"If" not "When"

            It didn’t take me long at all to decide what I wanted to write about for my second blog post. As I began reading the Epilogue to Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, my mind was nearly blown. Simply stated on the first page, Carr talks about Edexcel, the “largest educational testing firm in England” (Carr 223). He described a new technology that this organization has created which is an “’artificial intelligence-based, automated marking of exam essays,” (223). To be honest, after I read this, I nearly had to put the book down and think about how I felt. I really didn’t know. Part of me was thinking that this is a good thing, that students’ papers could be graded without bias. But the other part of me thought, wow, can a computerized program really grasp concepts from a paper the way a human can? Will this be a fair program to use on students?

            Carr in fact mentioned something that Joseph Weizenbaum said. He had stated that computers “follow rule; they don’t make judgments,” (223). In my opinion, I completely agree. Hence I believe that this automated program is in fact going to open the doors for children to do more poorly than they probably should. Although there shouldn’t be, there is usually a slight bias when someone is grading papers. Although, people can make judgments based on what they think the writer is trying to say. A computer on the other hand can’t do this. So when Carr mentions that the “’uncertainty is ‘when’ not ‘if’” (223) I feel it should be reconsidered.

            Yes, technology and the Internet have given our generation a vast number of opportunities for research as well as much more, although that doesn’t mean technology always needs to be used. In instances like this one, I believe that no better way to grade a paper than to have humans do it. I say that now because computers cant think like humans can. Computers are machines, and we are not. So Carr is right, “the seductions of technology are hard to resist” (224) but sometimes we need to. There is always a time and a place, and this should be used in terms of the Internet. Right now, technology is helping us with much, but if we cant learn to decide when and when not to use it, then it could in the end cause us harm like Carr had once mentioned. Because once technology has been expanded, and once a new thing has been created, there is no turning back and taking it away. Thus, we need to after all question “if” we create new technological instruments rather than “when” we do.

-Michelle Krupnik