After reading the assignments this week, and after weeks of articles that seemed to heavily suggest the “kids these days” sort of attitude, I couldn’t help but notice a difference in attitude. While Is Google Making us Stupid? certainly came to the conclusion of literacy technologies hindering our former ways of thinking, I actually had to agree initially with the point it was making. It could have been the non-accusatory type of writing, or the fact that it brought in direct sources from scientists about the function of neurological pathways and language development (I’m a sucker for a scientific source). Whatever the reason was, I believed it. It is extremely tough for me to sit down and read a lengthy paper on something that mildly interests me. Even this article was hard to read with all of the adds around it. From as far as I can remember, I cannot think of a time that I was able just sit down and read information flat out.
But then I started to remember what I had available to me as a child. Since I live in a extremely rural town (I’m talking less than 600 people rural), it was pretty tough to get cable or even satellite television, so I didn’t see many shows until I was 17. I ended up watching the news with the rest of my family until I got bored, which was pretty quick. Additionally, our internet was so slow that is was basically useless.
None of the technologies that could have influenced my literacy development, according to Carr, were available to me. I was just simply a hyper-attentive kid that was conditioned by the outdoors instead of new technological advancements. So where do I fit in to his conclusion? Google didn’t really have the opportunity to rewire me until I reached middle school, at which point, I was already unable to focus for long. Is it actually technology, or other factors that influenced my thinking patterns?
Your argument sir, is wonderful. I’m not even sure if you realize it but what you’ve said is the base of the thought that to “deep read” in the way described by Carr is to forfeit humanity. God I hope that bold code I learned five years ago works there. Anyway, deep reading is an interesting thing because it is basically deemed by Hales as a “luxury to humans afforded by the foundation of basic village support systems”. Your experience, as a small child–Void of the Google Menace–shows the tendencies of our youth to learn through concentrated bursts in short times rather than long, drawn out experiences. This system is actually exercised in our school systems too. Obviously we don’t spend an entire fifth of the year learning English, then another fifth Math, and so on. We chunk these ideas into small sections and proceed with the learning every day.
Now back to why it isn’t human to deep read. We have the obvious fact of it being a luxury and the less obvious being that the mental processes of deep reading require the body to be ignored and to function in a collaborative cognitive world.
I would go on to explain this more, but Brevity is the soul of wit , and you wouldn’t read it anyway.
I really love that you mention that google couldn’t be the culprit to your hyper attentive attitude. I find this refreshing because I don’t think I watched too much television and I didn’t have internet for a majority of my education. I spent a lot of time outside and I was involved in a lot of different sports. Why doesn’t anyone mention that bouncing from sport to sport can make you a little hyper-attentive? Because I’m not being lazy? Because I’m involved in something that pushes more blood and oxygen to my brain? Who knows but I find this interesting and I am glad I share this experience with someone else. I obviously feel that there are more factors than just technology influencing our thinking patterns. I do think that me bouncing from sport to sport made me a little less likely to focus on school and it told me that I could do a lot of things all at once. Could this have impacted why I think I have the ability to multitask? Possibly.