Drew Loiselle

Overall, computers have evolved rapidly over the past 20 years. I can remember as a kid, waiting for a dial up tone, and for my computer to try to connect to the internet. Then when someone wanted to use the phone, you got kicked off the internet and had to wait for the conversation to be over with. Back then, if we waited anywhere under a minute for one of our webpages to load in, we would be the happiest kids on the block. Now if its anywhere past ten-seconds, we want to throw our computers across the room, or call the company to complain how slow that the internet is.

In the book, The Shallows, Nicholas Carr states,”Over the past three decades, the number of instructions a computer chip can process every second has doubled about every three years, while the cost of processing those instructions has fallen by almost half every year.”(Carr 83).Everything that he has to say about this topic, I have to agree with. I always remember doing my homework as a little kid, and I would have to go to the library just to get some internet to work. I also did not have a computer for the longest time, because of the price of them back then. You use to have to pay over a thousand dollars for the most basic of home computers, just so that you could use the internet, or type something up for school. Now, if you need a computer, you can just drive up to best buy, give the guy $250, and drive home with a shiny new laptop that is  fast and will get the job done. You could even go get a new smart phone, which basically has all the features of a computer, but in a small, handheld device. For example, on my iPhone, I can browse the internet, use Facebook, listen to music, check my email, or call my friends, all from one little device. 

Having internet that is lightning fast has evolved everyone in our society. People are constantly now on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, or any other major sites while they are out on their daily routines. With all the new phones that we have out, people are much more likely to be spending time on them, instead of doing things like reading books, or having face to face conversations. I even find myself texting people who are in the same room as me, just so that I would not have to talk out in front of people, are create attention to myself.