The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Really great book that I feel I read at the right time. Makes a great point on the subconscious effects of technology. While also making some great insights about society and thought along the way.

“What was so remarkable about book reading was that the deep concentration was combined with the highly active and efficient deciphering of text and interpretation of meaning. The reading of a sequence of printed pages was valuable not just for the knowledge readers acquired from the author’s words but for the way those words set off intellectual vibrations within their own minds.’’‘Intellectual vibrations’?‘’In the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged, undistracted reading of a book, people made their own associations, drew their own inferences and analogies, fostered their own ideas. They thought deeply as they read deeply.’’ (62)This was primarily a religious, essentially Biblical devotion. How experienced?“Even the earliest silent readers recognized the striking change in their consciousness that took place as they immersed themselves in the pages of a book. The medieval bishop Isaac of Syria described how, whenever he read to himself,’’Of course, these were almost overwhelmingly reading religious books, usually the Bible or Greek philosophers. Deep reading. . .“as in a dream, I enter a state when my sense and thoughts are concentrated. Then, when with prolonging of this silence the turmoil of memories is stilled in my heart, ceaseless waves of joy are sent me by inner thoughts, beyond expectation suddenly arising to delight my heart.”Wow! Who does this? How significant?“Reading a book was a meditative act, but it didn’t involve a clearing of the mind. It involved a filling, or replenishing, of the mind. Readers disengaged their attention from the outward flow of passing stimuli in order to engage it more deeply with an inward flow of words, ideas, and emotions. That was—and is—the essence of the unique mental process of deep reading. It was the technology of the book that made this “strange anomaly” in our psychological history possible. The brain of the book reader was more than a literate brain. It was a literary brain.” (62)Carr develops this theme throughout - the importance, even essential - process of ‘deep reading’. For example, even the physical form of the brain changes . . .“One of the most important lessons we’ve learned from the study of neuroplasticity is that the mental capacities, the very neural circuits, we develop for one purpose can be put to other uses as well. As our ancestors imbued their minds with the discipline to follow a line of argument or narrative through a succession of printed pages, they became more contemplative, reflective, and imaginative. “New thought came more readily to a brain that had already learned how to rearrange itself to read,” says Maryanne Wolf; “the increasingly sophisticated intellectual skills promoted by reading and writing added to our intellectual repertoire.” The quiet of deep reading became, as Stevens understood, “part of the mind.” (74)Carr emphasizes that this - contemplative, reflective, imaginative - brain is being replaced by the - distracted, shallow brain.“Jordan Grafman explains that the constant shifting of our attention when we’re online may make our brains more nimble when it comes to multitasking, but improving our ability to multitask actually hampers our ability to think deeply and creatively. “Does optimizing for multitasking result in better functioning—that is, creativity, inventiveness, productiveness? The answer is, in more cases than not, no,” says Grafman. “The more you multitask, the less deliberative you become; the less able to think and reason out a problem.”Well. . .won’t all this extra information help?“You become, he argues, more likely to rely on conventional ideas and solutions rather than challenging them with original lines of thought.’’ (140)No ability to challenge ideas? Where is Luther, Galileo, Faraday - when we need them?THE WATCHDOG AND THE THIEFOne HAL AND METwo THE VITAL PATHS - a digression on what the brain thinks about when it thinks about itselfThree TOOLS OF THE MINDFour THE DEEPENING PAGE - a digression on lee de forest and his amazing audionFive A MEDIUM OF THE MOST GENERAL NATURESix THE VERY IMAGE OF A BOOKSeven THE JUGGLER’S BRAIN - a digression on the buoyancy of IQ scoresEight THE CHURCH OF GOOGLENine SEARCH, MEMORY - a digression on the writing of this bookTen A THING LIKE ME“What the Net diminishes is Johnson’s primary kind of knowledge: the ability to know, in depth, a subject for ourselves, to construct within our own minds the rich and idiosyncratic set of connections that give rise to a singular intelligence.’’ (143)Another theme is the difference between human mental processes and computers. . .“The old botanical metaphors for memory, with their emphasis on continual, indeterminate organic growth, are, it turns out, remarkably apt. In fact, they seem to be more fitting than our new, fashionably high-tech metaphors, which equate biological memory with the precisely defined bits of digital data stored in databases and processed by computer chips. Governed by highly variable biological signals, chemical, electrical, and genetic, every aspect of human memory—the way it’s formed, maintained, connected, recalled—has almost infinite gradations. Computer memory exists as simple binary bits—ones and zeros—that are processed through fixed circuits, which can be either open or closed but nothing in between.’’ (188)Reminds me of the wise man’s illustration of spiritual growth -“So he went on to say: “In this way the Kingdom of God is just as when a man casts seeds on the ground. He sleeps at night and rises up by day, and the seeds sprout and grow tall—just how, he does not know. On its own the ground bears fruit gradually, first the stalk, then the head, finally the full grain in the head.’’ (Mark 4:26)A biological metaphor, not a mechanical one!Carr connects another idea that I had not considered.“As McLuhan acknowledged, he was far from the first to observe technology’s numbing effect. It’s an ancient idea, one that was given perhaps its most eloquent and ominous expression by the Old Testament psalmist:“Their idols are silver and gold, The work of men’s hands.They have mouths, but they speak not;Eyes have they, but they see not;They have ears, but they hear not;Noses have they, but they smell not;They have hands, but they handle not;Feet have they, but they walk not;Neither speak they through their throat.They that make them are like unto them;So is every one that trusteth in them.’’“The price we pay to assume technology’s power is alienation. The toll can be particularly high with our intellectual technologies. The tools of the mind amplify and in turn numb the most intimate, the most human, of our natural capacities—those for reason, perception, memory, emotion.’’Of course, the psalmist was condemning idols, not technology. Nevertheless, perhaps Carr has a point, maybe we really are ‘worshipping the work of our own hands’.

The central point in Nicholas Carr's new book, The Shallows is that our brains change based on the technology we use and the technology we use changes our brains. "Every intellectual technology embodies a intellectual ethic, a set of assumptions about how the human mind works or should work" That quote sums up the essence of the book.In the case of the internet, Carr says that the sheer volume of messages and the web's very design are changing our brains away from deep thought toward more rapid response and that in that change we are losing our ability to think deeply.Carr takes careful consideration of this idea, building a case for the internet's impact on our brain over the majority of the chapters in this book.I recommend it for people interested in understanding the impact of our tools on our brains. This is as much a `brain study' book as anything.You have to read what Carr writes, which is one reason for the recommendation. As his PR machine and popular press reactions to the book are not the same as what he says.In many ways, Carr is creating controversy to drive the kind of attention the web culture craves that drives book sales and other opportunities. He wants to be as much of a force in the `shallow' internet world as in the `deep' world that preceded it.His ideas are not that radical. He does not say that we should ban the internet, or that the FDA should regulate the internet as an addictive or harmful device. This is not a technology-bashing book that his media hype or the hype around his prior books would lead you to believe.The book is a detailed study of studies rather than original research. Carr is more of a journalist than a scientist, thinker or policy maker. That is ok as he raises good points and I found the book to have two major sources of value.First, the book raises an important issue that we are responsible for our actions and our brains, not the technology we use. By pointing out the potential impact of the Internet and its applications on how we think, act and work, Carr provides a powerful reminder associated with any technology we use to the extent that we now use the web.This first point is pretty much summed up in the first and the last chapter of the book. The argument is better made in an article and if you want to get to the essence of the argument, I would suggest reading the debate between Carr and Clay Shirkey in the Wall Street Journal "Does the Internet Make You Dumber?" published on June 6th 2010.Full disclosure, I am starting Shirkey's book after I finish this review.Unfortunately Carr raises these issues without offering recommendations on how to retain those skills while still having the internet work for you. If his next book is around `going deep' then the sincerity of this work will be compromised and the whole point would then be to sell books.Second, the book is a great resource/compendium of scientific and philosophical discussions about the development of our mental tools from books to computers, their impact on the brain and society. Carr spends a whole Chapter 8, discussing Google that provides an interesting insight into the company. Prior discussions about clocks, maps and other tools are equally interesting.Its funny but in a way this book is like an annotated and bound set of edited and researched search findings. It is an ironic aspect of the book that while Carr decries Google and how it chops up big ideas; he uses the same approach in print, which is apparently ok.Overall, recommended for people who are interested in the relationship between technology, thinking and society.If you do not want to get into the depth of the argument or all the studies supporting it, then read the WSJ article, Carr's Blog or other sources. They will provide the essence of the argument, so take the time to read it in a quite place so you can think through it.This book is a one sided as it views the web as a threat and it raises more alarms than provides alternatives. This is not a policy book, but I can see people using to try to make policy. Restricting technology has never seemed to work, particularly a technology that is as ubiquitous and impactful as the web.The Shallows reminds us that these things are tools and that we can easily and unknowingly use the tools in ways that reshape ourselves. That point alone is worthwhile to understand, regardless of how you feel about the web, your attention span or society.STRENGTHSThe discussion of the brain science, while going into too much detail at times, was strength of the book. I would recommend this book as a Brain Book as much as a book about the internet and society.The characterizations of shallow behavior are accurate and things that the reader will recognize. The need to check email, validate yourself externally, etc are all symptoms of the points Carr is raising and the help the reader see the issue at a personal level.Carr tries hard to keep the argument at an intellectual level. He could and sometimes does drift into other points, but by in large this is an examination of the impact of technology on our brains and the way we think.He does recognize that the web is a tool that is here to stay and that we cannot all go off into a meadow in Massachusetts to unplug. He recognizes the point but provides little advice on what to do about it.CHALLENGESCarr raises the specter of the Internet and our brains without offering concrete advice and tools to manage it. He says that he had to unplug himself by moving to Colorado, limiting email and stopping his blog. It would have been more helpful if he could have provided advice on how to continue to keep deep cognitive skills while using the internet properly as not all of us can unplug.A note William Powers's Hamlet's Blackberry offers better advice on how to manage in this world in its last few chapters, but overall book is considerably weaker than this one.The book is `conservative' with hints of elitism in its views, basically asserting that past technologies were ok because they made intellectual life better, but this one is worse because its different. Seems that the author is ok with prior technologies shaped his way of thinking but he is a little closed to the idea that others in the future may think differently.The book's argument is carried by the weight of studies Carr reviews. He is not really advancing an argument on his own as much as raising the volume by integrating evidence provided by others. It is as if Carr knows that the subject itself would not provide enough content for an entire book. Fortunately these studies and his many digressions are themselves interesting, but they add weight to the book and they are not his central argument.The book talks about Google, the Kindle, etc. But it is surprisingly silent on the issue of online education. Sure it does talk about the fact that people thought the web would be a great educational tool, but he does not talk about online degree programs - the type of work that builds deep thinking and communications skills for professional lives. Schools like the University of Phoenix are growing like crazy and they seem like an obvious point for Carr to make but he misses it.The book is repetitive with others on the subject as they all rehash arguments by McLuhan, Seneca, Socrates, Emerson, etc. These are common citations that while powerful are reaching the point of being over used.

well researched! if you have a strange feeling the internet is affecting you.......it is!also read a book called "distracted" also excellent

Esse livro precisa ser impresso em português o quanto antes! É extremamente essencial para os tempos atuais. Eu li a versão de 2011 em português e esse é exatamente o mesmo, mas com um capítulo a mais no final. Apesar de ter sido escrito em 2007-2009, o conteúdo é atual e alarmante. Nicholas nos mostra, com base em vários estudos, como a internet alterou nossa forma de pensar e agir (assim como outras ferramentas criadas no passado, como o relógio e mapa). Hoje em dia, nosso cérebro tem mais dificuldade em se aprofundar em algo, em se concentrar e em se manter focado por muito tempo. O cérebro acostumou-se com estímulos rápidos e superficiais, graças ao que a internet nos proporciona: acesso a milhões de informações em questão de segundos, de forma muito descomplicada. O último capítulo é mais atualizado e aborda bastante sobre os smartphones e suas implicações na nossa mente. É preocupante, estamos nos tornando mais superficiais e reféns desses aparelhos. Me sinto muito privilegiado em ter absorvido esse conteúdo. Mesmo não tendo inglês fluente, consegui entender grande parte dos textos. Sugiro a leitura a todos, principalmente àqueles que estão preocupados e que notaram que suas mentes estão inquietas e que não conseguem se concentrar por muito tempo.

A must for professors and teachers. Makes a good case that the continuous distractions from the Web preclude deep thinking.

I read this book for my lectures in Cyberculture. I found it quite useful, perhaps slightly less academic than I expected. Nonetheless, I still learnt substantially about the topic. It made me aware of how technology really affects us both physically and psychologically. It prompted me to research more on some of the sections, which were particularly interesting for me, for instance, how the technology affects the size of the hippocampal area of the brain. I would recommend this book to any interested to know more about the impact of technology on our daily lives. I would say the book is a good extension to Carr’s essay how Google is affecting our brains.

I would not have considered the activity of reading a technology, but it is, or was, a new kind of technology back then that had both advantages and disadvantages. We take reading for granted nowadays.I am honestly in love with this book. It is super interesting and it does not only talk about the internet, but also about other technologies like reading, writing, clocks and other tools that we use and how our brain starts to perceive them as extensions of our body or mind and how that affects us.There is only one thing that I disagreed with. The author claims that some e-books are distractive and contain hyperlinks which would render deep reading impossible. I have read many things on my kindle, and if anything, the kindle has helped me stay focused as I could not simply tap on a word and see its meaning without having to use my phone which would bombard me with notifications the second I turned on the internet. However, I sort of know what the author was referring to. Funnily enough, I could click on a few books that the author has mentioned himself in this book and I did have to decide whenever I saw the book symbol next to the title if I did or did not want to check out the book. I did click on one of the links. This however disrupted the session of deep reading that I was having. Links inside of books can indeed get distracting or interrupt your reading, so I hope that fewer people will resort to hyperlinking everything inside books.Otherwise, I am so happy to have read this book and I am tempted to buy a paper version of it as well. I'd totally recommend it if you are interested in how your brain works and reacts to changes in environment, tools and so on. It is very interesting to find out what changed people's minds in the past and what is happening to our minds today.