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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which was one of the first computers Carr ever bought for his own personal use?

2. What do determinists believe, according to Carr?

3. In Chapter Four, who does Carr claim were the first people to use a specialized medium for writing?

4. In Chapter Four, which of the following does Carr say became a prerequisite for intellectual achievement?

5. In Chapter Three, what does Ong say that writing does for consciousness?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Carr think is the relationship between a medium and the content conveyed through that medium?

2. In Chapter Five, what is the most important difference Carr identifies between the Net and most of the mass media it replaces, like television?

3. What invention did Lee de Forest create, and what technological advances did it allow for?

4. In Chapter Five, what does Carr say research suggests about the relationship between the time people spend on the Net and the time they spend watching television?

5. According to Carr, how did the first maps change society?

6. How did the neuroscientist Michael Merzenich prove the brain was more changeable than was previously thought with his experiments in the 1960s?

7. How did Johannes Gutenberg change the path of human history, according to Carr?

8. What movie does Carr reference in Chapter One, and what does he use the reference to illustrate?

9. What does Carr say about the relationship between the so-called "intellectual ethic" of a technology and its inventor (45)?

10. In Chapter One, how does Joe O'Shea feel about his decision to stop reading books in favor of the shorter-form content of the Internet?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

According to Carr, what are some of the reasons that technologies that restructure language have the most significant impacts on our thought processes? Write an essay explaining your answer, citing specific references to the text to support your answers.

Essay Topic 2

How, and why, did society accept multitasking as a desirable way to work and to consume information? Write an essay explaining your answer, citing specific references to the text to support your arguments.

Essay Topic 3

What does Carr mean when he writes that the reader, when engaged in deep, immersive reading, "becomes" the book (74)? Write an essay explaining your answer.

(see the answer keys)

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