Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Nicolas Carr's article about Google making us stupid really snagged my attention at first. In the first couple paragraphs Carr discusses how he feels when he dives into a book. It is almost like he couldn't stop. I have also experienced this feeling with books that I may have caught my interest. It used to be easy, like Carr said. But now it seems to be more difficult for not only me, but other readers to get caught up in a book. One comment that Carr made in his article was, " Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. When I read this, I immediately connected to it. Reading the book I have now, sometimes I may have to go back and reread a page because I either do not remember what I read or my concentration was just lost halfway through a page. At least now I know I am not the only one struggling with this. This article explained to me why I am having trouble too.

A question popped up in the middle of the article. "What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because of the way I read has changed, but because the way I think has changed?" I never thought of it this way. Technology has a huge role on almost every person's life, whether we know it or not. And even if we don't realize it, it has changed the way we think. One example is if we need to look something up, rather than looking in a book, we decide to pull out our phones and google it. Bruce Friedman is a man who says he has now almost totally lost the ability to read. When I read this my jaw dropped. I couldn't even imagine losing the ability to read a book. This is probably a good reason why we should be reading in school and not having iPads like the younger students do.

The Ethics Of Living Jim Crow

This autobiography described in detail the struggles that African Americans had to go through from their point of view. Throughout our school years, we have learned about slavery and the civil rights movement and how unfairly blacks were treated compared to whites. Considering this story was in first person, it really gave me a new point of view on how poorly these men and women were treated during this time. I noticed a difference between this story and what I have learned just through textbooks and teachers, which is why I particularly liked this autobiography.

A theme that I noticed throughout this autobiography was how dominant the white men were compared to the black men and women. The fact that Richard had to suffer through getting beaten by his white coworkers just because of a lie that Morrie had brought upon Pease just breaks my heart. I have always known that white men felt superior over black men and women, but I never got to see what it was like from a black man's perspective. In Richard's eyes it was as if he did one thing that the higher power did not like, he was to be beaten or in other's case, killed. One part of the autobiography really caught my attention. When the woman was beaten for not paying her bills, Richard seemed appalled, but the part that had me locked in was when one of Richard's fellow porter said "Huh. Is tha' all they did t' her?" This is the moment that I felt fear through Richard's eyes.

Another theme I visualized throughout this story was boundaries. I first saw it in the beginning when Richard describes how the tracks separated the blacks from the whites. "Nothing green ever grew in that yard. The only touch of green we could see was far away, beyond the tracks, over where the white folks lived," I pictured one city but two halves of it. One where it was all dirt, pillars and black families, and another that had green grass, large houses, and white families. The tracks were only crossed one way, for the blacks to enter the white land only to be slaved over a stove or working in 100 degree heat in a white mans yard or factory. Whether Richard was on his half of the land or on the other side, he still felt small compared to the whites. From Richard telling his story, this is how I pictured their terrible experience as.

Talk of the Town

These articles showed me two different sides to the 911 terrorist attack. Of course there were many different opinions on this tragic event, but only two of them were recognized throughout these articles. In my opinion, I agreed more with the first article, rather than the second. The first one viewed the side of America being a strong country, which, I believe, is. Updike was one who trusted that everything was going to be okay. Susan described the terrorists in the second story and how they were "courageous" and certainly not cowards.

John Updike was a witness of this disaster. He sat as he watched thousands of lives being taken by the destruction of two historical buildings. One sentence that stuck with me was, "Risk is a price of freedom." This was interesting to me because it's entirely true. America is a country built off of the freedom of people. People like these terrorists take the risks as a consequence of our freedom. We couldn't stop them. We couldn't ask them politely. It was a secret attack that nobody could have done anything about. The sight had to have been horrendous, but like Updike said, we have a duty to go on living.

Susan Sontag and John Updike were very contrasting people. While John believed that America was a strong country, Susan thought the opposite. When I was reading this article, Susan made herself seem like she was against America and everything that this country is about. She disagreed with the Americans who thought that these terrorists were cowardly. These men were willing to risk their lives in order to kill innocent American lives. She took this action as being brave. Bravery shouldn't depend on who is being killed or who is doing the killing, bravery should be taken as an act of being heroic. Bombing two foreign historical buildings is not courageous. It's selfishness. They didn't create this to help their country, I think they did it to hurt ours.