User:Haoyangsama/sandbox

In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Carr argues that the frequent use of the Internet make people become hard to concentrate and distract by the huge amount of information on the Internet (Carr 2009). In the article, he states that “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle”; so according to him, the internet is somehow weakening people’s ability of deep thinking. Carr also writes in his article, “I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances… many say they’re having similar experiences.” After reading his article, I have to admit that I sometime have the same feeling too. I sometime, just as Carr describes, “trip from link to link to link”. I waste large amount of time doing nothing on the Internet which can be used for doing many other meaningful things, and I feel sometime distracted. However I cannot completely agree with Nicholas Carr. I do not believe his saying of “our intelligence will flatten into artificial intelligence”, which is saying Internet makes people stupid because people rely on Internet too much. I would argue that how Internet affects us depends ourselves, and for the most part Internet benefits us. Internet has bought us many good changes to our lives since it has been created. It changes people’s work style, the way people communicate, and even the way of learning. For most part, Internet improved the efficiency of life and also improves people’s quality of life. According to research, Internet actually increases sociability, civic engagement, and the intensity of family and friendship relationships, in all cultures (Manuel Castells, The Impact of the Internet on Society; Retreived from http://www.technologyreview.com/view/530566/the-impact-of-the-internet-on-society-a-global-perspective/). Kevin Kelly writes about how digital technology changes the process of people making amazing movies in his article “Becoming screen literate” (Kelly 2009). Kelly’ approach to Internet is much optimistic, and he even imagines the future to be “we could create the visual image of a turquoise rose …as fast as we could write these word.” My idea is much close to his: We cannot avoid the changes that internet brings us, because we are the “people of the screen now”; however we should adapt to Internet and make good use of it.