Media Shapes Our Thought Processes

This theme is exemplified perfectly by the "Is Google Making us Stupid" article by Nicholas Carr. In the article, Carr argues that these search engines and the instantaneous availability of information has changed the way that we as humans think. Instead of having to read intensely to understand something, we can just quickly reference the internet and get a simplified version of whatever we were looking for. Personally, I find that this is a very useful quality, but at the same time, we as people are becoming much stupider than we should be. As we discussed in class, many people are not even capable of reading the New York Times, which is only at an eighth grade reading level. This pitiful fact can be attributed to the fact that we have instant access to any information at pretty much any time we need it through our phones, computers, PDA's, and more recently, our on-board car computers. These devices generally provide short snippets of information which give people general understandings and decrease the necessity for people to have to "deep read" to get information.

Media has greatly influenced the way that people have done thing throughout the years. For instance, the creation of the book changed the way in which data was recorded and it eliminated the need for people to remember large amounts of information and pass it on through word of mouth. It also created a need for people to be able to read. Therefore, the invention of the book as a medium allowed humans to "offload" information from their mind to the written page. This has been the case with just about every type of medium and the only difference throughout the years has been the medium itself. Perhaps the best example of this could be taken from the Simpson's episode that we watched in class. After the students get a new "tech savvy" teacher, he basically tells them that studying is a thing of the past because anybody can just search for the answers on their phones and blackberries. This cartoon was absolutely right and brought the issue to light, jokingly of course.

As far as traditional theories go, Marshall McLuhan's theory that mediums shape the content and the message definitely applies. Also, the argument that the content of a new medium is the old medium also applies. Allow me to explain: As I mentioned before, each new medium that has come out has permitted us to offload information to an easily accessible place. However, the type of information that each medium permits us to offload does not actually change. With each new medium, we are offloading the same information, we're just doing it in a different way. Let me compare the book to the internet. Books allowed us to store our information, so that we could reference it at any time without having to have it memorized. The same can be said for the internet and search engines. The only difference is the method. In the case of the book, the information is printed or written within the book and is only accessible with the book in the person's possession. The internet, on the other hand, allows access to the information from any device or place with internet access. Therefore, although different media have been invented, each has only recorded the same information as the previous, but in a different way.