Introduction
Carr touches upon a controversial topic of the impact of technology on our reading skills and human intelligence (par. 3). He expresses concerns about the changes in reading patterns that we experience due to the Internet; it makes our reading less deep and shallower. Our reading has indeed changed with the rise of technology. However, despite the fact that technology appears to influence our life negatively, make it more chaotic and fast-paced, it also provides us with new opportunities that enhance communication, foster innovation, makes our work efficient, and our leisure time more diverse.
Is Our Reading Becoming Shallow?
When discussing the transformations in reading patterns, Carr examines his own behavior online: according to him, his reading became more fast-paced, abrupt, and less attentive to the text (par. 2). He argues that concentration is negatively affected by online reading and eventually leads to the inability to focus on lengthy passages or more than three pages of text (Carr para. 4).
These concerns sound reasonable and can be supported by different evidence, including research on decreased attention span in millennials, or the overall rate of time spent on reading among teenagers and young adults. Nevertheless, it appears to me that Carr, possibly, misinterpreted the changes that happened to literacy. Instead of noticing the emergence of a new kind of literacy (the digital one), he argues that human thinking and reading are changing. The development of new literacies (photo-visual skills, branching skills, information skills, socio-emotional skills, etc.) is the actual cause of the changing intellectual patterns.
People who are more efficient in using new literacies can also use the Internet more effectively. For example, as Coiro points out, one study has found that “college students with higher Internet self-efficacy used computers more correctly and efficiently, solved problems independently rather than asking for help”, and were able to criticize the detected information, as well as question it (646). In my opinion, the impact of the Internet on an individual can be very diverse, and in some ways, it depends on the individual’s attitude toward the Web. While Carr perceives it as a hectic source of information that makes our perception skills shallow, others use it to gather information, improve their understanding of the world, communicate, share ideas, and train their cognitive and noncognitive skills.
Positive Influence of Technology
One of the main controversies in the discourse about technology’s impact on human lives is gaming. Gaming is sometimes perceived negatively as a meaningless, dumb entertainment that adversely influences one’s memory, ability to focus, communicate, and so on. However, I think that not the gaming itself but the frequency of it should be taken into consideration. If gaming becomes the core of one’s life and interferes with other daily activities, it is definitely harmful. If it helps one to relax, communicate, or solve some puzzles during one’s leisure time, it can be compared to chess, crosswords, or any other activity that people respect.
Shute et al. measured the impact of Lumosity (a popular online game with puzzles) and Portal 2 (a digital game with a focus on problem-solving via portals) on participants’ cognitive and noncognitive skills (58). As it turned out, Portal 2 was capable of improving one’s ability to store, encode, retrieve, and apply environmental spatial information that could be used in real life for navigation. Although Lumosity claims that it does improve the cognitive skills of players, the entertainment game Portal 2 is, in fact, better at it (Shute et al. 63). Therefore, not everything that entertains us also makes us stupid.
When reading Carr’s article, I had the impression that he does not quite understand how to use Google and read online content. Reading as many articles as quickly as possible is not the goal of every online session. Nevertheless, it seemed that it was Carr’s initial intention. The Internet has brought us terabytes of new information. It can make our life easier, make us more aware of world issues, and facilitate our routine activities if used carefully. If one decides to gorge it (and feel sick thereafter), it is not the Internet’s fault.
Technologies of the Future
The rise of artificial intelligence and its success at winning complex human games such as the go game and chess or out-bluffing poker players has raised concerns among the humankind (Koren par. 1; Metz par. 8; Ormerod par. 1). People began to speculate that machines would outperform humans in every possible activity and view them as subordinate or less developed species once they become aware. At the same time, the owner of Tesla Inc., SpaceX, SolarCity, the famous billionaire Elon Musk believes that in order to be as advanced and developed as the future artificial intelligence, humans will need to transform their brain into a biological-digital machine that will rely on cloud computing and AI (Clark par. 1).
The main objective of the company led by Musk is to bring the new product to the market for those with severe brain injuries. Nevertheless, I believe it is more than likely that the humanity will eventually merge with machines. They can be used for health assessment, improve our cognitive skills (including reading), expand our memory, slow down the aging processes in our body, etc. In Carr’s opinion, technology can destroy our human nature and intelligence (par. 36). In my opinion, it can make people smarter, more efficient, creative, and skillful if used correctly and with regard to specifics of human cognitive functions. So far, it allowed us to communicate with people who live on other continents, send messages to space stations, transfer terabytes of information per second, work without leaving the house, read ancient books hidden in museums, track our health status, and so on. It seems that the world does not aim to abandon the benefits of technology any time soon.
Possible Dangers
Despite the rich possibilities that the technologies deliver to us, they are also dangerous, not because they have any aim to harm the humanity, but because it is hard to control them. In May 2016, a Tesla driver was killed in an accident because the car’s sensors did not recognize another vehicle on the road (Dowd par. 10). Our inability to control the technology or our goal to make it more fatal (e.g. atomic bombs) can result in a catastrophe. Musk, despite his investments into AI development and research, has a dark view of the future AI: in his opinion, it can wipe out humanity because we will be too obsolete by that time (Dowd par. 15).
Our inability to control AI systems that will operate with global defense mechanisms and warfare can lead to a third world war or nuclear destruction. Therefore, Carr’s terrifying prophecies about the rise of a new HAL and human resemblance to AI (functional but not emotional) are reasonable (par. 36). We do not yet know whether we will be able to control the treasures of Pandora’s box once we open it.
Conclusion
Technology has improved our life in many ways: by facilitating long-distance communication, providing more work opportunities, and enabling transfer of large data quantities. At the same time, the rise of artificial intelligence can indicate the future decay of humanity and its inability to compete with the new technology-based species. The humankind needs to ensure it can control the AI to avoid any global catastrophes in the future.
Works Cited
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic, 2008.
Clark, Liat. “Elon Musk Reveals More About His Plan to Merge Man and Machine with Neuralink.” Wired.
Coiro, Julie. “Understanding Dispositions Toward Reading on the Internet.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, vol. 55, no. 7, 2012, pp. 645-648.
Dowd, Maureen. “Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse.” Vanity Fair 2017.
Koren, Marina. “When Computers Started Beating Chess Champions.” The Atlantic. 2016.
Metz, Cade. “Inside Libratus, the Poker AI That Out-Bluffed the Best Humans.” Wired. 2017.
Ormerod, David. “AlphaGo Defeats Lee Sedol 4–1 in Google DeepMind Challenge Match.” Go Game Guru, 2016. Web.
Shute, Valerie J. et al. “The Power of Play: The Effects of Portal 2 and Lumosity on Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills.” Computers & Education, vol. 80, no. 1, 2015, pp. 58-67.