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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. In Chapter Seven, why does Carr claim that we want to be interrupted as we work on the Net?

2. According to Carr in Chapter Eight, how could the authority of any Web page be gauged in the early days of Google's first search engine?

3. What does Carr say, in Chapter Eight, that Larry Page has always viewed Google as an embryonic form of?

4. In Chapter Five, what does Carr say happens to other media as the Net expands?

5. What does New York University professor Clay Shirkey suggest is overrated in Chapter Six?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Patrician Greenfield's 2009 Science article describe in terms of the skills people acquire from Internet use?

2. In Chapter Seven, what does Carr think about the positives and negatives of skimming while reading?

3. In Chapter Eight, what does Carr refer to as the Internet's High Church, and why does he call it that?

4. In Chapter Six, what does Carr report might happen in the future with the incorporation of social media into e-Books?

5. In Chapter Six, what does Carr cite French poet and politician Alphonse de Lamartine as saying would be the death of books in 1831?

6. According to Carr, how has the Internet affected the business models of other forms of media?

7. What kinds of problems did Google's effort to digitize all the books ever printed run into?

8. In Chapter Six, Carr cites the work of some academics, including New York University's Clay Shirkey, as saying that deep reading was always overrated. Why did Shirkey and others think that reading long literary novels was overrated?

9. In Chapter Seven, what does Carr say is the greatest long-term paradox of the way human attention works when using the Internet?

10. In Chapter Five, how does Carr point out that the architecture of the Bronx Library Center has changed to reflect the supremacy of the Internet?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Why is Google's business model so dependent on its ability to feed users information and web content so quickly and efficiently? Write an essay explaining your answer.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay analyzing Nicholas Carr's early personal forays into using computers and adapting to new technologies. How do Carr's early experiences with new technologies predict his later interest, as manifested in his book The Shallows, in the links between technology and the brain?

Essay Topic 3

What is the relationship between Internet use and human memory, according to Carr? Why are our Internet browsing habits so bad for our memories in Carr's opinion? Write an essay explaining your answer, citing specific references to the text to support your conclusions.

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