Explanatory Synthesis Materials - Essay Example

The human brain is under the influence of ever-expanding world of new technology. There is internet, Bluetooth links, video games, multichannel television, and MP3 players. This article describes how online technologies have changed how people experience life in the digital age using the concepts derived from “In the Beginning Was the Word” by Christine Rosen, “Treading Water in a Sea of Data” by Peter Suderman, and “The Tweets for the Web” by Tyler Cowen. According to Cowen, the advent of computer and the internet has significantly changed the way people think and solve problems.

With the technology, people are capable of performing various activities at once within a short period of time. This is referred to as multitasking (Cowen 578). In the Nineteenth Century, people spent too much time looking for a small piece of information in books, articles, encyclopedias and atlases. With the internet, it only takes people less than one minute to look for a piece of information. The Web also helps people to develop broader intellectual narrative about the world (Cowen 579). Cowen argues that multitasking makes people more efficient in performing their tasks than the manual way, unlike other researches that criticize that it lowers people’s cognitive performance level to that of drunk (Cowen 580).

Multitasking has thus become people’s daily activity, and it does not distract people from their main activities as some people suggest. Internet and technological advancements have become part of people’s lives. It is never a long-distance relationship, as it was earlier perceived. People can instantly access books and other reference materials from the Web. Most people currently prefer contemporary culture, which is satisfying and contributes to happiness of most people. This is the reason why most people choose technologies that provide immediate and extreme access to information (Cowen 577).

Browsers have evolved from mere picture windows for viewing Web pages, to a frame of an array of applications which filter, sort and manipulate information for its human users. According to Suderman, these applications assist users to stay afloat as the vast tide of information continues to increase (Suderman 585). There are programs of blog and news updates. This program pulls information from varied sources and organizes it into a single Web page which is easily accessible. The news headlines are organized into categories such as technology, politics, business, economics, arts and entertainment.

The other programs are designed to facilitate personal communications. These include social networking sites like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, and email applications (Suderman 585). Internet and technological advancements just like most commercial developments are geared to be brighter, louder, and overwhelming to engage users, attentions. The availability of personal computers, tablets, iPhones and other devices has made reading easier and more appealing than before. People in the current generation find reading books difficult, and most of the readings and research works are done through the internet (Suderman 586).

Suderman argues that the informational rhythms of the present time sometimes make people forget that as much as they manage the information, they should also manage themselves. Rosen in her article strives to understand the cognitive difference between reading online and offline.