Taking over our minds.

From The Shallows by Nicholas Carr and the discussions we’ve talked about in class, I like the point that examines how we truly don’t read books or blogs or much of anything completely but mostly just skim it. I definitely agree and can say that I myself do this. It almost seems to be a waste of time to read every word of something when you can skim it and get the gist of it. I remember in the lower grades it was required because you would be tested on specific questions in a book but not as much now.  To some extent it saves time, and perhaps you do get the general idea of the context, but how can you be sure you get other underlying ideas if you don’t fully read everything? In my sociology class we watched a Youtube clip of an advertisement for a car. In the clip I think it really expresses Carr’s points. One girl is talking about her parents and how they don’t have many Facebook friends and she has hundreds. Her parents are out living life while she just sits around inside buried in her computer yet she thinks their life is “lame and pathetic”.  When the commercial first starts the girl says “She says I read an article online, well I skimmed the article” Then she says how she has so many friends, and that is “living” then she gets distracted by a picture of a puppy.

This commercial I think is a good example of what’s already here and what’s to come. That soon reading will become uncommon, as opposed to skimming and looking over, and our attention will often be interrupted by anything else on the internet.  Lastly, in my opinion, not Facebook specifically, but a lot of social networking sites, are becoming the norm. So instead of having 6 or 7 friends you hang out with and go do things with which would be called living, actively doing something.  I think its more likely that with my generation and the generations to come “living” will be how many friends you have on a website, how many people “liked” your status or picture. Which brings me to my last point, where in the beginning chapters about losing our brain, and the technology taking us over.  It is because we allow it to, becoming so engulfed with a virtual life rather than our actual physical life. It’s very strange and hard to grasp at first. You slowly see things, like this commercial which is a stretch but never the less a good and fair example of what as already happening and what’s to come.

By,

Allison Saffie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpeoRIvnxfk