Artifact 3

In this interview with Nicholas Carr, he discusses his new book called "What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains".  He begins his discussion talking about how he has been interested and involved in the technologies of the computer and the internet practically since they came out.  He goes on to talk about how he has sort of become attached to them and that when he tries to do other tasks like read a book, he feels distracted and that he needs to check his e-mail or click on links that only the web provides.  I agree with him that the internet has been a distraction when trying to accomplish other tasks.  If I am working on a paper or doing homework for a class, I usually tend to get on Facebook or look around on YouTube.  He later goes on to talk discuss the factor of multi-tasking.  All of the new technologies and the net have allowed us to do so many things at a time.  He says how being distracted and doing more than one thing at a time, this is harder for us to process new things to our short term and long term memory.  This is very interesting to me because I am the type of person that cannot read and listen to music at the same time.  If I do try to do that, the reading does not stick with me.  The more you are interacting with at a time, the less you are able to retain and understand later when you try to go back to it.  This is very true, at least for me.  I know it is a struggle for young adults and even any adults in general to stay focused on one thing at a time with all the different technologies we have at our fingertips.  We are attached to these things and they are the reason for distractions in relationships, school work, business tasks, and many other tasks and work.  This author relates to the author of "Hamlet's Blackberry" in the sense that these technologies are distractions and they force us to be disconnected from what is really going on in our lives.  Nicholas Carr talks about how because of the internet and computers that our reading and writing has changed.  I don't necessarily agree with this.  I still write the same quality of papers I would if I didn't have these technologies, I'm actually probably writing better because of all the resources and technologies.  However, even as I am working on this, I am getting distracted by my cell phone buzzing with text messages.  I would say maybe reading has changed just because of all the distractions, but for classes we read what we need to.. for the most part.  Overall, I agree with Carr because all of the technology we have today are all distractions in some way.  Wether it be e-mail, text messaging, Facebook, etc.  As technology advances, I believe only more and more distractions will arise and the more disconnected we will all be from the world around us.