Paperback, 280 pages
English language
Published June 6, 2011 by W.W. Norton Company.
“Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?
Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share …
“Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?
Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.
Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic—a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.
Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes—Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive—even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.
Pop history of technology and neuroscience, the mental processes of books vs media embedded in distraction, the ongoing plasticity of our minds to optimize towards what we attend to, failures of hypermedia in education and adtech-driven fragmentation of thought.
Extremely interesting, very well readable book on how the digital media and tools we consume and use, affect our brains. I was shocked to find out how radically memory, attention span and even empathy are influenced by these tools. I already was sceptical of these technologies and the prominent role they have in our everyday lives, but this book truly convinced me of the importance of de-digitalizing some parts of life.
Highly recommend!
I was drawn to this book after reading the author's article "Is Google Making us Stupid" in The Atlantic, and I share some of the author's concerns about becoming less attentive and finding it difficult to concentrate on tasks for any length of time. Carr does a remarkable job of bringing together relevant research, and he provides an impressive history of how technology has changed how people think over time. Obviously new information technologies draw our attention and distract us in many ways, but Carr seems less able to explain how we will continue to adapt than he seems to be defending the necessity of preserving how we have thought in the past.
