Assignment #1 Summary
Petracca, Michael, and Madeleine Sorapure. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"Common Culture: Reading and Writing about American Popular Culture. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998. 336-45. Print.
In
a society that is becoming more reliant on technology and spending more time
searching Internet databases, our ability to process information from traditional
sources is diminishing. According to the article "Is Google Making Us
Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, this is definitely the case at hand. The essay
starts off by reenacting a conversation between an astronaut named Dave Bowman
and his super computer, HAL. Carr relates to this conversation and the sense of "losing his mind". As the conversations goes on, Carr asserts that he
used to be able to read long books and understand what the thesis was. However,
since he has begun relying more heavily on the computer for information, it has become very hard for him to
focus and comprehend while reading books. As Carr states “ My mind now expects to take in
information as the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles”
(Carr 338). While he used to spend hours
at the library getting his information, he now can retrieve that same
information on the Internet in a matter of minutes.
Later
in the story Carr talks about Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California
commonly referred to as Googleplex. The two founders discuss how they would
like to make a Google search engine that is connected to people’s brains, so
people could search for information at any time of the day.
Towards
the end of the article Carr argues that the more we rely on computers and
popular search engines such as Google for information the less we make out of ourselves.
The answer is simple: technology overall is making people stupid and Google is
trying to turn people into mindless robots.
Quan, I just caught this when looking over your other work just now. Please review the instructions for reading response 1. It asks you to summarize the article, so instead of giving your opinion on this piece, which is certainly permissible in addition to what the assignment is asking, please summarize "Is Google Making us Stupid?" Remember that this will be your first draft for tomorrow's peer response session.
ReplyDeleteYou definitely want to get your opinion out of the piece, Quan. To help you structure your piece, you need to recall my advice about what audiences need from you quickly. When someone asks you: What was this piece about? They'll want answers to four subquestions, even if they don't state it. If you get this down, you'll always give impressive answers.
ReplyDelete1)What is the author's thesis?
2)How does the author prove the thesis? i.e. What's the method?
3)What does the author study to apply the method? i.e. what's the research site?
4)What theory underpins the entire argument? i.e. what central abstract concept gives the argument theoretical/philosophical weight?
I think you have these elements here, but you need to make them much more obvious and explicit. See my sample Summary as well. Ben is right that you need to clarify somethings, but I want to see from you a more complete version that answers these questions.
Your summary her is quite nice, Quan. A definite improvement, for sure. But I want to push you even further. This summary could be even more succinct. What you have verges on a scant paraphrase or a too detailed summary. What we want is a succinct summary that tells us what Carr is arguing. You take the long way around in your first couple of sections. For example, you say:
ReplyDelete"In a society that is becoming more reliant on technology and spending more time searching Internet databases, our ability to process information from traditional sources is diminishing. According to the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, this is definitely the case at hand."
Why not combine that and get to the point quicker? For example, consider the following:
In his article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Nicholas Carr argues that as society is becoming more reliant on technology and spending more time searching Internet databases, our ability to process information from traditional sources is diminishing." Much more succinct, yes?
From there, your audience is wondering, so how does Carr argue this, i.e. what is his method? You take the long way around here, too. You say he talks about the scene from the movie (2001: A Space Odyssey--one of my favorites), talks about his own personal expierience with his reading, and Google's technology plans. Note I said exactly what you said, but with less detail. That's what a summary should do.
Tell us what he argues (his thesis), how he argues it (the method, which also implies his research sites), and also his theory. You could realistically end the piece by saying that "Ultimately, Carr says that...." and say something about what theory he is drawing on. I think you may starting getting it now.