Friday, February 5, 2010

Nicolas Carr’s comments on Nietzsche’s typewriter

"Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts"-Nietzsche

I thought this article was extremely interesting with many great points. Some things were brought to my attention that I would have never thought about otherwise. This statement above is true because we think in different ways when we are using different writing tools. On a computer, we think about getting the point across faster, so we use more abbreviated words such as "jk" for just kidding or "nvm" for never mind. Americans think faster on computers because their fingers are working just as fast as their mind if they are good at typing. Writing on pen and paper is different because abbreviations are not as acceptable, we think more formal and write words out. I found it extremely interesting from the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" about how we skim articles that are in print. I find myself doing this with my text books, but if i have something that is online, it is easier to read and absorb all of the information. I have trained my brain to read the computer better than I read print pages.
I look back on my childhood when I grew up reading books and magazines, and now children are always on "learning laptops" or playing computer games. Learning laptops are similar to regular laptops except they only promote learning activities for children. These programs are making American "stupid" because it trains our minds to be lazy. We are being lazy because instead of reading the newspaper, turning it, picking it up, all we have to do is go online and type "news" and we have millions of options. I wish that American would go back to it's old ways in print, because it is more reliable than computers. Hand written notes are so much more sincere than a quick, convenient email.

2 comments:

  1. Interesting, KT! I definitely agree with having trained my brain to read the computer better than actual print. It's crazy how different our generation is from the last!

    ReplyDelete
  2. What's next? will your children be talking about "the old ways of the computer?" Hmmm.

    ReplyDelete