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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 1993 book of Neil Postman's does Carr reference in Chapter Eight?

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

3. In Chapter Eight, what does Carr say about the lives of Internet companies?

4. In Chapter Five, what does Carr say we do not think of libraries as, even though they are?

5. Which inventor and futurist wrote a 1996 essay on the legacy of 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Short Essay Questions

1. What factors does the UCLA psychologist Patricia Greenfield attribute the Flynn effect to?

2. In Chapter Seven, how did educators' hopes for the positive effects of students reading texts with hyperlinks work out?

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

4. In Chapter Seven, what does Carr think about the effects of email notifications on people's concentration when working online?

5. What is the Flynn effect?

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

7. What did Google's Eric Schmidt tell the Wall Street Journal is Google's main goal, and how long does he expect it to take to achieve that goal?

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

9. In Chapter Eight, what sentiment of the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne's does Carr highlight?

10. In Chapter Six, what was the experience of Christine Rosen, the fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., when she read an e-copy of Nicholas Nickleby?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

According to Carr, why do so many people not only welcome, but seek out, interruptions when they use the Internet? Write an essay explaining your answer, citing specific references to the text to support your arguments.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay explaining why Carr is reluctant to believe, at first, that using a tool like the Internet can actually change the way his brain works and functions, citing specific references to the text to support your answers. What factors, events, or conversations change Carr's mind on this topic?

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay exploring how Carr thinks the rise of eReaders and eBooks will change, or even possibly eliminate, people's experiences of deep reading.

(see the answer keys)

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