Nicholas Carr questions in his recent “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” essay if Google is hindering humans ability to learn and understand information. Carr uses various examples of historic technological changes to dig deeper into his original question “Is Google making us stupid?”, siting the typewriter as a similar technological change that humans have experienced and adapted too. Carr claims that the way people read has changed, long books used to be simple to read, but now concentration is an issue, it is a struggle to read more than a few paragraphs without skimming. Portraying the change in his own personal reading style Carr says “I used to dive deep in the sea of words like a scuba diver, now I’m like a jet skier riding across the water looking for information!” implying that he now skims through articles and books, rather than reading deep into the texts. Carr claims that this mindset has taken over all Americans; Carr does not end his essay by concluding whether this mindset is good, bad, or irrelevant, but rather he leaves it up to the reader to decide.
Carr claims in his essay that the internet is predominantly where Americans do their reading, saying “the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for the most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and dully applauded.” (pg. 2) implying that fewer books are being read due to the convenience of the internet. I agree with Carr’s claim, I think that most of the literature intake Americans experience is through the internet, it is faster, more convenient, and more efficient, so why would internet not become so popular among casual readers? The advantages of the internet are many; I do not see the regression in ones ability to concentrate on long articles evolving into a significant issue, though Carr proposes a relevant question to our modern-day society.
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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