Humanness

Julia Denietolis

April 19, 2012

Humanness

In chapter ten of The Shallows, I almost begin to agree with Carr’s negativity towards the Internet.  In this section he discusses the program ELIZA and the influence the simple computer program had. ELIZA is simply a computer that responds in conversation. All the computer program does is rearrange what the person typed to formulate its response. However, people were drawn to the program. Carr quotes the creator, Weizenbaum, saying “extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people” (Carr 205). Weizenbaum wasn’t the only one to see the programs potential.

Accredited psychiatrists began to show interest in ELIZA as well. These scientists thought that the computer program could play a key role in treating mentally ill patients. Some, like Carl Sagan, went as far as to say that the program could be turned into a “network of computer therapeutic terminals, something like arrays of large telephone booths, in which, for a few dollars a session, we would be able to talk with an attentive, tested, and large non-directive psychotherapist” (205).  When reading this, I became horrified.  Though the computer program may have been based off a type of psychotherapy, a machine and its programs should not be what treats a human being.  This is when I agree with Carr in that technology is overstepping its boundaries and taking too much control over people. Sitting people in a cubicle to chat with a nonexistent doctor is almost inhumane.

Ideas like these bring about questions to what society is coming to. Has the Internet really changed humans so much that it is now too time consuming and costly to treat an ill person with actual face-to-face help?  Is the Internet, like Carr suggests, slowly making us “lose our humanness?” Carr explains what Weixxenbaum concluded about what makes the human race human. Humans are humans because of our “least computable” characteristics.  These characteristics refer to the connections with our mind and body, our emotions, the ability to empathize and sympathize. As human become more engrossed with the internet, Carr fears that these parts of us will disappear. He says, “The great danger we face as we become more intimately involved with our computers-as we come toe experience more of our lives through the disembodies symbols flickering across our screens- is that we’ll begin to lose our humanness, to sacrifice the very qualities that separate us from machines” (207).  This is the first argument Carr has made that I agree with. The Internet may supply society with an abundance of wealth, but it should never take away our humanness.