Too Many Thoughts

Where to begin? This is always the question that leaps into my head the minute I sit down to write. I always feel like there are too many ideas in my head, and they become tangled together until I am unable to form a coherent thought. When thinking about the digital age, it reminded me of an article I read last semester called "Is Google Making us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr. I also believe this same article was mentioned in the E-book Writing about Literature in the Digital Age. Nicholas writes about how we think changes based on the current medium we are using. When we write by hand our thoughts become slow and methodical, while the internet makes us want to process a million bits of information at once, constantly scanning and flipping through different pages online. I was thinking about how I used to absorb information from books like a sponge. Now, I always feel like I have to be multitasking with 10 different tabs up on my computer, never being completely focused on one thing taking in a few sentences here and there. I can relate to the way Carr compares our way of thinking to a staccato note, short and sharp. Bouncing from one thing to the next. It makes me question if despite the new and wonderful ways of learning the internet provides, if it doesn't come at a steep price. Is the internet worth the toll on our minds and the way it changes the way we think?
I would say yes. While it is frustrating to have trouble focusing while I am trying to delve into a deep subject, I think that the opportunities the new media provides is well worth it. They allow us to make literature and knowledge accessible in many different formats, to people that learn in every kind of way. There are many pros and cons to using every new networking site available though. I have discovered that an education comes in many different ways. While the media tools are important and useful, they should remain just that-tools. They should help, not hinder us. Blogging, facebook, google+, twitter and the millions of other websites shouldn't take up so much of our time that we don't have the chance to go outside and actually live life. The reason so many people tweet and write status updates about eating cereal and their other mundane, everyday tasks is because nothing else is happening in their lives to write about. In order to get material, we can not allow the internet to become our life. This reminds me of Samuel McGrath's chapter in Writing about Literature in the Digital Age. He wrote that "to successfully break conventions, we must show a mastery of those same rules we are breaking." The new media tools allow us to break free of the conventions set by literary scholars and get creative with literature and how it is interpreted. So instead of just using the internet to hop from subject to subject, learning a little about whatever comes to mind, it is important to form a good foundation of learning, or in other words, sticking to the classics. Once we form that foundation, then the new forms of media become a help rather than a hindrance.