Unit 2 Writing a Literature Review Teacher’s Version

Identify the key ideas from each of the three articles on Internet ​Activity
technology from the handouts in Unit 1 by completing the following ​12
notes below. (Compulsory)
Article 1: Carr (2010). Does the Internet make you dumber?
Merits of technology
- ​... “easy access to unprecedented amounts of information” ​- ​“Some studies
indicated that certain computer tasks, like playing video games, can enhance “visual
literacy skills”, increasing the speed at which people can shift their focus among icons
and other images on the screens.” ​- ​“Our growing use of screen-based media [...] has
strengthened visual-spatial intelligence, which can improve the ability to do jobs that
involve keeping track of lots of simultaneous signals, like air traffic control.”
Drawbacks of technology Four major drawbacks of technology
(i) impoverishes sense of understanding and clarity of thought:
- ​“People who read text studded with links, the studies show, comprehend less than
those who read traditional linear text [...] People who are continually distracted by
emails, alerts and other messages understand less than those who are able to
concentrate.” ​- ​“when we are constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be
online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that
give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking.” ​- ​... “such rapid shifts in focus, even if
performed adeptly, result in less
rigorous and “more automatic” thinking.” ​- ​... “less control over [...] attention and [...]
less able to distinguish important
information from trivia.” ​- ​...“the Internet scatters our attention” ​- ​“It returns us to our
native state of distractedness, while presenting us with far
more distractions than our ancestors ever had to contend with.”
(ii) negatively affects memory:
- ​“People who watch busy multimedia presentations remember less than those
who take in information in a more sedate and focused manner.” ​- ​“We become mere
signal-processing units, quickly shepherding disjointed
bits of information into and then out of short-term memory.”
(iii) hinders creativity:
- ​“And people who juggle many tasks are less creative and less productive than
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2
 are not using the technology.” ​-
ael Merzenich believes our brains are
ever-intensifying use of the Web and
was profoundly worried about the
ant distractions and interruptions the
2 -term effect on the quality of our
Unit 2 Writing a Literature Review
eadly”.”
Teacher’s Version
those who do one thing at a
time.”

(iv) inflicts permanent damage:

- ​“The cellular alterations continue to shape the way we think even when we

Evidence of points i, ii, iii and

iv:
- ​“new weaknesses in higher-order cognitive processes” including
“abstract vocabulary, mindfulness, reflection, inductive problem-solving,
critical thinking, and imagination.” We are becoming, in a word,
shallower.”

Article 2: Pinker (2010). Mind over mass

media.

Merits of technology Champions the gains made by introducing new

technology in four key ways.

(i) dismisses the “moral panic” caused by electronic

innovations:
- ​“New forms of media have always caused moral panic: the printing press,
newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats
to their consumers’ brainpower and moral fiber.” ​- ​“So too with electronic
technologies. PowerPoint, we are told, is reducing discourse to bullet points.
Search engines lower our intelligence, encouraging us to skim on the surface
of knowledge rather than dive to its depths. Twitter is shrinking our attention
spans.” ​- ​“But such panic often fails basic reality checks. When comic books
were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s, crime was
falling to record lows, just as the denunciation of video games in the 1990s
coincided with the great American crime decline. The decades of television,
transistor radios and rock videos were also the decades in which I.Q. scores
rose continuously.”

(ii) undermines critics:

- ​“Critics of new media sometimes use science itself to press their case,
citing research that shows how “experience can change the brain”. But
cognitive neuroscientists roll their eyes at such talk. Yes, every time we learn
a fact or

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ask
Unit your spouse
2 Writing to callReview
a Literature you to bed at a designa
Teacher’s Version

- ​“And to encourage intellectual depth, do no

skill, the wiring of the brain changes; it is not as if the information is stored in
It is not as if habits of deep reflection, tho
the pancreas. But the existence of neural plasticity does not mean the brain
reasoning ever came naturally to people. The
is a blob of clay pounded into shape by experience.” ​- ​“Yes, the constant
institutions, which we call universities, and ma
arrival of information packets can be distracting or addictive, especially to
which we call analysis, criticism and deba
people with attention deficit disorder. But distraction is not a new
propping a heavy encyclopedia on your lap,
phenomenon. The solution is not to bemoan technology but to develop
efficient access to information on the Internet.”
strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life. Turn off
e-mail or Twitter when you work, put away your Blackberry at dinner time,
(iii) claims clear benefits:
2
- ​“These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper
and cannot lecture without PowerPoint. If electronic media were hazardous
to intelligence, the quality of science would be plummeting. Yet discoveries
are multiplying like fruit flies, and progress is dizzying. Other activities in the
life of the mind, like philosophy, history and cultural criticism, are likewise
flourishing.”

- ​“The new media have caught on for a reason. Knowledge is increasing

exponentially; human brainpower and waking hours are not. Fortunately, the
Internet and information technologies are helping us manage, search and
retrieve our collective intellectual outputUnit
at 2different
Writing a Literature Review
scales, from Twitter and
Teacher’s Version
previews to e-books and online encyclopedias. Far from making us stupid,
these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart.”

(iv) draws parallels of the impact of new technology with developments in

other relevant areas:
- ​“Experience does not revamp the basic information-processing capacities
of the brain [...] the effects of experience are highly specific to the
experiences themselves. If you train people to do one thing (recognize
shapes, solve math puzzles, find hidden words), they get better at doing that
thing, but almost nothing else. Music does
f how the not makeaffects
Internet you better
our at math,
conjugating Latin does not make you more logical, brain-training games do
not make you smarter.”

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Drawbacks of technology

None are given.

Article 3: Storm, Stone, and Benjamin (2016). Using the Internet

to access information inflates future use of the Internet
Merits of technology

(i). Background of the study

- ​“Participants are often asked to turn off their cell phones before beginning
a memory experiment. There are good reasons for this policy, but one might
argue that what participants are being asked to do is effectively turn off part
of their minds (Clark & Chalmers, 1998).” ​- ​“Indeed, to study memory
exclusively in the absence of the Internet would provide a necessarily limited
view of how we store, access, and use knowledge in the modern world.”

(ii). Claims clear benefits of storing information on the

Internet
- ​“When accuracy is paramount, and when the Internet is available and its
use is contextually appropriate, one might often be better off relying on the
Internet than not.” ​- ​“Rather than retain information internally, we remember
where information
can be accessed.” ​- ​“It is possible that certain aspects of the Internet, such as
its vastness, depth, and reliability, which can be compared to the much more
limited and fallible aspects of human memory (Schacter, 2001) make
becoming reliant on the Internet particularly useful.”

Drawbacks of technology

(i). Undermines the positive effects of using the Internet to augment

memory
- ​“Such a result would suggest that a person’s tendency to rely on the
Internet to access information can be exacerbated by the recent use of the
Internet to access other information.” ​- ​“Accessing information via the
Internet may not only affect a person’s likelihood of relying on the Internet to
access other information, it may also affect the speed with which one makes
the decision to rely on the Internet to access information.” ​- ​“Although the
Internet may be effective in helping people access certain types of
information, it may be much less effective in helping people access other

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 particular methods
Unit 2 Writing of accessing
a Literature Review information an
Teacher’s Version
2008).” ​- ​“Accessing information via the Intern
person’s likelihood of relying on the Internet to
types of information. In such cases, using the Internet
may also to access
affect theinformation
speed with which one make
could prove detrimental.” ​- ​“Searching the Internet has even been shown
Internet to access information.” to ​- ​“The presen
lead to illusions of internal suggest that using the Internet as an informatio
knowledge.” to which a person uses the Internet as an infor
Participants instructed to answer one set of triv
(ii). Claims using the Internet could be damagingthe forInternet were significantly more likely to ans
our mental
capacity set of trivia questions with the help of the Intern
instructed to answer the first set from memory.
- ​“Having unfettered access to so much information makes it difficult to
using the Internet to access information not on
determine what is available in the head versus what Memoryis available ​-
online​.”suggesting
condition, that they were le
“Sparrow et al. (2017), for example, showed thatthorough
difficult trivia questions
search of their own memory before o
increase the accessibility of terms related to the retrieve
Internetthe(e.g., Google,
answer.”
Yahoo), suggesting that people are primed to think about the Internet when
they encounter questions to which they do not know the answers.” ​-
Identify ideas (i.e. merits and drawbacks) that h
“Consistent with this possibility is the observation that participants in the
or more authors.
Internet condition reported significantly lower post-experiment ‘need for
cognition’ scores than participants in the Memory
Both condition.
Pinker (2010) It appears
and Stormthat et al. (2016) concur
being instructed to conduct only a handful of have
Google Searches
enriched humancan lives.
be Carr (2010) also ackn
sufficient to temporarily reduce a person’s desire to engage in challenging
technology
cognitive behaviours.”
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(iii). Empirical research investigating the interaction with our memories
due to the advent of the Internet 2
- ​“Research has shown that people can become increasingly reliant on

2
Unit 2 Writing a Literature Review
Teacher’s Version

facilitates information gathering and enhances visual-spatial

awareness.

Do all the three authors have similar opinions on the issue of

Internet technology?

The three authors are not entirely unanimous in their views about the benefits of
technology (Carr, 2010; Pinker, 2010; Storm et al., 2016).
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