Carr Often Looks Too Much Into Things

Meagan Cox

                In my opinion, chapter five of The Shallows included a variety of different topics laid out in an unusually confusing way. First off, the mathematician described in the first few paragraphs of this chapter led me to believe that the chapter was going to be about the use of the mathematics in the creation of the internet. However, as I read on, I became confused as to why a specific mathematician was even brought up, especially to the extent that he was, as Carr described not only his work on creating the basis of the idea of the computer, but also many aspects of his personal life. Throughout the rest of the chapter, I found myself in deep thought, trying to decide why the ideas of mathematics and mathematicians were essential to the topics that followed; however, no such connection was evident to me. Perhaps the information presented in the first few paragraphs of chapter five was   necessary for a topic Carr describes later on in the book, however, I think the placement of the information was a bit off, and confusing to the reader.

                There were many points in chapter five that I agreed with, however, I quickly realized that the parts I agreed with were mostly just facts and non-controversial ideas that are more just statistics than Carr’s personal ideas and thoughts. For instance, I do agree with the fact that the internet is becoming more and more prominent in the lives of just about everybody, from children to adults; however, I think that is a fact that is somewhat hard to dispute, more like common sense than anything. I would think that the presentation of these facts or “ideas” were useless, if they had not included the statistics that might pose to be interesting to a certain reader. The statistics mentioned showed just how quickly the internet has become a large part of the lives of people in just about every age group from just 2005 to 2009, which I thought was an interesting and good addition to prove his point to the reader.

                I found a lot of the information presented in chapter five to be a bit redundant, though I realize that the redundancy may be due to the fact that Carr was trying to make his point clear. Carr mentioned just about every aspect of technology, and how it was being taken over by the computer; from cd’s and magazines to movies and television. I agree that the computer is becoming a big part of how people listen to music, and with the fact that cd sales are going down due to the abundance of music available on the internet, but I do not think, as Carr mentioned, that the availability to access television shows and movies on the computer is changing how people view television, for the majority of people do most, if not all of their program viewing on televisions, not computers.

                An interesting idea brought up by Carr was that magazines and television shows are not only being “taken over” by the internet, as described above, but that they are also shaping themselves to incorporate more aspects that the internet offers. For example, Carr brings up the idea that television shows now include segments about sites like Facebook and YouTube, which is true, but I believe, unlike Carr, that the reason for this is more because of the fact that much of pop culture is through the internet, and not because, as Carr seems to believe, people are so obsessed with the internet that they like everything they view to be focused upon what they see on the internet, in the same layout as it is on the internet. Sometimes, it seems as though Carr looks too much into every part of technology to find their connections to the internet.