In his essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid" Nicholas Carr suggests that even though the web has been an amazing asset to him and his writing career it also has changed the way we think and use communication. As we reach out to the most innovative ways to collect information, books and older media are being phased out. Carr suggests that when we are reading we simply skim over important words and sentences, which is called "Power Browsing." Rather than reading books fully and understanding topics, we are merely power browsing by clicking from one site to the next reading simply what we need to. Carr uses the analogy, " Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." Carr's observations really show us how we are not seeing how society and technology is changing us. We all go with the flow and take in new things as they are presented to us, not considering any negative consequence that might go along with them. There will always be new technology and new ways of learning new material which will make our lives easier and faster. I feel this article is very supported because this exactly how I read articles online and do not read the entire articles if I do not have to. I feel the thesis of this article is the web is an amazing tool but it has slowly made us lazier and lazier.

 “Your brain is evolving right now”, by Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan. While I feel that they made a variety of arguments, the one that struck me most was this idea of an “artificial sense of intimacy” and a “new culture of communication” that exist because we interact with other people online and through text messaging. In “techno-brain burnout”, Small and Vorgan make a valid point, that the lack of face-to-face interactions could be detrimental to our social skills and our relationships to others, but I also feel that they are being a bit over dramatic. They are looking at the minority in this situation. The average person may spend a good deal of time on facebook and their phones, sending text messages and writing comments, but that’s not where their relationships end. They still get up, go outside, and socialize with others. In “the new, improved brain”, the authors speaks about relationships through digital media. I think their weakness here is to automatically assume that there is a fundamental problem with this form of communication. I feel some of her arguments are supported but they are up to interpretation and this is too dramatized. I feel the thesis of this article is that technology is ruining our social interactions.

Marc Prensky opens his "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants"(2001) by stating  that the problem with education today is  that " Our students have  changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system  was designed to teach".  He tells us that students today think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. He also talks about digital imigrants or people who were not born into this technology but instead has tried to imbrace it. He gives examples of people printing essays to edit them instead of editing on the screen. Or calling people in to show them a website instead of simply sending them it. The writer talks about how most teachers are digital immigrants and cannot connect with their students. The digital natives find this very frustrating and lose focus very quickly. Teachers need to try and integrate this technology in their classrooms to reach this generation of students. I feel this argument is very effective because this is exactly what is making the gap between this generation and between older generations. The thesis of this article is that digital immigrants need to reach their younger generations better.

“Do they really think differently?” Marc Prensky tells us how children today are being put into a society that no one has been put in before. Children today have been born into technology and spend their lives watching tv, playing video games, and sending emails. The writer tells how previously people thought our brain structure can’t be changed or altered but this is in fact incorrect and our brain structure can change by stimulation or various kinds. Evidence also shows that one’s thinking pattern can also change depending on our experiences. All these video games with hours on hours of focused attention are changing the way we process information and how categorize information. This is not necessarily a bad thing but we just need to find new ways to process information in school because reading out of books does not keep the generation today attentive like it used to. Marc tells us that teenagers today use different parts of their brain and think in different ways than adults when at a computer. Marc also shows evidence that the generations attention span is much smaller than previous. I feel this article is very supported with all the studies he gives. I feel the thesis of this article is that this generation’s brain structure and thinking process is much different than other generations.