Getting intimate on the Internet

In the article "A Brave New World of Digital Intimacy" Thompson is claiming that social media is perhaps driving society apart rather then bringing they together more. He talks about the news feed on Facebook. Zuckerburg introduced the news feed to make all updates on Facebook more accessible your friends. He wanted people to be able to scroll through one page and see all what was happening in their friends lives. This new power that Zuckerburg gave us also came at a price; it made us become "ambient aware" of our friends. The article describes ambient awareness as looking at your friends through peripheral vision, knowing that they are there, but not really paying attention to them. Thompson describes us as skimming what our friends are doing, not quite being able to focus on what they are doing. This skimming mentality is parallel to what the other articles have been saying about or society today. We are unable to focus on long portions of text, just like we are unable to focus on what our friends are doing. Thompson indirectly describes literacy as the ability to focus on what we are reading, not just reading and writing.

Gin and TV

This article is about the free time that we have and how we spend it. The author compares the time of the Industrial Revolution in England to our times now. He says that back then people would drink gin to in their spare time because of the mayhem of the Industrial Revolution. Nowadays, society spends most of its spare time watching what is on television. This article defines literacy as being able to understand what you read and being able to contribute your knowledge for the greater benefit of society. The article brings up the point of a cognitive surplus. It says that a cognitive surplus is all of the time we spend watching television rather than using that time to expand out knowledge and the knowledge of the world. This article is an important article in the fact that it is a call to action. The author says that we need to "Look for the mouse" is all that we do. We need to strive to find time to contribute to the wealth of knowledge of the world.
Repetition- cognitive surplus, looking for the mouse, at least they're doing something
The article uses the phrase cognitive surplus over and over again. The author is saying that that society has stored up a large amount of free time. We can use this free time in whatever way that we want but most of us choose to use it watching TV. The author is arguing that if society would put some of its cognitive surplus towards expanding the knowledge in the world, it would be a better place.

Is Google Making Us Stupid

In this article, the main point the author is trying to get across is the the human mind is evolving. Carr claims that because of all of his time on the internet, his mind has lost the ability to focus on long pieces of text. He finds him mind wandering a few paragraphs in, and is the article or text is too long he will skim it instead. Carr says that with the internet, humans no longer will go through the process of trying to solve a problem, instead they will look up the answer on their phone and not even think about it once. Carr argues that we have lost the desire to truly test our mind but instead we would rather have an answer given to us. In "Socrates Nightmare" it says that humans have lost the ability to think critically about what we read and truly think about it on a deeper level. Carr article is similar to this in the way that both believe that reading and really understanding what we read is important. Both men believe that literacy is a critical skill that all of mankind should possess.
Human kind is evolving into being that no longer thirst for knowledge. We prefer the easy way of googling something to find the answer rather than dig and go through the process of finding the truth. Carr's article is ultimately a cautionary tale about the dangers of the internet and the effect it can have on the human thought process.