Passage
The sentient supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman to stop what he is doing in a famous and weirdly poignant scene towards the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deepspace death by the malfunctioning computer, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial brain. ‘Dave, my mind is going,’ HAL says, forlornly. ‘I can feel it. I can feel it.’
I can feel it too. Over the last few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going – so far as I can tell – but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I feel it most strongly when I’m reading. I used to find it easy to immerse myself in a book or a lengthy article. But that’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. I feel like I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
I think I know what’s going on. For well over a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web’s been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or the pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s data thickets. The Net has become my all-purpose medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich and easily searched store of data are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded.
The boons are real. But they come at a price. Media aren’t just channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words; now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
Maybe I’m an aberration, an outlier. But it doesn’t seem that way. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends, many say they’re suffering from similar afflictions. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some worry they’re becoming chronic scatterbrains. Scott Karp, who used to work for a magazine and now writes a blog about online media, speculates: ‘What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I think has changed?’
We seem to have arrived at an important juncture in our intellectual and cultural history, a moment of transition between two very different modes of thinking. What we’re trading away in return for the riches of the Net – and only a curmudgeon would refuse to see the riches – is our old linear thought process. The calm, focused, undistracted linear mind is being pushed aside by a new kind of mind that wants and needs to take in and dole out information in short, disjointed, often overlapping bursts – the faster, the better.
Question for 100 RCs for Practice Questions- 67
Try yourself:The author will agree with which of the following statements?
Explanation
Option 2 is incorrect. In the penultimate paragraph, the author quotes Scott Karp as ‘What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I think has changed?’ The author quotes Karp only to support what he has stated in the earlier paragraph-- that “media shape the process of thought.” The author would disagree to us reading on the web because of its convenience. Eliminate option 2.
Option 3 is incorrect. The author does not offer judgement on whether short bursts of information are better to keep the mind active or not. Eliminate option 3.
Option 4 is incorrect. Similar to option 3, the author does not compare the productive output of the two different modes of thinking. Reject option 4.
Option 1 is correct. The last paragraph states thus: “What we’re trading away in return for the riches of the Net […] is our old linear thought process. The calm, focused, undistracted linear mind is being pushed aside by a new kind of mind that wants and needs to take in and dole out information in short, disjointed, often overlapping bursts…” The use of the phrases ‘trading away’ and ‘pushed aside’ suggests that the author is of the opinion that a balance is not feasible between the two modes of thinking--that they are incompatible processes. Retain option 1.
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Question for 100 RCs for Practice Questions- 67
Try yourself:Why does the author begin the passage with the description of a scene from a movie?
Explanation
Options 1 & 2 are incorrect. Refer paragraph 1, it is HAL – i.e. the supercomputer – whose ‘mind is going’ due to the actions of a human astronaut. These options inaccurately reverse the cause-effect direction. Eliminate options 1 & 2.
Option 3 is incorrect. Paragraph 2 states thus: “My mind isn’t going – so far as I can tell – but it’s changing.” Thus, we cannot conclude as given in option 3 that the author’s mind is going. Eliminate option 3.
Option 4 is correct. It can be inferred from paragraph 2 that the author chose this particular scene as an analogy for how he – like HAL – can feel that his mind is changing and has the sense that someone or something is ‘tinkering’ with his brain. Retain option 4.
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Question for 100 RCs for Practice Questions- 67
Try yourself:What is the author’s main argument in this passage?
Explanation
Option 1 is incorrect. The author highlights what prolonged and habitual use of the internet does to the way we think and process information. So, option 1, which tries to make the internet a dangerous thing in itself, is incorrect. Eliminate option 1.
Option 2 is incorrect. The passage does not concern itself about whether printed books will become redundant or not. The main idea in the passage is more about what prolonged use of the internet does to our information processing skills. Eliminate option 2.
Option 4 is incorrect. The author does not suggest that people will lose the ability to think on their own due to the Internet. Eliminate option 4.
Option 3 is correct. The passage is all about what getting used to the short disjointed bursts of information from the internet does to our mind and to our capability to process information for sustained periods. In the penultimate paragraph the author explicitly states thus: ‘the more they use the web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.’ Retain option 3.
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Question for 100 RCs for Practice Questions- 67
Try yourself:Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words; now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.’ What does the author mean by this?
Explanation
This sentence – the last one of paragraph 4 – sums up the author’s point and links to the struggles he describes in paragraph 2. According to the author, he used to be able to read deeply and immerse himself in books. Now he finds that his concentration starts drifting after a page or two; his mind has become used to taking in information in the fast-paced way the Internet distributes it. So the analogy in the quoted sentence refers to his past and present experiences with reading.
Option 2 is incorrect. The author does not allude to the increase in speed of reading, in the passage. This option is out of context. Reject option 2.
Option 3 is incorrect. The passage makes no mention of the author’s vocabulary. Again this option is out of context and can be rejected. Eliminate option 3.
Option 4 is incorrect. The author does not have trouble understanding books as stated in this option. There is no reference to ‘deeper meanings’ in the passage. Eliminate option 4.
Option 1 is correct. It correctly captures the underlying analogy by implying that the author is unable to read deeply with concentration and contemplation. Retain option 1.
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Question for 100 RCs for Practice Questions- 67
Try yourself:The author’s attitude towards the Internet is that of:
Explanation
The author has positive as well as negative attitude towards the Internet: he acknowledges its advantages in the third and the last paragraphs.
Options 1 and 4 are incorrect. These options mention only negative attitudes i.e. ‘anxiety and pessimism’ and ‘concern and aversion’ respectively. Eliminate options 1 & 4.
Option 3 is incorrect. ‘Condemnation’, which means ‘severe disapproval or criticism’, is a little too strong to blame the internet for. Eliminate option 3.
Option 2 is correct. The author expresses ‘admiration’, which is a positive attitude as well as ‘apprehension’ or uneasiness, which is a negative attitude, towards the Internet and the effect it has on his and other people’s minds. Retain option 2.
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