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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Who was one of the inventors of BASIC, the first programming language to use common words and syntax?
(a) John Kemeny.
(b) Steve Jobs.
(c) Bill Richardson.
(d) Nicholas Carr.

2. How did Francis Bacon say that Gutenberg's press affected the globe?
(a) He said it changed things all over the world so much that no empire or sect or star had as great an effect worldwide.
(b) He said it made societies much more equal.
(c) He said it made everyone, everywhere, better educated.
(d) He said it made books much less expensive.

3. Where did Lee de Forest grow up?
(a) Pennsylvania.
(b) Louisiana.
(c) Alabama.
(d) Mississippi.

4. How does the brain's ability to adapt to changes shift as people age?
(a) The brain becomes more able to change as people age.
(b) The brain needs medication to be able to change as people age.
(c) The brain requires surgery to be able to change as people age.
(d) The brain becomes less able to change as quickly as people age.

5. What do instrumentalists believe, according to Carr?
(a) Tools of technology will be the end of humanity.
(b) Tools of technology are neutral in themselves and have no ends of their own.
(c) Tools of technology have their own paths and need to be tightly controlled.
(d) Tools of technology are only for the wealthy.

Short Answer Questions

1. What else besides repeated physical actions can rewire the human brain?

2. Theorist Marshall McLuhan said that media forms supply the stuff of thought and also do which of the following?

3. What does Carr say he finds himself trapped in by the mid-1990s relating to computer equipment purchasing?

4. Who created the Hypercard application?

5. What kind of type did Johannes Gutenberg invent with the printing press?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Carr claim the creation of clocks influenced civilization?

2. In Chapter One, what activity does Carr propose heavy Internet use has diminished human capacity for?

3. How does attending Dartmouth College in the 1970s affect Carr's attitudes towards computers?

4. In Chapter Three, what does Carr identify as the philosopher Socrates' fear that widespread reading would replace?

5. What is the central message from Marshall McLuhan's 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, according to Carr?

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

7. How does Carr describe the characteristics of a so-called technological determinist?

8. 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?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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