Write: In a topic-driven, well-organized, and
well-substantiated paragraph, SUMMARIZE Carr’s argument—his “they say”—in
chapter “Four: The Deeping Page.”
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In the fourth chapter of Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows,” he begins by explaining the “They Say” about how back in the day readers didn’t read nearly as much in the ‘ancient world.’ He explains that “Readers didn’t just become more efficient. They also became more attentive” (63). His “They Say” argument in this chapter elaborates on his “I Say” because it explains how this is not the first time that there has been a struggle in reading—‘an unnatural process of thought.’ The main idea of his “They Say” is that deep reading being a problem for society is not a newfound phenomenon, it has happened in the past, and we have gotten over it.
ReplyDeleteAround 1445, Johannes Gutenberg invented the letterpress. This invention 'changed the face and condition of things all over the world' (69). Many more books were being published and it wasn't expensive for them to get published. This boom in books created a boom in reading. Many people would become a character in the booked, they were so hooked. Soon after the creation of the letterpress, other technologies, such as the computer soon became the technology of choice. 'Writing and print and the computer,' writes Ong, 'are all ways of technologizing the word'; "and once technologized, the word cannot be de-technologized" (77).
ReplyDeleteIn chapter four of Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows” he talks about the development of the book. Originally it began with tablets and scrolls. Besides that he describes the transition from “scriptura continua” (61) to the separation of words. The closer the words are the faster you can read them, rather than them being separated by space. Carr also believes that the fact that no one has the attention span to focus long enough to read a book is recurring throughout history.
ReplyDeleteIn chapter four of “The Shallows”, Nicholas Carr talks about how writing has changed over the years. The first place he talks about is Mesopotamia and how ancient times were with reading and writing. Carr explains how people started off with clay tablets and then evolved into using paper. He talks about how history has helped us change our ways of reading and writing. Carr shows this by saying, “The legacy of the oral world continued to shape the way words on pages were written and read.” (60).
ReplyDeleteIn the fourth chapter of “The Shallows”: The Deepening Page, Nicholas Carr explains how "Scriptura continua" and Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the letterpress completely altered the way people thought. Carr observes that “it was the technology of the book that made this ‘strange anomaly’ in our psychological history possible” (65). Because Carr believes that it is impossible to return to the “lost oral world” (77), he may give a hint that deep reading may also be lost. Either way he admits that “the pathways in our brains are once again being rerouted” (77). The base of Carr’s argument is the fact that this isn’t the first invention to change our thinking, and it’s certainly not the last.
ReplyDeleteIn Chapter 4 of, “The Shallows”, Carr centers his focus on the evolution of the written word discussing how and why it evolved. Starting in Ancient Mesopotamia ancient history began to be documented. Carr discusses the first evidence of cognitive training,” They had to train their brains to ignore everything else going on around them, to resist the urge to let their focus skip from one sensory cue to another”. This is the first time in documented history that humans are altering the way they thing to accomplish more in the amount of time given. The human race began to shift from a spontaneous brain to a “linear” brain when knowledge became the goal instead of survival. One thing Carr makes clear: “Once technologized, the word cannot be de-technologized”.
ReplyDeleteChapter 4 illustrates the evolution of reading and writing throughout the middle ages. At first, the extent of writing was just a symbol or picture on a rock, nothing more. Until, the Sumerians began writing cuneiform onto tablets. However, this still was not common practice. The invention of the reusable tablet was what really led to writing being done but ordinary people. In the same way, Early reading was only done by an elite group of people, and the reading material was long scrolls. When the production of actual books became popular, "reading...[became] less an act of performance and more a means of personal instruction and improvement." (62) Carr made another connection between writing development in the development of the human brain; much like children write what they hear, so did early scribes. So, scribes did not put spaces between words, which is called "scriptura continua", and they didn't always put words in any specific order. This made reading labor-intensive and difficult for common people. As the importance of reading grew, writing became more geared toward the eye and towards making it easier to read swiftly. So, scribes began inserting spaces between words, making reading a much simpler task. This caused the popularity of reading to increase greatly and for "...[readers] to become more attentive" (63) because now they could more easily comprehend what they were reading. The main point for Carr to write this chapter was to show the reader how much one invention can completely change an entire race's thinking. Humans can get so swept up in what's new and what everybody else seems to be doing, that they can lose sight of the possible outcomes of sudden shifts, whether they have a positive or negative effect on the world.
ReplyDeleteNicholas Carr discusses how the form of writing has evolved all the way back to the period of Mesopotamians in Chapter 4 of “The Shallows” The evolution of clay tablets to the invention of the letterpress invented by Johannes Gutenberg has completely altered the way the brain thinks and processes words. This continues the reoccurring theme of Carr’s idea that technology is reconstructing the way our brains work. He reiterates this with “the pathways in our brains are once again being rerouted”(77)
ReplyDeleteIn chapter 4 of “The Shallows”, Carr is informing us about how writing has evolved so much over time. From the beginning of it he states, “The Sumerians were the first to use a specialized medium for writing.” (58). I learned that they used to not have spaces in their writings, so that is the reason we don’t pause in between each word and the reason why children run their words together while writing, because they write what they hear. Carr says. “To read a long book silently required an ability to concentrate intently over a long period of time, to ‘lose oneself’ in the pages of a book, as we now say.” (63). In this book we’ve seen that our generation has started losing our interest and concentration in reading books. If it looks too long, or is written in a way that doesn’t appease us, we will not read it. As it states in page 77, technology has become our companion and Internet has become our medium. We have lost touch with our ability to think, read, react without having an electric device there.
ReplyDeleteIn the fourth chapter of Nicholas Carr’s- “The Shallows” –he writes about the evolution of literature, starting from Mesopotamia. Carr describes the first time people began to instigate efficient work by writing, “They [Mesopotamian people] had to train their brains to ignore everything else going on around them, to resist the urge to let their focus skip from one sensory cue to another” (64). Hence, with every invention, there comes a change in every human’s thinking. Carr also quotes the new changes in the world as, "Now the mainstream is being diverted, quickly and decisively, into a new channel"(77).
ReplyDeleteChapter 4 Summary
ReplyDeleteIn Chapter four of Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, Carr explains the evolutions of writing and how words have been transcribed since the beginning of recorded time up until now in modern time. Carr shows how the human brain has developed in way to focus on certain things and disregard others to continue to maintain focus. Carr shows that the brain has changed from instinctive ideas back in the early days of writing to a more straightforward engagement on the matter at hand, which in this case would be innovative writing. In todays time Carr shows how there are many distractions for the mind to combat and how the mind has continued to develop in a way to combat these distractions and stimulations effectively.