Thursday, February 3, 2011

CONVENIENCE AND DISTRACTION


The Internet is a mind-boggling place to put your mind into. It can be so beneficial and convenient in so many ways but it can also make us so extremely lazy. Like inmy wiki, I kept talking about GOOGLE and how I am a google-er. I search anything and everything that I may be unsure of on google and I get an answer. I love the convenience of that but many times, I get the answer I needand don’t bother reading further into something or reading a book or anything. So then I question (along with many others)…does the Internet make you dumber?

“When we’re constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking. We become mere signal-processing units, quickly shepherding disjointed bits ofinformation into and then out of short-term memory.” – Nicholas Carr (http://theneave.com/does-the-internet-make-you-dumber/)

^^Basically what I do…google everything short term. No real significance to many ofthe things I search.

"In another experiment, recently conducted at Stanford University's Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab, a team of researchers gave various cognitive tests to 49 people who do a lot of media multitasking and 52 people who multitask much less frequently. The heavy multitaskers performed poorly on all the tests. They were more easily distracted, had less control over their attention, and were much less able to distinguish important informationfrom trivia." – Nicholas Carr (http://theneave.com/does-the-internet-make-you-dumber/)

I don’t think it has so much to do with being DUMB, but more so the fact that we aredistracted...

Then, one might question where the Internet is leading education? I mean if EVERYTHING can be offered online, from classes to certificates, then why even have institutions/campuses? I don’t event know the answer to that. I’m split. But as my opinion, school and an actual learning environment is very much so needed for kids (and even adults) to learn to become social and explore the world physically. We have to make mistakes and learn from them. Instead of reading it up online or searching the answer to everything. And really, if things didn’t happen in real life, then how can information be posted online? HA! It’s funny because as i'm writing this, i'm also questioning what i'm writing and coming up with more questions…=/

The web DEFINETLY does change the way we think. We spend umpteen hours, either mindlessly or not, on our computers. Some get addicted to watching stocks online and others stare at a screen to watch a little red notification to pop up at the top of their social networking page. After we leave our computer, if we have nothing else to do, we go right back on and do the same thing over again. Its similar to gaming, you just do it sometimes even without thinking. We don’t consider being more active or for some just giving our eyes some rest. We would rather be online doing nothing.

Just like anything else, the Internet can be good and bad, depending on how you use it and how often you use it. Overall though, the internet, no matter how much you use it, you know it is at your disposal. You can run to it whenever you please without considering any other physical or extensive action such as getting up to go to the library to check a book out or do research elsewhere. It is just SO simple and SO convenient and we are fully aware of it. Why make things harder than they should be?


1 comment:

  1. Sumaiah, I totally agree with you when you say that the internet does INDEED change the way we think. I am the same way about checking all of my websites right when I sign on. I like to call it my "Morning Matchup" It consists of 5 websites that I visit right when I sign on to the internet. Mine consists of 1.) UMD Email 2.) Facebook 3.) Yahoo Mail 4.) Twitter 5.) Pistons.com

    I thought it was funny when you said that as soon as we sign off our computers, we sign right back on because we have nothing else to do. That's so true!! I laughed when I read this because so many people sign off Facebook and then you see them on again at least 10 minutes later. People are addicted to the internet and especially social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Myspace has really hit a wall and isn't even half as popular as it used to be.

    Nice post though!

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