This weeks articles mainly have one goal; this is to either disprove or prove that technology is providing an educational or regressive forum for human intelligence. As easy as it may be to draw a line and assume that new media can simply make us smarter or dumber, I believe that it is not the technology that we should be altering to decide, it should be the way that we interact with it.

In a way, this is what Clay Shirky was touching on in his article “Why I Just Asked My Students To Put Their Laptops Away.” In this article, Shirky explains that even as an avid supporter and lecturer on the use and effectiveness of utilizing new media, that he too has begun requiring the stow away of laptops and cellular phones. He believes that the technological advancements have met where the they physically are taking our attention away from learning because we cannot keep up with there flashy excitement.

In a left side view that the internet is making us stupid, Nicholas Carr takes his post, discussing matters that it is the technologies fault. This is something I heavily disagree with and I also believe Shirky does as well in his article “Does the Internet Make You Smarter.”  I believe the matter at hand is not which technologies to blame, but which ways are we utilizing them to degrade heir effectiveness. I believe the answer lies in the category of User’s error.

This is the real discussion we need to have. How can we more effectively utilize the gift of technology and it’s advancements to permanently improve the existence of human life and how the two interact. Technology needs to be looked at as a tool and not a toy. It is not something to simply look at scroll through when there is nothing to do, it’s something we use to learn and educate others. We need to use it as a tool to spread awareness and clean up hate. It has nothing to do with the tech itself, but the people using it and how they choose to.