The Internet

Michelle Salvati

            In Chapter Five of The Shallows, Nicholas Carr states a quote that I find very true.  Carr says, “Constructed of millions of interconnected computers and data banks, the Net is a Turing machine of immeasurable power, and it is, true to form, subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies.  It’s becoming our typewriter and our printing press, our map and our clock, our calculator and our telephone, our post office and our library, our radio and our T.V. (Carr 83).”  I agree with what Carr is saying that the internet is extremely powerful and is basically all forms of media in one.  The internet allows people to do almost anything, an amazing technological breakthrough.

            The internet has turned into not only online research, but something much more than that.  People can now write papers on a computer, tell time, find directions to a place through online maps, tell time, compute equations, make phone calls, send letters/ pay bills, listen to live radio, listen to songs, and watch television shows and movies.  How can one form of media be every form of media combined? I think the internet is amazing.  It allows people to do everything and anything imaginable.  Most importantly, the internet is very time handy and allows people to do tasks that sometimes would be time consuming and require a drive.  As Carr says, “Over the past three decades, the number of instructions has fallen by almost half every year.  Overall, the price of a typical computing task has dropped by 99.9 percent since the 1960s (Carr 83).”  This is evidence that the internet has become faster and has become less expensive making it one of the best media today. 

            Although I agree with what Carr is stating as facts, I feel as if he is contradicting himself as a whole.  He feels as if the internet is ruining our lives but yet he just published facts that state the internet is a speedy media and barely costs.  What could be better and more time manageable that that?  I understand that he feels that “we” are using the internet in dangerous amounts of time and it’s taking our “our” lives and brains.  I just don’t think Carr should have put facts in his own book that directly contradict and go against what he is trying to convince his audience of.   Finally the last fact about the internet that completely contradicts Carr is, “The Net differs from most of the mass media it replaces in an obvious and very important way: it’s bidirectional.  We can send messages through the network as well as receive them.  That’s made the system all the more useful (Car 85).” 

            So in conclusion, in chapter five of The Shallows, I agree with the facts that Nicholas Carr is stating and referencing about the internet being a handy and useful media.  I just think Carr is contradicting his book as a whole, but then again maybe he feels that putting valid contradictory facts in makes his book truthful and real.