How The Internet Affects the Way We Think

Internet has been with us for more than two decades now. It came with the invention of computers. Today almost every aspect of our daily lives involves use of the internet either directly or indirectly. Everything from shopping to paying bills to dating depends to almost entirely on the internet. As a matter of fact, the traditional way of doing things has been replaced with the internet. Whether internet has served to change positively or negatively the way we think has in the recent past been a topic that has elicited heated debate. Just like a coin, this debate has two sides. Philosophers like Plato, Socrates and Aristotle had warned that new technologies are likely to make people "owners of conceited rather than real wisdom". They felt that new technologies would make information more accessible and so in the long run people would find no need to memorize important information. Modern academicians like Nicholas Carr feel the same way. There are others, however, who feel that internet and other related technologies has provided a large pool of information which people can use to enlighten themselves.

Aristotle Socrates and the rest were right. Internet has made has brought distractions and interruptions in our thinking process. We no longer think straight. Rarely can we read long passages (over 10 pages) after all someone have summarized it for us on the internet. Internet has not only changed the way we think but is has also changed our brain structure. Our brains have become shallow because we have allowed other people to think for us. We can rarely think straight.

In the research that I intend to carry out, I hope to find out to what extent technologies like the internet has changed the way people think. The rationale for this objective is that people have come to rely on the internet for everything. Students, for instance no longer visit libraries to read large volumes of hard content. They'd rather visit the internet where books with as many pages as 400 are summarized into less than 10 pages. I can about choosing this objective because I feel that internet is changing students and other people from great thinkers to shallow thinkers or as the philosophers would say "holders of conceited wisdom instead of real wisdom." My study will be directed mainly to students unlike other studies which have studied students and non students or non students alone.  I wish to use information collected who have done similar studies before but I will limit myself to student related information only.

For my research paper I will to a large extent rely on material available at Bowling green Technical College library database. I know there is a lot of information related to my topic. Due to the scope of my study, I will rely more on secondary sources as opposed to primary ones. I may not be in a position to administer questionnaires or interview students. Because of this reason I plan to use statistical data and other forms of resources collected by those who have done related research before. Online databases like EBSCOHOST and JSTOR contain scholarly journals which contained detailed information on social issues.

I'm convinced that I will get enough information from this kind of databases that will enable me to come up with reliable findings. What other researchers have done is to use reports and questionnaire that needed people to answer questions regarding how internet has changed the way think. I will use responses given by students and this will form the basis of my findings.  I know there are researchers who have done thorough research on the issue and have availed their data either online or on print. Such data will be of great importance to my research as it will improve its reliability.