In his article What the internet is doing to our brains, Nicholas Carr states that the internet is atrophying our ability to read lengthy articles and staying focused on a particular topic. I couldn’t agree more – ordinarily I would never read an article as long as his. In fact he probably made the article that long intentionally to make his point.

However I do not agree that we are losing our ability to read long articles or books. Its just that we do not read lengthy articles on the internet. The reason for this is that during most of our browsing time we aren’t looking for anything specific. We just look around for anything to catch our interest. But once we do find something interesting, we tend to read through the whole thing.

Mr. Carr claims that people who do online research “skim through articles, hopping from one source to another.” I agree with this point, but this is not evidence that the internet is diminishing our reading abilities. The nature of the internet necessitates skimming – to find relevant information from the enormous amounts of ambient crap. When I do research online, I first skim through articles to find if contains information that I’m looking for. And when I do find relevant information, I prefer the articles to be long and informative.

In the article The internet is no substitute for the dying newspaper, Chris Hedges claims that the declining newspaper industry is a blow to democracy. He depicts the newspaper as an angel, complete with a halo. According to him, newspapers provide “the means for citizens to examine themselves, to ferret out lies and the abuse of power by elected officials and corrupt businesses, to give a voice to those who would, without the press, have no voice, and to follow, in ways a private citizen cannot, the daily workings of local, state and federal government.” And he dismisses the internet as full of bias and opinions.

Although newspapers generally have more resources than individual bloggers, they are equally prone to bias. Whereas bloggers display bias on an individual level, newspapers are subject to bias on a much larger scale. Newspapers are often controlled by an organization or political party, who alter information to influence people to promote their goals. So newspapers can actually be more sinister and harmful to democracy than the internet.

What the Internet is doing to our brains

By Nicholas Carr

Main Points:

- The internet makes research very quick and efficient these days, saving us the tedium and the time-consuming process of reading through long articles and books

- However it is also diminishing and atrophying our ability to stay focused on a particular task

- The technologies that we use influence the way we think

- The author suggests that Google is trying to create artificial intelligence to replace the human mind

- He foresees a future where humans will simply become like machines and he is strongly opposed to such an idea

The Internet is No Substitute for the dying Newspaper Industry

By Chris Hedges

Main Points:

- The decline of the newspaper industry is about the rise of the “corporate state”

- Newspapers spend a lot of money to provide honest and objective news, whereas the internet provides biased news at little or no expense

- Newspapers have liability for the truthfulness of their facts whereas bloggers do not

- The demise of traditional media will be a demise to democracy, because the internet is browsed through an “ideological lense”

- Today’s media is all about making a profit and not about informing people what they need to know

- The author claims that our society is in a decline

Satirical News

While doing some research for a class, I came across a video captioned “White House Reveals Obama Is Bipolar, Has Entered Depressive Phase”. Intrigued, I clicked on it, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. What appeared in the video certainly did not seem plausible, yet I didn’t catch on that it was a satire until I read the rolling headlines at the bottom of the screen that said “Yankees hire Pakistani cricketer just to be assholes.” This is how I came to know The Onion.

The Onion makes extremely exaggerated and humorous articles appear plausible – by giving it the rhetoric and feel of the “professional media.” In the Obama video for instance, they started off with the serious-sounding music, showed comments from a “White House representative”, called upon “expert witnesses”, had a live teleconference and during the entire time they maintained a serious demeanor that we associate with “the News”.

The Onion also satirizes current events and turns serious stories into funny ones. The Obama story is clearly based on some truth – the declining public euphoria over Obama’s election and the fact that Obama is not succeeding in alleviating the problems of reality. It achieves this by over-exaggerating. The tone of the stories are lightened and turned humorous by intentionally losing credibility with the viewer.

After Christianity, it’s on to Masonry

September 22, 2009

New York - Dan Brown, the author of controversial books Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, has released his newest work, The Lost Symbol, yesterday, at the local bookstore.

The story of Mr. Brown’s protagonist, Robert Langdon, is resumed after he found and procreated with the last remaining descendant of Jesus Christ and killed a few cardinals in the Vatican to strengthen the Catholic Church.

Of his new book, Mr. Brown said “There’s never enough controversy you know,,, There wouldn’t be any problems in the world today if only everyone wasn’t filled with so much love and compassion. The world needs more hate and misunderstandings of other cultures.”

The Pope and his chicks will have orgies of relief in the traditional Catholic style, since Christianity is not the target of Brown’s book this time around. Instead, it will be the Masons, who will be glad that their “secret society” will receive a few google hits. Basically this is an ordinary and clichéd case of where everyone is happy.

In the article, “Blogs: All the noise that fits”, Michael Skube makes the point that blogging is not a legitimate form of journalism. It is based primarily on biased opinions and can never substitute the traditional “fact-finding” of reporters.

Skube mentions the quote “No man but a blockhead ever wrote but for money.” He implies that bloggers seemingly write for free, but more often than not, bloggers are political partisans, trying to advance their agenda, or promote their candidates. They express their opinions with a blatant disregard for facts or truth in the hope of fulfilling their political goals.

Bloggers do not want to be labeled as "journalists", or even be associated with the "mainstream media", yet, ironically, they are BECOMING the mainstream media as time passes by and more and more people follow and post blogs.

Bloggers simply dispense their opinions, from the comfort of their homes, and the safety of hiding behind their computers, whereas a true journalist painstakingly finds and verifies facts, occasionally putting himself or herself in danger. As an example, he mentions Claude Sitton, a reporter from the New York Times, who was threatend with death by a group of rednecks while he and another reporter were investigating segregation in the south.

The articles by Sullivan and Skube are in stark contrast to each other. While Sullivan claims that blogging will make the established press obsolete and advocates the embracing of blogging as a primary source of news, Skube argues that blogging will never become a legitimate form of journalism. Sullivan shows how blogs can eventually lead to profitability whereas Skube believes blogs are written to advance personal or political agendas.

The tone of the two articles are also very different. While Sullivan clearly approves of the blogging revolution, Skube dismisses it at as a bunch of biased opinions and nothing more.

I agree with Skube and believe that blogging cannot make the established press obsolete. I view blogging as a means to express opinions on articles based on unbiased facts, written by journalists who were paid to do so. No one does anything for free, and does a good job for it. Therefore I believe that blogging is good for commentary and opinions only, and that the established press is here to stay.

The Jamaica Idea

When I think of Jamaica, the first image that comes to my mind is that of an overflowing garbage can. Then, the image expands to include a shabby street with a broken pavement, and unkempt houses with unkempt lawns. Occasionally, a few rats scurry around in the garbage can. Suddenly a flock of pigeons come flying out of nowhere. And the squirrels look really scary and don’t budge. That, is my charming little mental image of my favorite place-where-I-live, called Jamaica.

Many people have a similar stereotypical view of Jamaica, although perhaps not as vivid as mine. I came to Jamaica about three years ago, and I moved from a more … affluent place than Jamaica. Perhaps that is the reason why I have such a horrible mental image of Jamaica – a bad first impression due to a sudden change in surroundings. I have since grown accustomed to Jamaica, and can earnestly say that it’s not a bad place at all. In fact, if I was given the option of living anywhere in New York, I would choose to live in Jamaica.

Jamaica is one of the most ethnically diverse places in Queens. It is possible to verify this fact simply by walking around for a few minutes. There are people of various colours and ethnicities; people that speak different languages; people that wear different clothes; people that smell different. People play all types of music (except for classical of course), loudly and especially during the night. The upside to this diversity is that there is a lot of food - there are restaurants literally everywhere and cuisines from all over the world to sample.

Jamaica is not only diverse in terms of people; it is also diverse in terms of where people live. The same street can have a house with a beautiful lawn and garden next to a smelly and crappy apartment. Although most people are middle-class-ish, many rich people live here also.

The diversity, and essence of Jamaica is best captured by the image at the bottom. It shows a basketball court next to a tennis court. Since basketball is generally considered to be the sport of the “poor” and tennis is generally considered to be the sport of the “rich”, it is only fitting that in a place as diverse as Jamaica, such stereotypes are melted away.

Would anyone go out to take a picture when they have the power of google?