Post 11

The Shallows for me was a disappointment in general. Many of the things Carr said completely contriditcted his argument that computers were changing the human mind for the worse. For example,  in chapter four Carr wrote about the beginning times of written language and how it was an exciting time. Later in the chapter he also goes on to say, and I quote, "It's no exaggeration to say that the writing and reading of books enhanced and refined people's experience of life and nature". Also in this chapter Carr describes Plato's reaction towards the beginning of books. Plato was completely against books and viewed them as sort of like cheating. He thought that people would not retain as much information from memory if there were books there to write things down and share ideas. When I tie this back in with Carr's original argument I feel like he is doing the same thing Plato was doing-not giving it a chance. Throughout the novel he gives plenty of examples of earlier technologies that people at first were against. As time goes on, however, in all of those technologies people began to see how great of an impact they had on the world. This is why his argument was not effective for me- he was contradicting his whole point. Besides this though, his chapters were very interesting, don't get me wrong. I found it interesting to learn about the beginning of the book and about maps and whatnot I just don't think it was a good argument.