Reading Connection #1: Internet Effects - Dwight Stannard

Why use books? We have the internet. Why bother? It's all the same material. The new disease sweeping the globe in epidemic: Too much internet-itus.  We are all victims of this horrible creature.  You have it. Your brother has it. Your sister has it. Who knows, maybe your dog "Snickers" has it.  "Snickers" may be one of few who are lucky enough to survive. 

"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. 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." Nicholas Carr

We are in the midst of an attack upon our brains through which valuable information is being killed, gutted, skinned, and barbecued for supper.  The internet has been adopting trillions upon trillions of pieces of information - some true, some false - that we absorb into our daily lives and interpret as real. 

I think that this is very important to society today because there are many children students who are being raised using the internet and not books to fuel their education.  When the time comes for these children to make executive decisions and theories, they will not have the proper education to successfully bring society forward.

WORKS CITED: Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The Atlantic. July-Aug. 2008. 2 Oct. 2008 .