There are a few authors involved in the discussion of how technology has been affecting our lives over the past few decades. Nicholas Carr and Sam Anderson both share a variety of viewpoints and list an inclusive scramble to learn how certain technologies impact us more than others. Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, an opening idea that gets brought up is how we interact with the access to almost limitless information. With access to millions of databases, critical on the spot thinking and the ability to have human interactions have been lost to the virtual world. From page 3, it introduces a study about the “power browse” for gaining some amount of information in rapid succession with a minimal effort input. Maryanne Wolf, from a study that Carr interacts with, calls this idea, “We are how we read”, where she worries that the immediate effect in which we aggressively chase is weaking the capacity to how we can deeply interact with a text. Anderson’s, “In Defense of Distraction”, the first paragraph on page 5 discusses the myth that the ability of multitasking, even after thorough research, is merely a myth. I lean to disagree. It continues by describing multitasking is where the brain is in rapid-fire mode just jumping between avenues of focus in a repeated and anticipated way as a myth for something that we need to perform well on a task. Although “multitasking” is challenging to perfectly describe, I think we see it in our lives more often than not. Maybe not in the streamlined way Anderson sees it, but as a subtle, more behind the curtain way. He brings up the driving the car and texting, a very extreme, polarizing combo with a dangerous overlooked potential outcome.

Both Carr and Anderson see the advantages of what technology can provide us. With an ever-evolving society and a drive for advancement that is through the roof, technology has most certainly gotten to a point where it has begun to affect how we see each other and the way we collect our knowledge. We have gotten to a point where learning is more like trying to absorb a block of information instead of being involved and deeply thinking about seeing where it could lead us. A mostly linear growth pattern is seen as technology continues to advance, and so does our expectation of having the access and ability to understand the information to grow alongside it. But there is absolutely a limit in our social existence to how much information we as humans can actually retain, this is where these millions of information databases need be indited, and recognized as our last chance to keep in touch with reality.