Book Review: the Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr Essay

Many are still quoting from Nicholas Carrs 2008 Atlantic article Is Google Making Us bore? Here in The Shallows What the net income Is Doing to Our Brains, he elaborates to illustrate precisely how the Internet changes our lives. Along the way, Carrs highly entertaining book inspires us of how the enceinte thinkers of past centuries did just fine without a hyperlinked database of all the worlds knowledge at hand.In the 21st century, we are facing the consequences of our deflect and scattered society, and we make choices about the impact of engine room, weighted with assumptions about the temperament of knowledge and intelligence. The Shallows What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains presents a thoughtful, if frightening, look at what were doing to ourselves.We carry to take in information the way the Internet distributes it, in a swiftly moving stream of particles. At best we skim the surface, sooner than go deep into information, and our fragmented journey results in lack o f density and inclusion body.Pay attention as the author cites his own difficulties with exercise and that of others who reign problems with their ability to read and absorb. Sadly much of our reading has become skim and scrolling.In just twenty years, since the webs graphical web browser was created, the Internet has become the communication and information medium of choice. Those of us who grew up in an analog youth can still remember when AOL was the lapse consumer choice for web use. Do you remember AOLs weekly parcelling of a limited amount of web surfing?Carr colors his abbreviation with interesting stories and profiles of some of the worlds sterling(prenominal) thinkers and writers, including Socrates and Plato. He reaches remote back in time to bring us a all-encompassing understanding of the development of human intellect over centuries.In the youthful 19th century, when first using a typewriter, Nietzsche quickly found a difference in his work when not using pap er and pen. Our writeequipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.The Shallows illustrates that every technology is an expression of human entrust and changes how we think. The typewriter, sextant, globe, book newspaper and computer are all overlyls for self-expression, our identity and relations with others.In Chapter Four, The Deepening Page, Carr creates an interesting parallel between forthwiths technology divide and Johannes Gutenbergs publish press invention, developed in the mid-15th century. While it was as central an event as the Internet is today, it too was out of reach for the poor, illiterate, isolated or incurious. The biggest difference between the printing press and the web today, other than speed, is the webs bi-directional communication ability. Yet, Carr quotes marshal McLuhan stating, A new medium is never an addition to an old one. Nor does it add the old one in peace.Today, when a printed book is transferred to an electronic thingumajig connected to the Internet, it trolls into something very like a web site, says Carr. Yet, he reflects on what this means, when the ability to continually update a book removes the sense of occluded front from book writing. He raises the question of whether an authors pressure to come across perfection will diminish, along with artistic rigor that pressure imposed.The Jugglers Brain, Chapter Seven, should be mandatory reading for us to understand effects of technology in the school system, after a decade of using hypertext on computer screens instead of printed pages. Over time, it was apparent that evaluating links and navigating paths was mentally challenging, and saucy to the act of reading. Studies quickly determined that hypertext increases readers cognitive load and is more than the norm reader is capable of handling and remembering.As skimming becomes our dominant climate of reading, we as a society and individually, pay a price. With lessened comprehension and compulsive multitas king, were easily distracted, compounding our problems. As Carrsays, The Net is do us smarter, in other words, only if we define intelligence by the Nets own standards.Do yourself a favor and turn off your browser and email while you read the section on attentiveness. It points to a problem many of us experience without understanding, thinking were faced with too much information. The reality may be that changes in our brains, as we use the web, turn us into shallow thinkers.The Shallows is more than a report on the current state of technology in society. The greatest problem is the more we use the web, the more we train our brain to be distracted to process information very quickly and very expeditiously but without sustained attention. Its worth reading this book to remind ourselves that we are responsible for the priorities we set and the choices we make.Reviewers note In the complexity of todays technology, and as proof of the dramatic changes the simple act of reading a book, The Shallows is available in hardcover, as well as a Kindle edition, audio book, CD, Audible Audio edition, cassette and MP3. Such is the reality in the modern world.