Technology Addiction

Throughout reading the Shallows, the only thing that always crossed my mind was how boring and dragging this book was. At times it was hard to concentrate and even want to read on. Carr even says, “the very existence of this book would seem to contradict its thesis. If I’m finding it hard to concentrate, to stay focused on a line of thought, how in the world did I manage to write a few hundred pages of at least semi coherent prose?” (198) He himself struggled to keep focused on the task he was writing about, the internet. Many times I remember him going off on a random rant about his life or multiple random scientists and their experiments. He would write in “disconnected spurts, the same way [he] wrote when blogging.” So even Carr understands his book has its dull, useless points.

     When Carr did focus on the point of the internet and how it affects our minds, I would agree with a good majority of what he says though. One thing he mentions personally about himself is about how the internet affected him when he moved from the highly connected suburb of Boston to the mountains of Colorado. He faced difficulties with internet connection and cell phone reception. With horrible connection and frustration, he merely canceled his twitter, blog, and Facebook account, limited his skyping and instant messaging, and cut back on checking e-mails. Carr highly enjoyed using all these applications of the internet and knew they were a distraction, so would keep programs closed for a good portion of the day. At many points though, Carr would crack down and he “found [himself] able to type at [his] keyboard for hours on end or to read through a dense academic paper without [his] mind wandering.” (199) He would check his e-mail more frequently than he wanted to. Eventually though, he found a way to break away from the internet slowly. Carr’s mind was so used to using the internet daily that a drastic change to no internet at all was too dramatic. This shows that the internet does have a huge impact on our brains and we can become addicted to using it. I myself feel the need to check my e-mail a few times a day, and go on Facebook a few times too. But when I go on vacation, I try to isolate myself from it all and just enjoy peace and quiet. So in agreeing with Carr, the internet is addicting. Technology has not stopped people from enjoying a book to read or even write one, it just connects our minds to it in a way that makes us think we need it to live. We could live without technology, but people choose not to. As Carr says himself, “I have to confess: it’s cool. I’m not sure I could live without it.” (200)

Jacque Rideout