Sadik 1 Hakan Sadik Professor Susan Lago College Writing 16 December 2013 How Technology Affects Us The first

thing that comes to my mind when I hear the word technology is how advanced it has gotten over the years. Technology also is a great distraction, for instance as I am writing this paper I have my iPhone right next to me. Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are easily accessible with a simple tap of the screen. Although they impose a great distraction when I am trying to tend to my studies I wonder, were my parents this distracted when they were in school without technology? Probably not, but what hardships did they face when they were in school without the technology that students have today? The students today that are my age are so hooked on the internet, it is a second nature to us. In excess anything and everything is bad for you, even in technologies case. Studies have shown that prolonged use of the internet affects the brain and how we input information. The internet is a blessing to anyone that has access to it. With the internet you can find information, communicate with friends or family who lives thousands of miles away, and even buy things such as gifts, clothes, food, anything and everything you can possibly imagine. The internet does offer all these things and more, but only for the people who know how to find it. For example, my parents are not technologically advanced at all, they barely know how to use their touch screen cellphones, but they do live in a country surrounded by technology and will eventually have to, learn to adapt (Levy 211). Eventually everything and everyone will need

Sadik 2 to be connected to the internet to be able to go about their everyday life style. Nowadays people look for the easiest and simplest solutions to everything, so what do they do? They turn to the internet for everything. An article in Nicholas Carrs blogs, Rough Type, called The futures so bright I gotta wear Glass, Xer Mary Lou Jepsen said, you become addicted to the speed of it. Like all junkies you just keep wanting more. I see this being true for the future if it does become more revolved around the internet than what it already is. If in the future everything does revolve around the internet it will affect us in a negative way. In excess the internet does have a negative effect on the brain, it causes problems with concentration and the way we retain information. The Nets cacophony of stimuli short circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively (The Shallows 119). In the 80s two similar experiments were conducted, one stating that knowledge is objective and the other stating knowledge is relative (128). Each article was set up the same way and both had links to the other article for comparison. The hypothesis of the researchers was that they predicted the test subjects who used the hyperlinks would have a better understanding about the two topics, but they were wrong. The testers who read the two topics linearly scored considerably higher than those who used the links. Researchers concluded that the links, got in the way of learning (128). The blog entry I talked about above also had hyperlinks in them. I did follow a few of the hyperlinks to different pages, and I did receive new information regarding the items that were linked, but I found myself to be lost in the information and I somehow forgot the information that was in Nicholas Carrs blog. I personally find it easier to have two hard copies in front of me at the same time, then having to have two pages open on my laptop. I seem to get more lost in the words on the screen than I do when reading them on paper.

Sadik 3 New technologies are constantly replacing older ones. Printed texts are still out their people, and this overall is a better way of learning. People tend to retain more information when they have a physical piece of paper with text on it rather than on a digital device. With the physical text you have less of a chance of being distracted and less of a chance procrastinating. On a digital device such as a laptop you might tend to look at Facebook, or other forms of social media in-between reading something, thus side tracking you and causing you to forget what you were reading. I find it easier to learn out of a textbook, because you can highlight important information, and overall your focus is just on your readings within the book. Many would agree the internet has made our lives much easier. Having information at your fingertips is great, but we have become to accustomed to this and forget the old fashioned way of finding information. Yes, it is easier to find information in todays society due to the technological advancement of online books, websites, blogs, etc... But we fail to retain the information for longer than what we may need it for. In excess nothing is good for the body, even the internet. Studies have shown that prolonged use of the internet has caused problems within our brains on how we retain information. Maybe old fashioned isnt a bad thing. Hyperlinks are used to further educate someone on a topic they are interested in by providing links within the topic to information they may not know. This can be helpful, but often causes procrastination and loss of the initial topic and initial thought process. The constant evolution of technology has become a way of life for us, we are and always will be looking for the next best thing.

Sadik 4 Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas G.. The shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print. Carr, Nicholas. "The futures so bright I gotta wear Glass | ROUGH TYPE." ROUGH TYPE | Nicholas Carr's Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. <http://www.roughtype.com/?p=3850>. Levy, Steven. "The AI Revolution." Writing and Reading Across The Curriculum. By Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. 12th ed. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 209-11. Print.