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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. What kind of award did Eric Kandel win for his work on sea slugs in the 1970s?

2. What does the phrase scriptura continua refer to, according to Carr in Chapter Four?

3. Where was Johannes Gutenberg born?

4. What was one of the main drawbacks to scrolls?

5. What do determinists believe, according to Carr?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. When scientists first discovered how adaptable, or "plastic" the brain was, how did the field of neuroscience receive this revelation?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay explaining Carr's views on how and why the Internet, and people's wide use of the Internet, is fundamentally changing public libraries in the United States.

Essay Topic 2

Carr writes that "every technology is an expression of human will" (44). Write an essay explaining your interpretation of Carr's meaning with this phrase. How does it relate to his views on computers and the Internet?

Essay Topic 3

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.

(see the answer keys)

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