The Killernet?

In Nick Carr’s book; The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Carr talks about instrumentalism and how the world views technology. According to both David Sarnoff and James Carey “technology is technology”. This is the most widely held view of technology today that I also agree with. Both Sarnoff and Carey downplay technology and argue compelling arguments against the over exaggerated power people give to it. In Carr’s book, instrumentalists are described as “the people who, like David Sarnoff, downplay the power of technology, believing tools to be neutral artifacts, entirely subservient to the conscious wishes of their users.” The name instrumentalist itself describes their view; that technology is just an instrument used to help one exceed in their abilities. There is also historic evidence that points to the instrumentalist’s outlook. For example; the Japanese preserved their traditional samurai culture by banning the use of firearms in their country for two centuries and this proved to be affective! Another example used in Carr’s book is North America. The religious community for the Amish rejected the use of motor cars and other modern technologies. It seems all throughout history many different cultures have shied away or put some kind of restrictions on the use of certain tools. It all is not a foreign concept and has proved successful. So why should it be any different in this case, we are not any better than our ancestors or our history! This leads people to believe that yes in fact technology is in our control. Although this all seems very self explanatory and logical, but an interesting point Carr makes is that could this be the view that we all would prefer to be true? Do we want to believe that we truly hold all utter control when it comes down to technology? In my previous essay about the reviews on Carr’s books,