Is the Internet for Better or Worse?

Is goggle making us stupid? Does the Internet make us efficient or lazy? Do humans lose the ability to process information or does the way humans process information change? As technology continues to grow rapidly these are questions that arise. Nicholas Carr the author of “Is goggle making us stupid,” states “Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such 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” I agree with Nicholas Carr in the sense that humans are being “reprogrammed”. However the underlying question remains is the Internet for better or for worse? (please see article: http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-11/2006-11-29-voa19.cfm) Carr’s argument sheds a negative light on the Internet and what it is doing to humans. Carr discusses that because the Internet is so fast and allows one to hop from one thing to another in a split second people can no longer stay focused. The humans attention spans have dwindled away and are no longer satisfied unless we’re are constantly doing multiple things at once. Yes, there is a fair amount of truth in this but the Internet is changing the way humans think. It literately is reprogramming the process in which our brains go about accomplishing tasks. Personally I do not think that the reprogramming of humans is necessarily bad. As technology continues to develop and advance this is bound to happen. The same as with the invention of clocks, the printing press or electricity. Humans have to adapt to new technology even if it changes our though process.
The internet presents us with an interesting problem; information overload. Now more than ever before do humans have enormous quantities of information at their fingertips. So how do we filter and interpret so much information? It is obvious that the filtering process is going to change, it would be impossible to immerse ourselves in such large quantities of information. So instead of submerging ourselves in to one book we have to skim through hundreds of thousand of websites. Is this bad or good, or is it just different? As humans begin to develop new ways to decipher information and complete tasks more efficiently I think the debate of whether the Internet id for better or worse will fade out. The way human’s process information will change as the use of computers, internet and technology only continues to grow.

I thought this was interesting website discussing why people use the internet and why people put things on the web. http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/resources/resources/tutorial/conceptual/uses.html

Work Cited:
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The Atlantic. 2007. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google