Gin, Television, & the Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky discusses how much time and effort goes into things and how some people have time to do these things. Shirky begins the article by describing how drinking gin was the original time waster of the twenties century. He goes on to discuss the modern version, which is television. The main argument of this article is that people will find time to do things they want, but wont for things they don't like.  The cognitive surplus all the time spent on time wasters which could have been used for something constructive. This article defines literacy not as the capacity to see the deeper meaning of a text, rather literacy is defined as simply knowing and being productive with information given. The article is an argument that we should use our time more wisely and matters because we should learn from it. The article repeats the phrase “transform society” at multiple points throughout the writing.  A strand of similarity is the phrase “taking advantage of the surplus.”  “Information society knows without really knowing it” is a binary in the writing.  A great anomaly stands out in the writing, “millions of trillions of hours spent with free time, one percent doing something productive that affects the person.”

Google Corrupting the MInd

The article tells how Google is making us less intellectually sound or less of intellectual thinkers.  According to the article, the internet is making our thought processes more and more robotic and machine-like. Technology is making us lazy as a species.  The article points out that we, as humans, no longer take the high road, rather we opt to take the low roads or easy way out.  Carr talks about how the search engines, like Google, are making our first instinct and thought to gather information as fast as possible instead of taking time to analyze given information. Carr’s thinking is similar to Socrates, although writing is to Socrates as technology is to Carr. Carr uses a multiple notable studies to support his points, including studies conducted by Harvard University. Carr also cites various books providing more insight about the change in human behavior.  Finally, Carr provides personal experience to support his argument.  All three sources back Carr’s argument and strengthen the overall writing, therefore they are effective. Carr’s “so what” is his point that there is an inverse relationship and direct correlation between increases in technology and decreases in human literacy.