What Makes the Internet Controversial?

What Makes The Internet Controversial?

Living in today's modern world the Internet can be our friend or foe. For Nicholas Carr author of "Is Google Making Us Stupid" finds it rather distracting, on the other hand Amy Goldwasser author of "What's The Matter With Kids Today?" finds it to be more intriguing and helpful. Some issues making the Internet controversial are its many distractions, reaching out to the older generation, and it changes the way we think.

The Internet can be a helpful and accommodating engine if used in the proper way. It has a broad range of search engines, and encyclopedias that are accommodating in everyday life. Carr explains, "Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes." Yet, even though it gives us access to a vast amount of information, it can distract us from what we really need to do. With every good resource come's just as many distractions that affect us. "A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we're glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper's site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration" says Goldwasser in her latest article. The Internets intentions make it a controversial machine, which can either help or hurt us. We think it is there to help us, yet all its distractions make its intentions unclear. It can open up doors that books and other resources could not do before, yet it has the ability to take us even farther away from what we began to use it for. The Internet can lead us to a dead end or make us more efficacious than ever.

Being a teenager today means using the Internet for just about everything, yet for adults it's a completely different state of mind. The older generation does not completely understand and accept the Internet for the positive things it can assist us with. Kids today are doing more reading and writing, just on the Internet explains Goldwasser. "Or is it the older generation that the Internet has seduced- into the inanities of leveling charges based on fear, ignorance and old-media, multiple choice testing?" The older generation does not consider reading and writing on the Internet to be productive learning. Growing up in a older time period means they are used to a more traditional way of reading and writing. As modern technology has developed so has our way of learning. The older generation has not fully accepted the Internet is not all-social networking rather an alternative to the traditional pen and pencil reading and writing. It can be used to read textbooks online and take interactive lessons on new topics that might not be as boring as reading the common textbook. Just as the way we think is changing so is our way of learning due to the Internet. Kids see it as a useful tool and adults see it as a distracting brain washing

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