In the article “Is Google Making US Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr suggests that the internet today is making our brains change. Google is changing the way we think. It is changing the way our minds learn and process things. In a way Carr is basically saying that the internet is causing us, in a way, to have ADD (attention defecate disorder.) He talks about how the internet not only allows us to jump from one thing to the other but that it encourages such behavior. When we are online there are so many pop ups and distractions we are never settled on one thing for more than a few minutes. For example on face book you are constantly getting little “notifications” saying who commented on what etc. When I am on face book I will be doing one thing or IM-ing one person for only a short period of time before there is a pop up or something else going on to distract me from my task at hand and encourage me to multi task which in Carr’s claims is the reason why we are becoming so ADD, we are no longer accustomed to focusing on just one thing for a long period of time. In Carr’s article “Is Google making us stupid?” He goes back as far as to when clocks were made to explain technology’s effect on people. In a way he states that when (time) the clock was introduced to society, people started revolving around it. Knowing about time made us want to be efficient. The object of time gave us a desire to use it wisely and figure out ways to make products the most efficient way possible. And we did. Carr also talks about how when machines and technology first started advancing that we were using it to replace manual labor that was our goal. However our goals for technology has advanced throughout the years from having technology replace manual labor to having it think for us and be able to do our brains work of thinking and processing things. I do not think a computer will never be able to actually replace thinking for ourselves; the computer will never have the ability to be our brains. The more we let the computer think for us the less we actually know. I believe there will come a point where the computer will be doing so much of what our brains originally were created to do that we will only know what are in the computer and nothing else. If we let the internet advance to the point of doing all of our thinking for us (and I believe we will) then we will have no true knowledge accept to what is online.
Welcome!
Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversations Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
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