, with all the freshest future-of-journalism news.
Prefer a once-a-week email? APA Garber, M. The latest from Nieman Lab. Public access television channels are an untapped resource for building local journalism. This allowed me to reflect on how my reading patterns have changed over time.
When I was younger, I did not have a phone or a computer so it was easy to concentrate and immerse myself in deep reading. Now I find that harder to do. As a result, the internet really has affected my deep concentration and thought because I direct my focus elsewhere. Therefore, I would have to agree with what Clay Shirky mentions in her article.
The need to always be plugged in is like an itch waiting to be scratched and it is hard to take in huge amounts of reading before the mind drifts off on its own. This really does make the average person appear slower and more distracted than before. This did seem plausible, but I still felt like Carr was a bit paranoid with forward movement and I found that his skepticism over the abundance of information was a bit unfounded.
The internet is a good source of information and many argue that it puts freedom at your fingertips. It is overwhelmingly helpful to the point that it can no longer be completely avoided. It also provides a means of improving efficiency that was impossible without it. Being a content creator myself, I feel especially strong about this point. It acts like a crutch that we can lean on, but with this crutch, it gives us access to growth and information at speeds that were previously unobtainable.
Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy…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. When starting a book, doing as assignment, even doing this assignment, I see myself being distracted or unconsciously seeing my attention switched to another subject as Netflix or my phone nearby.
I agree with the other notion that we are being dragged along with information instead doing the critical thinking ourselves. Is this cultural change a bad thing? It opens a world of information that has just never been available to us. If anything it can also enhance our complex thoughts and thinking.
To get there, we must find ways to focus amid new intellectual abundance, but this is not a new challenge. In the end information goes both ways. Having this richness of the Internet, Google, and technology in general can help this world grow to new proportions that were never thought imaginable. The best way would be what Shirky said, to grow and adapt for what the world is now.
I, too, find myself having more difficultly immersing myself in long pieces of literature compared to my younger self. Yet, I find myself not having the same fears as he does. Science, in all forms, has proven throughout history to be fallible as we are continuously finding new facts that nullifies what we once believed to be true.
This same case could eventually be applied here as well. Not similar in a sense that in the next 50 years we will find ourselves living in a world where our brains have been replaced by a machines, but similar to his idea of human evolution. Where in his argument he states that humans have evolved due to outside environmental pressure. What we are experiencing today maybe the right application of said pressure that could potentially force us to utilize a few more percents of our brain to capture the abundance of information flitting by our screens.
The possibility for both our options are there, along with a host of other possibilities. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. I agree that the human mind is changing to be able to read and learn from various information it sees on different webpages, whether they be social media, articles, mail, etc.
The human mind must evolve to absorb as much useful information it can to be able to recall and use the useful lessons for the future. Carr points out that this method of learning is shallow and not as enriching.
My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. He is deeply affected by the negative side of what the Internet and Google brings, but overlooks the limitless amount of information with instantaneous access, whether it is useful or not. Individuals who utilize the Internet to do research and enhance their knowledge have a greater impact and usefulness, than those who use the Internet for entertainment and distraction.
Both uses are seen and the Internet can be seen as both positive and negative. I myself disagree with Carr and say that the Internet is a revolutionary tool for human development both socially, industrially, cognitively, and technologically. I believe that the human mind has evolved to absorb vast amounts of information by just scanning and reading information from the Internet that is useful or interesting.
We live in a world where technology and how we use it is the end all be all. This is a broad claim that anyone can argue against. The question of whether or not Google is making us stupid is also a broad claim that anyone can argue against.
There are pros and cons to every situation. As a Film and Media Studies major, I tend to use the internet a lot. However, are you using it the right way? Are we using the internet to consume information?
Or are we using it to watch videos about cats getting themselves stuck or easily entertained by mundane objects? We consume information on a daily basis with the rise of social media. We live in a world where technology and information is in our faces.
So is Google making us stupid? I think that Google is making us smarter. But the idea of what field or subject you are getting smarter in is a question that needs to be addressed. There is the tech smart where someone can help you with anything and everything that has to do with computers or circuit boards. There are so many different classifications of smart today than there were years ago. Google and the internet is simply supplying a platform for people to apply their expertise.
Have our brains changed? I would say that they have, but not necessarily in a bad way. We are simply adapting to world we live in today and are preparing for tomorrow. Reading his article did instill some fear into me, but overall I was unimpressed.
Different is different, why try to qualify it? I think it has a lot more to do with society and its shifting values. Kids today are taught that they can do or be anything. When kids are praised for nearly anything, they become narcissistic. When kids are narcissistic, it becomes very hard to tell them what to do. There are certain pieces of literature constantly referenced in pop culture, and kids have to read those literary pieces in order to understand them.
Any independent adult needs to have a solid understanding of basic math just to keep their finances in order. People cannot pick and choose what important pieces of information they will choose to focus on. There needs to be a common base between people.
And technology is not making us stupid. Technology is making it easier for narcissistic people to decide for themselves what matters. It just is. Our brains are changing to accommodate the world around us. We are becoming a different kind of smart. Henri Bergson said that those who are inelastic and rigid in their though are targets of ridicule and comedy. Humans are naturally inclined to adaptability; our cognitive approach to reading is not different. However, adaptability in regards to media and literature is not a new topic.
If the transmission of information out into society is changing then the way in which we receive the information should evolve with it. The anecdote about Nietzsche slowly going blind is a perfect example of how humans are forced to evolve to their surroundings. Shirky agreed that the style of writing may have changed but connects how the introduction of pen and paper was a new way of expressing thought at one point in time that was adapted to in more positive ways than negative.
Another strategy Carr and Shirky shared was their use of metaphor centered around the relationship between clocks and human advancement. This explanation proves how the mind is malleable with adapting to various technological influences. Carr uses this metaphor successfully because it fits the conditions of comparison makes sense of the arbitrariness for the concept by providing clocks as a familiar reference for the audience, exemplifying his argument.
Shirky takes this idea and runs with it, in the opposite direction Carr intended it to be taken. This clarification informs the audience that Carr used clocks as an example to show how easily the mind is influenced, not as an example to show how an innovation proved to be a detriment to society.
The Internet has taken over and while many believe it has provided more benefits than costs, the opposite is also considered.
While the Internet does provide a plethora of information and other forms of entertainment, questions are raised about whether this abundance has altered the formerly progressive way people think. Both arguments develop with the help of numerous rhetorical strategies ranging from authority figures to process analysis and fallacies that can further their argument but do not provide any added strength.
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