There is indeed an overreliance on technology in the current world. Carrs is right to make assumption that overreliance on some technological tools might not make people eager to learn or master some skills that come with direct observations and doing the things. Tools like the GPS are important but having manually mastered the art of locating places before using it makes it more fun and educative to people. The overreliance on other tools like CAD makes work easier although the mastery of manual identification and doing things might elude the users.
The part of argument according to Carrs that I agree with is the loss of navigational skills caused by the overreliance on devices like the global position system. Many people might not be bothered to look for interesting phenomena before visiting a place. They will believe as long as they have GPS, they can locate anyplace and indeed forget to enjoy the natural fauna or master the art of knowing where everything is. With the GPS mapping, we rarely exercise our mental mapping skills. In case the GPS equipment stops functioning, the person who will have over relied on it might not be able to find way easily.
The part of Carr’s argument that I do not agree with is the assertion that tools like CAD assists less in the memorization of a drawing than manually drawing. While he asserts that the movements of muscles during drawings and sketches on paper assists in the memory of what was done, CAD can also achieve the same. The advantage of CAD will be to get more drawings in the memory at a shorter time and if you get the same problem in future, it becomes really easy to remember. Memory is actually enhanced by doing a lot of exercises on the same thing since the visual aspect of the drawing is the most important aspect. Moreover, manual drawings do not allow the design flexibility that can be achieved by using CAD .
References
Realizing the benefits of BIM. (2011). Retrieved from Autodesk Building Information Modelling: http://www.autodesk.com/bim
