hugh reviewed Superbloom by Nicholas Carr
This book could have been a Facebook post
1 star
I resisted reading Nicholas Carr's The Shallows for years because when it was first published, I thought he just "didn't get it". Last year I read it and realised he had been right about most things way back then, so I was excited to read his new Superbloom.
Unfortunately, this book is a waste of time. It might, possibly, have made a pretty good article if it was strongly edited. As a book it is ponderous, highly derivative, repetitive, and ultimately left me wondering what the point was. Carr throws in some numbers from dubious psychology studies and then makes sweeping statements about "young people" of various eras. Much of what he has to say was written better and much earlier by others. There's nothing new, and little particularly interesting here, and the section on AI in particular was out of date by the time it went to …
I resisted reading Nicholas Carr's The Shallows for years because when it was first published, I thought he just "didn't get it". Last year I read it and realised he had been right about most things way back then, so I was excited to read his new Superbloom.
Unfortunately, this book is a waste of time. It might, possibly, have made a pretty good article if it was strongly edited. As a book it is ponderous, highly derivative, repetitive, and ultimately left me wondering what the point was. Carr throws in some numbers from dubious psychology studies and then makes sweeping statements about "young people" of various eras. Much of what he has to say was written better and much earlier by others. There's nothing new, and little particularly interesting here, and the section on AI in particular was out of date by the time it went to the printer.
To top it all off, when we finally get to his conclusion it's literally to just give up:
Now it's too late to rethink the system. It has burrowed its way too deeply into society and the social mind. But maybe it's not too late to change ourselves.
Not only do these two sentences contradict each other, Carr's "solution" is that we ...just have more self-control and get off the computer. Gee why hasn't anyone else thought of that.
