Author David Shenk is a firm believer that the internet is not such a good thing. In his essay he supports his stance by stating that there are too many ways to get side tracked when on the internet. "Reading gives way to surfing, a meandering peripatetic journey through a maze of threads."(Shenk. Riverside Reader) This is how he feels the internet disorganizes peoples thoughts, one minute they are reading something and the next they are looking ant some pop up add or searching for something else. He also points out that on the internet there is never really

A complete opposite perspective then Shenk's is Wendy Lessers. Lesser has learned to embrace the internet which she was skeptic about at first and is now almost addicted to. In her essay she tells how she was almost forced in to using the internet when she left America for four months and could not afford to keep making long distance calls or wait weeks for letters to arrive. Before she left she got a lab top and an email service so she could talk to people at home. She also signed up a friend of hers who was "very resistant to this idea."(Lesser, Riverside Reader) At first they used email mainly as a toy having micro conversations, but once she left for London and had a message waiting for her when she arrived and instantly sent one back it "was a revelation for both of us." (Lesser, Riverside Reader) Soon her fiend and she were exchanging four or five messages a day and the five hour time difference was nothing because they could leave a message while one was sleeping and a reply was there when the other awoke. One thing she thought might get lost in there writing was each other's personal

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 741
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)