The Internet. Helpful or Harmful?

HIST 696 started with the assignment of reading Nicholas Carr's The Shallows and James Gleick's The Information. This post will be both a review and a reaction, because I feel you can't do one without the other.

The Shallows by Nicholas Carr dives into the topic of how our brains interact with the internet and if this interaction is positive or negative. James Gleick in The Information examines the evolution of how people are exposed to and process new information. Both of these books look at how the internet and its expansive amount of knowledge has had an impact on its users.

While reading these books I saw myself continually agreeing with both the positives and negatives of the internet, e.g. the benefit of accessible knowledge for all persons as well as the negative of how users process all this accessible knowledge. I can see myself falling victim to both of the above examples... I constantly dread reading a whole book front to back, but I will sit on my phone and read short length articles all day. Am I learning less by not reading the whole book? Am I learning more by reading a broad range of short articles? These are some of the issues Carr and Gleick are trying to figure out. How does the internet impact and alter the process of collecting and learning new information?

The true impact of the internet will probably not be understood for some time, but the effects the internets are already very clear. For most people our day to day lives are dictated by social media and "click bait" articles... Should it be that way? Or is this simply the newest invention for the mass transmission of information?

Did internet kill the publishing star?

#internet #prosvscons #bookreview #jamesGleick #NicholasCarr #informationprocessing #learning