Procrastination at its best

            It clear to see by my title that I am a bit late on getting to this whole blogging thing… well maybe a lot late but I’m still writing an entry nonetheless. I have procrastinated writing on this blog for one main reason – I really dislike Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows. I find it dry and uninteresting to be frank. I know it’s a little harsh but it is true. I mean honesty really is the best policy. Anyways, back on track here, ever since I first picked up The Shallows I was a little weary of what the book might contain. To my dismay, I found it uninteresting and found it hard to read. Also, I felt that I had more interesting material to read such as The Hunger Games series as well as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. As you can see,  I put the course reading on the back burning and focused my interests more toward books that do not directly involve what happens in my day to day life and also contains a bit of a thrill while reading.

            While I may not be flipping through the pages like my life depended on it, to make sure that someone from the book doesn’t come out and kill me that is, I am still plugging along through The Shallows. I did not dismiss the reading entirely but I did try to finish it as quickly as I could because I did not agree with the points that Carr was trying to get across. This is mainly because he has been contradicting himself throughout the whole book.

            At the very start of the book, Carr talks about how the internet and other media’s have taken over our lives and that we cannot focus at any single task – like reading a book. I’m not sure if he is aware, but for his point to be made, he shouldn’t have written the book itself. I feel that from the very beginning he is trying to force his opinions on the readers and there is no grey area to argue against. I say this because he makes it very clear of where he stands on the matters he write about and assumes that everyone who does in fact read his book has the same opinion also – because of course we all do.

            However, to contradict my previous statements a little bit, I do find some of his points to be valid. The most valid point being that we do have an addiction to the internet and other media because of how prominent it is in our everyday lives. I constantly find myself panicking when my cell phone has gone “missing” but is really just hiding somewhere in my room and I also find myself checking social networking sites every ten or so minutes to make sure that I haven’t missed anything interesting in the “world”.

            The main point that I am trying to get across here is that while I do not agree with the majority of what Carr says, he does have a point when he says that the internet is taking over our lives. From personal experience I can say that I do feel very much tied to media and would find it hard to drop it cold turkey for the fact that it’s everywhere in the world we live in today.

-          Jeanne Aggouras