Google response

After reading Carr’s article, “Is Google making us stupider,” I must disagree with most of his arguments. First of all, no one and nothing can “make” you do anything. You choose to do everything. Weather that means choosing to read an article less closely or “bouncing” from site to site, it is all up to you how deep you look into a certain text. In the article, Carr quotes Bruce Friedman, who said, “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” I however think this claim in context is completely absurd. What I mean is that although this may be true, it is not the internets fault that this man has lost this ability. If he truly wanted to “read and absorb” and article, he just has to be willing to do it. The fact that the internet has made information available to us within just a few seconds makes us think that we don’t need to really learn the information, because the it’s saved into cyberspace. However just because we don’t necessarily need to retain this information is not making us any dumber. After all, we’re the ones who choose not to thoroughly read the article, or who choose to “bounce” around web pages.

Friedman continues to say, “Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.” To me this statement seems ridiculous. I don’t think it has anything to do with the internet that this man doesn’t read articles deeply anymore. To me it just sounds like he’s lazy.

Another thing I didn’t like about the article was how much it generalized. “When we read online…our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.” First of all, this article is online and I’m pretty sure all of Mr. Dominguez’s AP Literature classes read it. Now how deeply they read it is a different story, but they must have read it deep enough to write a 300 word response to it. So just in doing this assignment I think we’ve proven this claim to be false. Sure, it may be true some people have lost that ability, but to claim that “we” as an entire group have lost the ability is not true.

pseudo-modernism

After watching the, “Did You Know” video and reading part of the article by Dr. Alan Kirby, I think we may indeed be reaching an era of “post postmodernism”. In the article, Kirby calls this idea, “pseudo-modernism.” “Pseudo-modernism includes all television or radio programmes or parts of programmes, all ‘texts’, whose content and dynamics are invented or directed by the participating viewer or listener.” We talked about this same idea in class when we talked about how anyone can post something on the internet. We invent the text, we create new ideas, and as the video shared, “we’re preparing students for jobs that don’t even exist yet.”

Also in this article, Kirby relates this “pseudo-modernism” concept to the show, Big Brother, by saying that without the voters, the audience, the show could not exits. We create the results. “By definition, pseudo-modern cultural products cannot and do not exist unless the individual intervenes physically in them.” Simply take the internet for example, it cannot exist without the information that we put on it. With this information growing exponentially as shown by the video, we stray form the main ideas of post modernism and into those of pseudo-modernism.

“Postmodern philosophy emphasizes the elusiveness of meaning and knowledge.” Pseudo-modernism however doesn’t care how hard it is to define meaning or knowledge. Knowledge is out there, and how or where we get it from isn’t the point. Science for science does not apply, the concept is now science for progression. Knowledge is climbing so fast, we can hardly keep up with it. Okay well this might not make any sense, but oh well.

Cat's Cradle

This book Cat’s Cradle I think has a lot of post modernistic themes within it. The first thing I noticed in this book that seemed to relate most with what we’ve been talking about in class is found in the beginingish of chapter 4. “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.” At first, this statement seems like an obvious contradiction, but when I thought about it in terms of what we’ve been talking about in class, I came to realize that nothing can be considered an “absolute” truth. This is why he says that even though the things he says are true, the words he uses to say them are not. However, just because things, or words in particular, can never be absolute truths, does not mean that there can be no truths. I mean, how else would the human race communicate if not for the attachment of “words” to certain objects or even non-tangible things, such as emotion? “Words” are an obvious necessity, even if they are just symbols for the real object, and I find it funny that this seems like a big deal.
Anyway, I also remembered the part in the end of chapter 6 where Dr. Hoenikker questions the true nature of sin. For the sake of the assignment, I’ll quote it. “A scientist turned to Father and said, ‘Science has now known sin.’ And do you know what Father said? He said, ‘What is sin?’” Sin, being a non-tangible object, cannot be clearly represented. Since the word sin cannot be attached to an actual object, it is connected to other words, that are connected to more words. This is similar to what we talked about in class, about not being able to reach an end to definitions, or to find an absolute truth.
Anyway, I mostly just think that even though things or ideas can never exits naturally, they still do exits, because we made them. And that’s ok.