Analysis of The Juggler's Brain

Why did educators believe that hypertext within a text will assist learning and comprehension?

The answer to this question lies in, I think, the way we process information. We tend to look at things that are different from other things, and oftentimes the bright blue and underline of a hypertext word or phrase will grab our attention and allow us to better comprehend what the main points of the text is. At least, that was the idea behind the argument.

Why is the internet being blamed for the lowering of attention spans?

According to researchers, part of the reason why the internet is being blamed for shortened attention spans is due to the nature of the internet itself. It rewards short bursts of directed attention to certain details rather than extended study and longer focus on something as a whole.

Does optimization for multitasking increase our ability to function better cognitively?

In short, no. The human brain, despite all its intricacies and astounding capabilities, is unfortunately very unsuited to multitasking. While it is certainly within our ability to consciously focus on two things at once, such as driving and talking to a passenger (and even then both of those activities are not done to their fullest ability) it is nigh impossible for us as human beings to do much more than that. We simply do not have enough brain power to consciously do a list of things simultaneously. Think of cognitive processing as a very small company paying its employees. With just a single employee, that employee gets all the pay from the company, and everything works perfectly fine. Add in a second employee, and the company starts to have a little trouble paying both, having to split the pay between them both. At this rate, the company is simply unable to hire a third employee without letting one of the original two go, due to there not being enough income to support three employees. It simply doesn't work.

How does an increase prevalence of multitasking affect the habits of people as a whole?

People who experience a large amount of multitasking tend to be distracted by small, irrelevant details when working, lowered ability to concentrate on a single task, and generally utilize bottom-up processing, where they take in all the sensory information around them, leading to a less focused cognitive process. People who don't multitask as heavily are more able to concentrate on a single thing without being distracted, and utilize top-down processing where their perception is driven by cognition rather than sensory information.

Is technology making us smarter?

This is actually a very difficult question to answer, and very well may not have a correct answer. While technology such as the internet allows for much more accessible information, it certainly does open up many opportunities to educate ourselves on, well, whatever we may like; this same availability gives us the impression that there is no reason to commit much, if any of this information to long term memory when we could easily just look it up online. This is definitely a highly subjective dilemma, due to the multiple standpoints from which we can view it, but personally I believe that technology does make us smarter. A mere century ago, we had a much lessened access to information, and the average person had a tendency to be less educated or informed. In today's world, nearly everyone in modern society has some level of awareness of what is going on on a local, national, and international scale due to media exposure, which reaches people through technology such as television or the internet. This world wide information hub that we call the internet has allowed for a much larger amount of people to become more informed on  the world they live in.

Your last question is a really good one. Access to information is easier and easier thanks to technology. We have, in the palm of our hands, the Library of Congress, breaking news in the Congo, and commentary on last night's Padre game. Bad. Not in and of itself. However, the distractability of the waves of information makes me wonder the depth of processing we engage in because of the ease of access.

If you have time, check this out: http://niemanreports.org/articles/our-deep-reading-brain-its-digital-evolution-poses-questions/

Here's the article sited in the previous one: https://www.mbaea.org/documents/resources/Educational_Leadership_Article_The__D87FE2BC4E7AD.pdf

Thoughtful and important questions, Jason. Nice!

Myette

(1) The Net seizes our attention only to scatter it. What is Nicholas Carr trying to say?


-He is trying to say that On the internet there are so much information and People just want to know everything at once. that's why people may spend hours on the web searching info and gaining anything possible. For me especially

(2)What Senses are used while using technology, and why is this important?


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(3)Does the Internet enhance our skills or not?


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(4) What is Hypertext? For peoples performance which style of reading and answering question is better and why? Explain.

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(5) When Nicholas Carr quotes “Survival of the busiest” What does he mean?

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