What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains - The Shallows

I found the author had so much footnoted that I wasn't sure there was any new points he actually made. So difficult to get through; I bought if because it was a selection for my local book club. I do not agree with the author's position on the way the Internet has impacted lives and thinking (negatively).

This book is not an easy read--more like a college text. It has interesting ideas for us to think about and how our brain can change when bombarded with all the messaging from computers, phones, twitter, etc.

This book for the most part is a regurgitation of brain studies, disjointed and with no clear prescriptions. At times it reads like a college paper, where the goal is to cite the maximum number of sources in support of a single simple idea. This worked as an article in The Atlantic but it gets tiresome when stretched over the length of a book. I suggest you look up that original article ("Is Google Making Us Stupid?" - available for free on the Atlantic's website). If you already have, then you'll get nothing new from the book.

I needed this book for my college class. It was in very good shape and I enjoyed every minute of this book. I would highly recommend this book and the company that sold it to me. It was a really good price and extremely good condition.

I familiarized myself with the work of Mr. Carr after I read his Does IT Matter? article for one of my graduate business classes. Since 2007, I am a regular reader of his blog, and I eagerly anticipated his previous book The Big Switch.

His latest effort is another worthwhile read with important insights into what is happening to our minds in the age of the Internet. I, myself, have struggled with the same ideas and issues described in The Shallows and found it very relevant. The book provides great examples and scientific explanations about memory, brain plasticity, and recent advances in cognitive science. Maybe some of the examples and topics from the book would be familiar to followers of his blog, but now they are laid out in such a way, that larger implication emerge from the text.

When I first came across this book I noticed that a lot of my friends on social media were expressing disgust or boredom with the thesis of "Is the Internet frying our brain?" After all, who but a curmudgeon would claim that the most vital and transformative technology of our time might have a dark side? Especially at a time when leading edge educators are working furiously to bring their field up to date by incorporating the best of the latest technology in a way that improves education. Against this background Carr's book seems reminiscent of those poor backward folks who opposed the printing press. As the brilliant and funny curmudgeon Neil Postman once said about himself, Carr is indeed playing the role of the Luddite in some ways. Still, neither Postman nor Carr were trying to dismantle the Internet or just shriek an alarm with their work. They are trying to help us understand something important. With that in mind, let's take a more careful look at this book.

The Shallows is a thoroughly and broadly researched and beautifully written polemic which I found to represent two different things. First, it is a media analysis and culture critique. Second it is a pessimistic theory about the overall effect of web media on our thinking ability over time.

The first aspect will be a delight for those interested in the evolution of human cognition, those fascinated with media effects per se, the traditionally minded book scholars, and assorted geezers. It is a very satisfying cultural media critique very much in the spirit of Marshall Macluhan and Neil Postman even though it lacks Macluhan's showmanship or Postman's remarkable ever-present humor. It was this aspect made the book a worthwhile reminder for me, introduced me to some fascinating recent cognitive science work supporting the view that different media encourage different ways of thinking, and helped tie together a number of broad ideas for me regarding the evolution of human cognition and the influence of the tools we use.

The second aspect, for the more technically psychologically minded, and the more alarmist and pessimistic part, is a clever argument for competing and mutually destructive habits of attention allocation: (1) the nimble web browsing mind that constantly reserves attention and working memory for making navigational decisions and is exposed to massive amounts of information, and (2) the sustained attention ability that we learn with great effort over time for the purpose of reading and reflective thinking.

The second aspect is the one that most of the articles and marketing have been pushing, a thesis I'll call "Help! The Internet is Frying My Brain!"

Carr argues that the nimble web mind better exploits our more natural "bottom-up" or stimulus driven attention mechanisms, which is why we find it so powerful. He also argues that the undistracted reflective mind is far less natural but has unique advantages for human cognition. So it is worth retaining, he argues, _and_ we need to keep working deliberately at it in order to retain it. That alone would be an important point. Thus far, I think the attention argument is completely consistent with the media critique, and supports it. None of this so far says that our brain is being fried by the Internet.

Now comes the trickier part, and the part of Carr's thesis that to me is most controversial, the two ways of using attention may not only compete but may actually be mutually destructive. Carr offers his own experience and that of several other serious book readers to show that they are having increasing trouble reading for prolonged periods. Carr says that there is neuroscience data showing that this may be the result of web reading rather than just advancing age or other less ominous explanations.

This "fried brain" thesis is the part that is either revolutionary, or becomes the fatal flaw in The Shallows, depending on whether or not it is true. So is it true? Does Carr persuade us that not only are we thinking differently with different media (a very strong case I think) but that the Internet is frying our brains?

Today we remember the iconic wise curmudgeon, Socrates, only through his students. That's because old Soc didn't believe in writing. It seems he was a great proponent of contemplative thought and taught that contemplation depends heavily on memory. He thought it would seriously hurt people's memory to rely too much on writing things down. His criticism seems perverse today, even as we remember Soc fondly for his deep reflection and his provocative teaching methods. That's the historical role into which Nicholas Carr has cast himself, the media critic who invokes wisdom and reflection and plays them against seemingly unstoppable cultural trends towards greater convenience, efficiency, and information distribution.

Carr is the guy who wants to warn us about the hazards of writing on our memory. About the damage that the printing press will do to culture. About how TV will change us for the worse. And now about how the Internet will shift our values, instill bad habits, hurt our reading and thinking skills, and even destroy our powers of sustained concentration.

Socrates wasn't entirely wrong even though he bucked a trend that in retrospect was downright silly to oppose. People who don't specifically practice remembering things and instead devote everything to writing do find that they have weaker memories. That's the reason for all those memory courses, the best of which essentially just teach the same methods socrates would have used. The widespread distribution of news did have negative consequences in terms of reinforcing bias and propaganda on a massive scale.

There are some adverse consequences of all the TV watching we do. However none of these things has had the dire consequences that culture critics predicted, we have adapted in turn in some way to each of them, more or less successfully.

So Carr isn't entirely wrong about the tradeoffs involved in using modern technologies. He is not a "Luddite" and he does make a number of valid points.

Carr is not telling us to dismantle the Internet. He fully recognizes the value of technology. He is rather playing Socrates to the modern students. Most people, desperately trying to keep up with the amazing new technologies and learn new ways of getting better information with them will ignore Carr's message pretty much out of hand. "Carr is the only one affected negatively by the Internet, the rest of us are thriving."

Those folks who ignore culture critics out of hand are taking for granted the skills and expertise that many people have cultivated through sheer effort using sustained concentration. They are buying into the attractive fashionable modern viewpoint that just being exposed to a lot of information via technology will make you smart. The majority of people, the ones who go along with that implicit confusion of information and personal knowledge, will indeed lose some of the things we take for granted today. I think Carr is right about that, and that is the most profound message in this book. LISTEN TO IT. Even if you think, with good reason, that it is silly to imagine that using search engines and hyperlinks will hurt your concentration.

Still, the message that the Internet will make us stupid isn't quite right. Writing didn't entirely destroy our memory, it just shifted the habits we need to cultivate to preserve it. It seems like the wisest among us will recognize the value that culture critics like Carr have always had, they will appreciate the detail and care that good media critics like Carr put into their warnings, and they will remember the real tradeoffs between different kinds of media and take responsibility for the cultivation of their own minds.

Just as wise modern students still practice the methods used by Socrates, they will still learn to read and think deeply using books or the electronic equivalent, the wisest will still turn off the TV and other distractions when sustained concentration is called for, and they will understand the difference between various conditions and different kinds of media in general and will use each to its best advantage.

So long as we aren't stupid enough to stop cultivating our individual minds regardless of technology changes, media itself will not make us stupid. Listen to Carr's message, learn it, and then apply it to your use of technology. It's easy to dismiss the claim that the Internet will somehow fry your brain. It's another matter entirely to dismiss the value of cultivating your mind through personal reflection.

Related background reading:

On the evolution of cognition and symbolic thought (and secondarily, the role of reading):
A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness
The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain

On reading and the brain:
Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

On the role of tools in cognition:
Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition Series)

On the role of media technology in culture:
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

On the trend to rising IQ scores in modern times:
What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect

On the practical limitations of human working memory:
Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long
The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory

The Shallows is an expansion of Carr's 2007 article in The Atlantic, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The question with a book of this derivation is always: does it achieve more than the article did, or is it just a puffed up excuse to gain from the notoriety of the original piece, now freely available on the Internet? To that question, I answer that it is indeed more than the original piece. It provides much greater depth of detail for the brain science research that centrally informs the book, and he also expands on the nature and history of deep reading, in a way that I (someone who is doing research in this field) think is quite deft and responsible. In a sense, the earlier magazine article was really a book masquerading as a magazine article, whereas these days most books are magazine articles masquerading as books.

That said, The Shallows is somewhat less than the original Atlantic article in that Carr, as he approaches the end, falls into the most predictable sort of romantic nostalgia. We're becoming machines. The machines are taking our souls away. The Internet is compromising our integrity as humans. Machines are colonizing our minds. Soon they will be more interesting than we are, just like Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I've heard this all before! Certainly, a man as clever and as hard-working as Nicholas Carr could have thought a little harder.

(An aside: Perhaps he's proving his point that we've already lost our ability to think deeply. Or perhaps he's DISproving his point that going to country--Carr had to "get away from it all" to write this book--helps us to be contemplative whereas cities only distract us.)

We need people who care about the things books have done for us and continue to do for us who can *also* think beyond the nineteenth century. We can't leave this to the machine people. So, I end up in the middle on this book: 3 stars. The first 80% is good but it fails to deliver a "where we go from here..." Let the good parts inspire the rest of us to take up where Carr has left off.

The Shallows is one of those rare books that frustrated me to no end but, by the conclusion, was one that I respected. It forced me to think more deeply on an issue I've long dwelled on (the issue being how our lives are increasingly merging with the digital) and similarly to see it from a new viewpoint. Nicholas Carr's prose seethes with pomposity, but don't be distracted by it because the underlying message is important even though it borders on being out-of-touch and reactionary. My only criticism is this book is barely a decade out from the start of the digital revolution. That's not enough perspective. I get that it needed to be written eventually, but it's too soon to pronounce a good/bad judgment on something this unprecedented. An analogy from ancient history would be like 10 years after a group of hunter gatherers switched over to agriculture someone from the group laments the change as unnatural. I'm not arguing that this seemingly inevitable digital integration is a good thing. I'm saying it's too soon to tell.

Also, this book came out at the start of the smart phone era. I doubt Mr. Carr could've foreseen how our relationship with our tech devices was about to get a whole lot dumber before it got smarter.

When I first came across this book I noticed that a lot of my friends on social media were expressing disgust or boredom with the thesis of "Is the Internet frying our brain?" After all, who but a curmudgeon would claim that the most vital and transformative technology of our time might have a dark side? Especially at a time when leading edge educators are working furiously to bring their field up to date by incorporating the best of the latest technology in a way that improves education. Against this background Carr's book seems reminiscent of those poor backward folks who opposed the printing press. As the brilliant and funny curmudgeon Neil Postman once said about himself, Carr is indeed playing the role of the Luddite in some ways. Still, neither Postman nor Carr were trying to dismantle the Internet or just shriek an alarm with their work. They are trying to help us understand something important. With that in mind, let's take a more careful look at this book.

The Shallows is a thoroughly and broadly researched and beautifully written polemic which I found to represent two different things. First, it is a media analysis and culture critique. Second it is a pessimistic theory about the overall effect of web media on our thinking ability over time.

The first aspect will be a delight for those interested in the evolution of human cognition, those fascinated with media effects per se, the traditionally minded book scholars, and assorted geezers. It is a very satisfying cultural media critique very much in the spirit of Marshall Macluhan and Neil Postman even though it lacks Macluhan's showmanship or Postman's remarkable ever-present humor. It was this aspect made the book a worthwhile reminder for me, introduced me to some fascinating recent cognitive science work supporting the view that different media encourage different ways of thinking, and helped tie together a number of broad ideas for me regarding the evolution of human cognition and the influence of the tools we use.

The second aspect, for the more technically psychologically minded, and the more alarmist and pessimistic part, is a clever argument for competing and mutually destructive habits of attention allocation: (1) the nimble web browsing mind that constantly reserves attention and working memory for making navigational decisions and is exposed to massive amounts of information, and (2) the sustained attention ability that we learn with great effort over time for the purpose of reading and reflective thinking.

The second aspect is the one that most of the articles and marketing have been pushing, a thesis I'll call "Help! The Internet is Frying My Brain!"

Carr argues that the nimble web mind better exploits our more natural "bottom-up" or stimulus driven attention mechanisms, which is why we find it so powerful. He also argues that the undistracted reflective mind is far less natural but has unique advantages for human cognition. So it is worth retaining, he argues, _and_ we need to keep working deliberately at it in order to retain it. That alone would be an important point. Thus far, I think the attention argument is completely consistent with the media critique, and supports it. None of this so far says that our brain is being fried by the Internet.

Now comes the trickier part, and the part of Carr's thesis that to me is most controversial, the two ways of using attention may not only compete but may actually be mutually destructive. Carr offers his own experience and that of several other serious book readers to show that they are having increasing trouble reading for prolonged periods. Carr says that there is neuroscience data showing that this may be the result of web reading rather than just advancing age or other less ominous explanations.

This "fried brain" thesis is the part that is either revolutionary, or becomes the fatal flaw in The Shallows, depending on whether or not it is true. So is it true? Does Carr persuade us that not only are we thinking differently with different media (a very strong case I think) but that the Internet is frying our brains?

Today we remember the iconic wise curmudgeon, Socrates, only through his students. That's because old Soc didn't believe in writing. It seems he was a great proponent of contemplative thought and taught that contemplation depends heavily on memory. He thought it would seriously hurt people's memory to rely too much on writing things down. His criticism seems perverse today, even as we remember Soc fondly for his deep reflection and his provocative teaching methods. That's the historical role into which Nicholas Carr has cast himself, the media critic who invokes wisdom and reflection and plays them against seemingly unstoppable cultural trends towards greater convenience, efficiency, and information distribution.

Carr is the guy who wants to warn us about the hazards of writing on our memory. About the damage that the printing press will do to culture. About how TV will change us for the worse. And now about how the Internet will shift our values, instill bad habits, hurt our reading and thinking skills, and even destroy our powers of sustained concentration.

Socrates wasn't entirely wrong even though he bucked a trend that in retrospect was downright silly to oppose. People who don't specifically practice remembering things and instead devote everything to writing do find that they have weaker memories. That's the reason for all those memory courses, the best of which essentially just teach the same methods socrates would have used. The widespread distribution of news did have negative consequences in terms of reinforcing bias and propaganda on a massive scale.

There are some adverse consequences of all the TV watching we do. However none of these things has had the dire consequences that culture critics predicted, we have adapted in turn in some way to each of them, more or less successfully.

So Carr isn't entirely wrong about the tradeoffs involved in using modern technologies. He is not a "Luddite" and he does make a number of valid points.

Carr is not telling us to dismantle the Internet. He fully recognizes the value of technology. He is rather playing Socrates to the modern students. Most people, desperately trying to keep up with the amazing new technologies and learn new ways of getting better information with them will ignore Carr's message pretty much out of hand. "Carr is the only one affected negatively by the Internet, the rest of us are thriving."

Those folks who ignore culture critics out of hand are taking for granted the skills and expertise that many people have cultivated through sheer effort using sustained concentration. They are buying into the attractive fashionable modern viewpoint that just being exposed to a lot of information via technology will make you smart. The majority of people, the ones who go along with that implicit confusion of information and personal knowledge, will indeed lose some of the things we take for granted today. I think Carr is right about that, and that is the most profound message in this book. LISTEN TO IT. Even if you think, with good reason, that it is silly to imagine that using search engines and hyperlinks will hurt your concentration.

Still, the message that the Internet will make us stupid isn't quite right. Writing didn't entirely destroy our memory, it just shifted the habits we need to cultivate to preserve it. It seems like the wisest among us will recognize the value that culture critics like Carr have always had, they will appreciate the detail and care that good media critics like Carr put into their warnings, and they will remember the real tradeoffs between different kinds of media and take responsibility for the cultivation of their own minds.

Just as wise modern students still practice the methods used by Socrates, they will still learn to read and think deeply using books or the electronic equivalent, the wisest will still turn off the TV and other distractions when sustained concentration is called for, and they will understand the difference between various conditions and different kinds of media in general and will use each to its best advantage.

So long as we aren't stupid enough to stop cultivating our individual minds regardless of technology changes, media itself will not make us stupid. Listen to Carr's message, learn it, and then apply it to your use of technology. It's easy to dismiss the claim that the Internet will somehow fry your brain. It's another matter entirely to dismiss the value of cultivating your mind through personal reflection.

Related background reading:

On the evolution of cognition and symbolic thought (and secondarily, the role of reading):
A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness
The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain

On reading and the brain:
Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

On the role of tools in cognition:
Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition Series)

On the role of media technology in culture:
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

On the trend to rising IQ scores in modern times:
What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect

On the practical limitations of human working memory:
Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long
The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory

The Shallows is an expansion of Carr's 2007 article in The Atlantic, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The question with a book of this derivation is always: does it achieve more than the article did, or is it just a puffed up excuse to gain from the notoriety of the original piece, now freely available on the Internet? To that question, I answer that it is indeed more than the original piece. It provides much greater depth of detail for the brain science research that centrally informs the book, and he also expands on the nature and history of deep reading, in a way that I (someone who is doing research in this field) think is quite deft and responsible. In a sense, the earlier magazine article was really a book masquerading as a magazine article, whereas these days most books are magazine articles masquerading as books.

That said, The Shallows is somewhat less than the original Atlantic article in that Carr, as he approaches the end, falls into the most predictable sort of romantic nostalgia. We're becoming machines. The machines are taking our souls away. The Internet is compromising our integrity as humans. Machines are colonizing our minds. Soon they will be more interesting than we are, just like Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I've heard this all before! Certainly, a man as clever and as hard-working as Nicholas Carr could have thought a little harder.

(An aside: Perhaps he's proving his point that we've already lost our ability to think deeply. Or perhaps he's DISproving his point that going to country--Carr had to "get away from it all" to write this book--helps us to be contemplative whereas cities only distract us.)

We need people who care about the things books have done for us and continue to do for us who can *also* think beyond the nineteenth century. We can't leave this to the machine people. So, I end up in the middle on this book: 3 stars. The first 80% is good but it fails to deliver a "where we go from here..." Let the good parts inspire the rest of us to take up where Carr has left off.

The Shallows is one of those rare books that frustrated me to no end but, by the conclusion, was one that I respected. It forced me to think more deeply on an issue I've long dwelled on (the issue being how our lives are increasingly merging with the digital) and similarly to see it from a new viewpoint. Nicholas Carr's prose seethes with pomposity, but don't be distracted by it because the underlying message is important even though it borders on being out-of-touch and reactionary. My only criticism is this book is barely a decade out from the start of the digital revolution. That's not enough perspective. I get that it needed to be written eventually, but it's too soon to pronounce a good/bad judgment on something this unprecedented. An analogy from ancient history would be like 10 years after a group of hunter gatherers switched over to agriculture someone from the group laments the change as unnatural. I'm not arguing that this seemingly inevitable digital integration is a good thing. I'm saying it's too soon to tell.

Also, this book came out at the start of the smart phone era. I doubt Mr. Carr could've foreseen how our relationship with our tech devices was about to get a whole lot dumber before it got smarter.

I agree with many of Carr’s points. The internet does foster distraction and addiction. It does change people’s brains, and it can make us numb and dumb. But the reason I’m giving the book three stars is not because of what is written, but because of what is not written or considered. And also because of the seeming powerlessness he assumes people have over their own lives in relation to technology.

When you touch an exposed power-line, you don’t have a choice as to how you react when you get electrocuted. Carr writes about the internet’s influence over people in a similar vein. But there’s a big difference.

Carr makes assumptions that, regardless of who you are, you will not read online content or e-books the same way you read physical books. In fact, it is a bit mocking for him to write in a way that assumes online readers or e-book readers will always be distracted by hyperlinks, ads, etc. He writes as if someone is forcing our hand when it comes to distracting us, but this isn’t so.

He postulates that just because the medium you’re consuming text from will directly impact how you read. The leap of logic required to make that statement is immense, and making that leap leads to deception. This leap glosses over many subtle and nuanced facts about our daily lives.

He never once suggests that it’s up to the reader to decide how he reads and what distractions he or she allows. As if readers are mindless automatons that have no willpower or focus when it comes to their reading! Furthermore, just because we read physical books doesn’t automatically mean we’re engaged in deep reading or that we don’t skim. (This has been the case far before the internet’s invention.)

He does not gives examples of people engaging in deep reading online. I have read many e-books and thousands of pages of PDFs on my computer and have in many cases been just as engaged and immersed as I have been within physical books. And I have also read many physical books that never really hooked me. So I read them in a similar way I’d read some online pages I’m not interested in.

Ultimately, what’s most disappointing is that he does not leave any wiggle room, or room to consider the possibility that just because we’re reading a text online, we could also be reading deeply and not be distracted by hyperlinks or other distractions. As if just because there’s a hyperlink, it HAS to be clicked and it has to be a distracting influence. How about recognizing it for what it is and not clicking on it? But Carr doesn’t give his readers that much credit.

How about that blinking light on the microwave just in my peripheral vision as I’m reading a physical book? Or how about the annoying bird’s chirping in the park as I’m trying to read a print article? Surely, those are just as distracting as some of the internet’s distracting influences. (Surely you’ve experienced trying to read something outside on a windy day… as you can see there’s a very fuzzy line between the internet’s ability to distract us and other situational distractions.)

This is a very obvious thing for Carr to ignore. Did he not consider that many people reading his book would have many, many counter-examples as to their own personal reading habits and experiences?

It would be easy to buy Carr’s arguments if we do not have personal experience reading print books or online websites. But it becomes more difficult to not consider what he fails to write if we have read both deeply and superficially both online and in print.

There are many leaps in logic he makes in order to advance his point. On page 213 he comments how humans are quick to project human characteristics onto computers and how that can pose problems to our integrity as human beings. As if that’s exclusive to computers! We humans project human characteristics on many things – from trees, to houses, to our pets. And that has been going on for far longer than computers have been around.

I would still recommend this book. It is a good read. It is just not at all balanced and, like any book, you have to read it with a critical mind. Just keep an eye out for what he does not say, and look within your own personal experience to see if you can counter his argument with personal examples to the contrary.

I went into this book expecting an anti-technology rant announcing the collapse of our society (as mindless twits walk into water fountains because their eyes are glued to a tiny screen). What I instead found was a nuanced, thoughtful book that discussed the effect of technology (not just the internet) on our brains. I was surprised to learn that intellectuals have been decrying the arrival of new technologies since the beginning of recorded history (Plato claimed that writing things down instead of passing stories along via oral history would be somewhat of a bad thing). I also encountered an array of interesting tidbits-- apparently, reading silently to oneself was seen as odd for hundreds of years, as the preferred method was to read aloud-- as well as meatier information such as the way technology, particularly the internet, alters the way our neurons fire and form synapses within our brain. Bottom line: the internet is making it difficult for us to engage in deep thinking, with its endless distractions and connectivity. While the internet has dramatically increased our access to information, it has led to people "scanning" information rather than reading it. We may have a wealth of information at our fingertips, but it hasn't made us any smarter.

This incohesive book must have been written for the attention deficit victims of web browsing that Carr continuously talks about. Each section jumps around a dizzying range of topics, without synthesizing to create something greater than the parts and rarely offering new arguments that did not already exist elsewhere. Carr interleaves sociological and philosophical quotations along with research from human-computer interaction and unknown people's blog posts -- putting them all on equal footing and rarely taking the time to stitch something together. Still there's not nearly enough citations to justify the length of this book, and most of the pages are filled with bland speculations or irrelevant anecdotes.

It's a journalistic exposé of the topic, not a well reasoned summary of experiments and theories surrounding the problems. Perhaps I should have recognized that by the book's title, which sloppily describes "browsing web pages" as "The Internet" and "simple theories of working memory" as "our brains". The book certainly doesn't stick to these topics either; it haphazardly discusses the sometimes deleterious effects of PowerPoint presentations, public naivete in understanding how artificial intelligence systems (developed in the 1960s no less) work, and then a lot of non-empirical theoretical word salad that wasn't clearly communicated or thought out enough for me to understand. For other ideas on this topic, try reading Cliff Nass's books/papers.

An exhaustive and at times tedious look at the way our brains process information in the age of digital information overload. Yes, our brains retain a high level of plasticity and they are changing as we speak to adapt to the constant digital onslaught. The ways in which we read, process, write, and interpret are all evolving into a more shallow existence. The pros and the cons are weighed and perhaps the ultimate warning that digital auto-regulation (my term as far as I know) is the most critical factor in managing the digital chaos that permeates our lives to the degree that none of us can fully escape even if we wanted to.

Highly recommended for all, especially the Millennials and the TBD’s (age 10 and younger) who are growing up fully indoctrinated into the digital era with no frame of reference to a time before. Carr reminds us that there is a price to pay for top speed information processing and that our brains have not yet evolved to the point where that price is null and void.

BRB Rating: Read It

Skim more, ponder less as "the transformative power of new communication technologies alters our neural pathways." Using studies to bolster his point, the author holds that our minds are changing as they adapt to an ocean of easily-accessible information streaming over our phones and computers. This alteration threatens users' ability to think deeply or analyze because the "Web has scattered attention, parched their memory or turned them into compulsive nibblers of info snacks."

Neither luddite nor scold, Carr reasons calmly that our technologies are changing us to better adapt to their nature. According to research, both young and old Web surfers find their neurons and synapses effected by heavy Web interaction, resulting in "shrinking vocabulary [that becomes] hackneyed and formulaic with less flexible syntax."

Carr feels we are seduced by Internet "benefits of speed, efficiency and desirability." Losing the knack of deep thinking "the tumultuous advance of technology could . . . drown the refined perceptions, thoughts, and emotions that arise only through contemplation and reflection."

Having experienced the drawbacks of prolonged Web usage, Carr explains what actions he took to focus enough to write this book, and offers hope that a more aware approach to the Internet may be on the horizon.

Written seven years ago, this book is accessible to the general reader and remains increasingly relevant today.

While I understand the authors position, it is a shallow view of the internet. There is really very little specifically about what the internet is doing to our brains. A few narrow studies are vaguely presented about peoples eye movements while surfing the internet, etc but I was not really able to put the pieces together to conclude the internet is causing us not to be able to focus. The majority of antidotes are about other topics and the author then implies that all this means the internet is causing us to be more shallow thinkers. I had a difficult time making those connections. Anything said in this regard about the internet could have also been said about television for the last 30 years. I grew up spending hours surfing channels. and it was shallow and looking back miserable. Now with the internet the possibilities for deeper learning have increased dramatically. I love the way the internet has changed my brain. I have learned many new things from online courses and have been able to download and listened to many audiobooks, including this one, that I never would have had the opportunity without the internet. These things over the years have definitely changed my brain. For instance learning to program and programming itself does lead me to think in a more algorithmic way when making decisions in everyday life. I can feel this change. The author comes from a blogging background which is something I rarely look at because the information is shallow and difficult to source and verify. If you need a quick answer to something these blogs and discussion forums are helpful because they are so fast.

He gives an example that academics now just read abstracts and rarely return to a paper a second time. Using this as an example that the internet is making us less capable of deep thought is absurd. If a person is trying to learn about a particular topic you can imagine they would look at a lot of abstracts and skim papers to understand the lay of the land then cull out one or two papers for a deeper study. There are a lot of bad papers published in journals but this is because academics are required to publish, and their students are required to publish in order to graduate. This does lead to a lot of shallow type work and many papers to sift through before finding the true master works but this is not caused by the internet it is a product of the university system.

In the end I thought many of the arguments were unfair because the internet can be so many different things to different people.If you want to look out binoculars then look out binoculars, if you want to see without binoculars remove the binoculars from your face. I think most people who want deep thinking can still do it with the internet. I believe there is so much more to be said about what the internet is doing to our brains than what is in this book and I think the positives outweigh the negatives. Sure we will lose certain functions that are no longer needed but we will gain functions that allow us to develop even further as a human species. But I don't think the ability to think deeply will be lost. So much focus is needed to build the technology and infrastructure we use a today and will use in the future, that I think the people who participate in this work will gain in cognitive ability, not decrease.

It is difficult to express exactly why I did not like the book but I would say as I read I had the feeling it was not quite right. Some books the arguments flow so naturally together they are easy to accept. This book I was uncomfortable reading because I questioned most of what was being said.

I bought this book after reading its title -- "How the internet is changing the way we think, read and remember" hoping for a pop science type discussion of research on the topic.

Unfortunately, the book is mostly an overview of the historical development of technology.

In total, the book contains about 21 pages of research discussion pertaining to the title. Namely, page 120 (bottom) to page 143.

The rest is just filling material. "The Shallows" is an accurate description of the research content of the book. I am disappointed.

This is a non-fiction book that argues the Internet is quite literally rotting our brains. (I can remember when they used to say that about television.) His argument is that the Internet is not just encouraging us to scan, skim, and surf the web while being constantly interrupted to the point where we are losing the ability to read, concentrate, and think deeply. Carr is quite literate and cites Plato, Nietzsche, Freud, T.S. Eliot, and Nathaniel Hawthorne in developing his thesis as well as recent studies in neurology and psychology. One of his arguments is that the Internet has diminished our interest in reading books, but he does not even mention the Harry Potter phenomenon and the widespread proliferation of young adult fiction aimed at the very people who spent many hours on the Internet. I did not buy his argument that heavy Internet users are not as smart as those who are light users, but I can accept the notion that they think differently.

A compelling, masterful call to spend less time on the internet and smartphone - it literally rewires the brain.

These quotes really resonated:
“Whenever we turn on our computer, we are plunged into an ecosystem of interruption technologies”
“Skimming is becoming our dominant form of reading”
“in most countries, people spend, on average, between 19 and 27 seconds looking at a page before moving on to the next one, including the time required for the page to load into the browser window.”
“Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle; that’s the intellectual equivalent of the Internet.”

THE SHALLOWS is a surprisingly passionless book on a passionate subject: the internet and what it may be doing to the nature of human consciousness. The book reads like an extremely slick term paper, well-researched and well-written, but with few original insights and little or no advice on how we should face the brave new world of ever more fragmented thinking. As Carr cited such original thinkers as Lewis Mumford and Daniel Bell, I began to realize that what is missing in Carr's book is that level of excitement, originality, and breakthrough thinking that Bell, Mumford, and other writers exhibited back in their age. Perhaps it isn't the internet that is killing reading, book sales, and concentration, but, rather, bland derivative writers such as Carr who are merely "safe" and "okay", and editors at Norton who hire writers who simply expand old magazine articles (THE SHALLOWS is based upon an essay in THE ATLANTIC) and recycle old internet blog material.

Nicholas Carr argues in The Shallows that our media landscape--and particularly in the internet--offers up continual distractions to our brain, changing the essential structure of our thinking. The result is that we lose some ability to focus, to make connections, to assemble ideas fluidly and logically, to remember, to live deep and thoughtful lives. The internet is slowly robbing us of essential aspects of our humanity.

I won't say that Carr's book is without some gaps or that it doesn't overargue a couple of claims. It, too, spends some time arguing for what I thought were truisms (i.e. that technology may change our minds). But on the whole, Carr makes a good case that we are being diminished. I found myself, as I read the book, seeing the evidence for Carr's argument all around us. For instance, I read continually online, without ever seeming to finish an article, and though I still read books continually, the large tomes that I once devoured have gradually grown to a too-large, mammoth size. And my students. I'm teaching college and advanced high school kids who struggle to read books that I and my (not-always-that-bright) friends once read in the fifth and sixth grades on our own (and I wasn't in school that long ago). Many of my high school teaching colleagues have taken in desparation to reading novels aloud *to* their students, just so that they will have encountered, in some small way, literature before they leave school. Of course, there is a lot more going wrong in those circumstances than the internet. But that the level of cultural discourse and capacity for thought is lowering seems clear to me. Carr's book is important because it explains a small part of why that is so.

This is a first rate, thoroughly researched and packed with information critique of the medium we've all come to embrace and admire i.e. The Internet and its beloved offspring Google et al.

Mr. Carr has done a tremendous job of elucidating what internet is, how it affects our brain, our mind and eventually our habits and why it's such a menace for serious contemplation and linear thought process so essential for something like book reading. He's far from being a Neo-Luddite. In fact he cites some benefits of internet such as quick access to hordes of information and being able to search pertinent bits and pieces but according to him this should act as a supplement to our explicit memory, one that we gain through reading, learning and interacting, rather than being a substitute.

Author cites numerous research studies, publications and anecdotes making it for a thoroughly enjoyable and informative exposition.

Somewhere towards the end of his book he quotes "to be everywhere is to be nowhere" from famous Roman philosopher Seneca. This quiet succinctly sums up the entire premise of his book.

Read this book along with Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" and you'll get a picture where we're heading and why?

Famous Muslim jurist Imam Shaf'i mentions six conditions for acquiring knowledge:
1. Intelligence
2. Determination
3. Diligence and Patience
4. Sufficient Means
5. Teacher
6. Time
This is from the classical era, an era which produced true polymaths, scholars who produced tomes of enlightening material aimed at transforming masses. It was fairly common among scholars of that era to have more than 100 books to their credit, some of them comprising multiple volumes. Such scholarship has drastically diminished since the industrial revolution unleashed its intellectual technologies such as radio, TV, computer and internet.

Thank you Mr. Carr. I ended up buying Thomas Kuhn's and Joseph Weizenbaum's books that you mentioned. They're next on my to-read list.

It is an important book for our generation. Carr is continuing the tradition of media prophet such as Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman. It can be seen also that he is continuing the tradition of technology critics such as Lewis Mumford, and believe me or not Joseph Weizenbaum, one of the computer wizard in its early days, by creating one of the first AI: ELIZA, the chatterbots (google it by yourself). Later he became one of AI critics.

In this book, in which he goes to full length, he tries to argue that Internet is making us dumber. And in the long term, instead of serving the mankind, Internet will indeed do us harm, because we rely on it too much. By "outsourcing" our thinking ability to the Internet, we will eventually loose the ability that makes us most human: THINKING!

In the following I will emphasize some of his arguments:
1. All technology will change our brain and body structure, for better or worse. For example: the farming technology, will decrease our reliance of physical strength, while increasing the output of our work. By depending on technology, we can no longer rely on our muscle power. In other words, we are numbing our muscle. Is it bad? Not necessarily. Because we still can supplement the muscle power ability by lots of exercise (this line is my own argument).

2. But what about computer and Internet especially. Computer or in wider sense Information Technology (IT). By "outsourcing" our thinking ability, just like what happened in muscle analogy, we will numb our brain. So what? If computer can do the works better for us, why not? Why? Because computer can not replicate human way of thinking. Computer thinks in rules, specific predefined rule. While we, human, think by breaking the rule sometimes. There are no such thing as perfect copy when we are talking about human way of thinking. In computer, you can copy a file millions of times, and it is still the same file as the original.

3. So, is it a bad thing? The realm of sci-fi is a good way in exercising this. Once upon a time, one of sci-fi prophet, Arthur C. Clarke, wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this novel, there was HAL, the supercomputer inside a spaceship, programmed for the ultimate success mission of the ship, AT ALL COST! And once the AI "thought" that its human counterparts were jeopardizing the mission, you can guess what happened next.

4. So, is computer all bad? No. But unfortunately it reshapes the way we are, for better or worse. Hopefully we can keep the better part, and get rid of the worse part. But I doubt it, the trend has already show that we are going to the worse part. And this is Carr's argument: we have lost our deep and systematic thinking, the legacy of the typographic culture, and replaced by staccato and intermittent thinking, the one that is heralded by Internet. Look at Twitter! Who wants to read long arguments on Twitter! Do you want to have a discourse on Facebook? I wish you good luck! In the long term, we might lost the one thing that makes us human: THINKING.

One thing that kept me from giving him a 5 star, he is not coining any new thoughts. He is just compiling from many past thinkers. I am not saying that what he is doing is nothing, he still spend lots of time to present these thing in front of us in a coherent way. Without him, we might not aware of all of these stuffs.

There are other authors I read before this one: Sherry Turkle, Nancy Baym are but two examples. I grabbed this because I was interested in a more physiological discussion. My bias is that instead of technological determinism (machines change us) or social constructivism (people have power), social shaping (Baym, 2010) is a middle ground where technology affords certain capabilities that people then adapt that then suggest other affordances. At times, Carr seems to lean towards a 'chicken little the sky is falling" voice (big grin). Even so, he raises some poignant points.

1. "The cost will be a further weakening, if not a final severing, of the intimate intellectual attachment between the lone writer and the lone reader. The practice of deep reading. . . will continue to fade" (p. 108).
2. "The net delivers a steady stream of inputs to our visual, somatosensory, and auditory cortices" (p. 116). - engages all of our senses simultaneously.
3. "When people search the Net they exhibit a very different pattern of brain activity than they do when they read book-like text" (p. 121).
4. Carr compares and contrasts Net surfing with book reading as to the 'load' on the brain, the style and depth of thinking, and the contribution of memory.

This discussion was thought provoking. I thought of my fatigue after sitting for 8 hours at a desk working on a computer and now realize there is fatigue beyond physical exertion. In the classroom, I see anecdotally examples of students who are unable to concentrate when asked to reflect, consider, ponder - yet who excel when we are in a highly participative, interactive, give and take. I do want a both/and - the capacity to reflectively read, consider, think and the hypertext capacity of the Internet to provide information and connections. I want this for my students also. The question I return to again and again - is the horse out the barn? I get college age students - if in fact there are literal brain changes perhaps introducing a new literacy - can they now learn deep reflection and concentration? I have more questions than answers. This was the impact of this book (smile).

Baym, N. K. (2010). Personal connections in the digital age. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity.

This book was very enjoyable and an excellent read! It was a book that I felt like I actually learned something from – which is great considering he talks a lot about our memory and how our capacity to learn and retain information has been skewed. Overall, Nicholas Carr shares many different studies and thoughts showing how both technology and the brain have adapted over time. There is not necessarily a clear connection between the two but the build between studies on the brain and ‘neuroplasticity’ and how technology has changed to become faster, easier, and more efficient allow the reader to make strong inferences that there is a correlation between our brains and technology.
Carr, an established writer on technology, business, and finance, does a great job of presenting the information and sharing his opinion but also leaving room for the reader to formulate their own opinion. It is very evident that he has done his research and knows what he is talking about – all of the studies and evidence that he presents are very clear and useful in demonstrating the topics. Throughout the book though, I wish he shared more personal experience. Yes, he has clearly researched the topics thoroughly, but he also is not a psychologist or software engineer, two areas that he talks about through the entirety of the book. Parts of the book seem as if he is presenting material that he has learned without adding much of his own experience, though everything he presents is riveting and interesting and relevant so it does not affect the pace of the book too much. He does do a good job of presenting highly technical information in a way that is clear and understandable to any audience, for the most part. He may have a bias in much of what he talks about, because he explains that he wrote the majority of this book in seclusion – largely disconnected from the Web – but he also humbly admits that it was hard to focus and concentrate on writing this book. As a reader, it was refreshing to hear this. Just as I was starting to beat myself up for getting distracted and checking my phone and email while reading this book, Carr admits to the same struggles! It was nice and comforting towards the end of book to hear him admits that technology is easy to cave to (as he talks about his special Blue-ray being a necessity) as much of technology is so user friendly and accessible and actually intended and designed to help us.
Much of what drew me into the book were the psychological studies and information shared about how the brain functions and what actually is happening when we are reading book versus e-books or creating short-term versus long-term memories. Carr sets up the book very logically and starts by describing how the brain actually functions, followed by how technology has evolved for the past century, and finishes by admitting that technology has permanently changed the path of our society, no matter where we go from here. Most of the book is very relevant to today. He presents a lot of studies from as far back as the 1700’s up till 2007, when he was writing this book, which is very helpful to understand the full scope of what he is presenting as changes that have occurred due to technology. Much of what he said, in terms of “technology-ADD” or finding it hard to concentrate on books or being distracted by ads on the computer, were very applicable and I found myself agreeing with a lot of it. There was a tiny part of me, though, that thought that technology has actually surpassed what he has written about and the problems of technology have gotten further out of control than we he published the book in 2009. What Carr presents is a bit controversial, but I read it as a science-student who was interested actually learning what the Internet does to our brains and was fascinated to learn of the developments happening in the world.
I agreed with a lot of the book and kept flipping the pages, trying to focus and absorb all the information he shares. I tried to test myself when reading this to see if I could actually focus without being distracted, and found a lot of what he said to be frustratingly true. An absolutely fabulous read that I would recommend to anyone! This book is informative on how individuals have been affected and have fallen subject to the marvels of technology. I was fully ‘sunken in’ to this

The Internet is a fabulous thing. After all, you wouldn't be reading this review or the myriad other reviews of anyone on this planet if it wasn't for the Internet. People can find information that they need or maybe never knew they needed in mere seconds. It is a wonderous thing, but perhaps also a dangerous thing, as Nicholas Carr argues in "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains." In short, it is not making us any smarter.

Carr begins his narrative with his own addiction to technology, the constant checking of e-mail, the allowing of interruptions to interfere with his work, and he found himself unable to concentrate on work or even reading a passage of significant length. This made him wonder if there was something about computer technology that was wreaking havoc on his brain. It turns out, there is. Exposure to this wonderous technology has literally rewired our brains and changed the way we think. It is affecting our ability to recall and remember. And it is making us dependent upon it for tasks that a computer, a machine, should not do.

Carr cites a wide variety of sources and studies to prove his point, dating to pre-computer times and the earliest advances in computer science, but he also recognizes the difficulty in abstaining from a life improved by technology. Just as some have argued that social networking sites like Facebook infantilize our brains (due to the constant need to update status and see what others have posted), Carr argues that the Internet has prohibited our ability to think deeply. We can find a ton of information, but we skim it and don't read it. With cell phones holding all of our phone numbers, we no longer memorize them. With books available online, we no longer read the printed on paper word, a very scary thought for this confessed bibliophile.

Yet Carr does not argue for abstinence, an almost impossible task in this technology-driven world we live in. His words act as a warning - the vast so-called intelligence of the internet could turn our own intelligence into something very shallow and artificial. We shouldn't rely so heavily upon machines to grant us wisdom, for it is not true wisdom. "The Shallows" is an extremely thought-provoking and well-written read. Carr doesn't have all the answers, but he certainly raises some good, and scary, questions.

The Internet. A monster that society has created that is destroying our cognitive minds and our humanity. In his groundbreaking book The Shallows, author Nicholas Carr presents incredible evidence of how our lives, our bodies, our souls and brains are being dangerously affected by the deluge of information overload, rapid speed technology, intense multi-tasking life styles and careers, and the increasing usage of computer artificial intelligence. We are becoming robots; we are losing the very ingredients of what makes us human. Bit by bit, hour by hour, the whirlpool of the World Wide Web that is keeping us plugged-in and connected through computers, Ipods, Ipads, and cell phones, is becoming a darkened black hole of destruction that is spiraling out of control. And we are going down with ship.

Carr takes us through a historic tour of how each major technological invention in our history of civilization has affected society as a whole, as well as individually, and how those tools impacted our ability to think and reason. Taking his presentation from the invention of ancient clay tablets that allowed early man to record their thoughts, right up to the present day bombardment of computer technology that is invading every aspect of our waking moments, the author shows us how the internet and our ability to accommodate more and more, process more data faster, to read and import a wealth of knowledge in seconds, is destroying our brains. Neurologically, medically, emotionally, and psychologically we are drowning our minds. He presents the pros and cons, goods and bads, and the features and benefits of the Internet, but also shows us the frightening downside and lasting negative and destructive side effects that are becoming fatal.

From physical disorders of the body, neurological damage to the brain, to the increasing number of people with ADD and other disabilities of decreased focus, attention spans, and the inability to think logically and reason out problems, the constant use of technology is creating havoc. We are no longer able to read lengthy novels or long documents, people are scanning and skimming, taking in bits and bites like a computer. People are not stopping to smell the roses, or going outside to enjoy nature. Bookstores, art museums, and concert halls are seeing a severe decline in attendance and interest. The Web provides the visual and audio arts all at the same time. We watch movies, listen to music, and read all at the same time so quickly, who has time to "take time" to appreciate the artists of the world?

Our capabilities to have normal love relationships, to emote or feel, is sadly evaporating. We are too busy computing to enjoy wonderful moments of quiet thoughts and meditation. We are becoming automatons, our hearts are becoming numb to emotions and passion, we find no time to play, we are seriously exhausted physically and mentally. We are getting sick, sleep deprived, our children are lacking in education and social skills. Divorces are becoming the norm, people have no time for each other any more. We are losing the ability to interact face to face and to show each other feelings we humans were born to share. The Internet is dehumanizing us, and it's not pretty.

For anyone interested in the topics of the "dumbing down" syndrome or the philosophy of what computers have done to us, for scientists, psychologists, teachers, or for anyone feeling themselves that their lives have changed for the worst with all this technology forcing them to keep up and be plugged in, read The Shallows. It will open your eyes and change your way of thinking about your own life and how you can stop following the crowd and start following your own heart and mind. Five Stars, and exceptional read I will not forget anytime soon.

The Shallows by Nicholas Carr is an intriguing book exploring the impact of the Internet on our thinking patterns. He does an admirable job of pointing to scientific and historical data to show that technology can alter the neural pathways of the brain to change the way we think. Unfortunately the picture he paints of a world hooked on the Internet is not a pretty one. He concludes that deep reading and critical thinking are in danger of extinction.

While Carr's book is commendable because of his considerable research, he admits one flaw of his argument is the ability to write such a book amid so many digital distractions. He answers this argument by saying he had to withdraw from all his digital media in order to be able to concentrate on this work. He fails to explain how so many other authors are able to do the same without necessarily withdrawing from all digital media.

Nevertheless, his arguments are food for thought because we all have noticed how we have changed our habits because of digital media. Instead of actually remembering information, we tend to store it outside the brain because it is easier. We consequently decrease our ability to recall information from our brains. His book is groundbreaking and deserves to be considered as a theory about human development. We all hope he's wrong.

We all know that computers are melting our minds somehow, but most of us don't let that stop us. The boons of virtual virtuosity are too attractive to let any studies keep us away. However, if you or someone you love is suffering from depression, sleep disorders, or ADD, reading this book can definitely help understand the subtle forces that can seriously undermine health.

If you want to become more aware of exactly how virtual reality impacts and transforms our through process, emotions, and bodies, "The Shallows" is an important resource book. But I wondered why it, and others of its kind, are missing some of the nuts and bolts you can find in earlier books about how communication technology's transformation of our lives. "The Plug-In Drug" by Marie Winn, still beats out all others because it explains, in clear detail, how computer screens (regardless of content) affect brain function. If content is king, medium is emperor.

It's not easy to stay away from computers, but the information and analysis offered by Nicholas Carr strengthened my resolve to keep virtual reality at more of a distance and balance it carefully with quality time in the nurturing, vibrant world of nature.

Let me begin with what I think is Nicholas Carr's main statement in this book:
"What can science tell us about the actual effects that Internet use is having on the way our minds work?...Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, educators, and Web designers point to the same conclusion: when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. It's possible to think deeply while surfing the Net, just as it's possible to think shallowly while reading a book, but that's not the type of thinking the technology encourages and rewards" (115-116).

Carr has written an engaging book that explores how our Internet habits are changing how we think. He tells how he noticed a shift in his concentration levels after his immersion in the Internet world of links, clicks, and tweets. This English literature major found that he had trouble concentrating on a novel beyond a few pages. After years of training his mind to follow links and read news blasts, he was troubled that he could no longer read deeply. This led him to write an article, "Is Google Making Us Dumb?" which he expanded into this book.

The bottom line of his findings is that our brains are malleable, and they will change to fit the environment. When we "feed" our brain a diet of short bursts of information with no contemplation, the neurons and synapses change. In essence, we teach our brains to be distracted. We become shallow thinkers.

This is a matter I have thought about as a teacher. I look out into a sea of brains that have been raised on digital distractions and see that they cannot sustain attention for a short story without pictures and accompanying videos, never mind a longer work of fiction. While many in education hail the Internet as a wealth of information and a Promethean gift from the gods, I do not see that teaching journals are addressing what this bombardment of information is doing to how we think and, in turn, how we behave in and about the world around us.

In my estimation, this book focuses on three main parts. The first is about neurology and the Internet. At times, it was too technical for me, but I was able to enjoy the idea of the "plasticity" of our brains. This section grounds Carr's premise in scientific testing and research. The second part of the book addresses the history of written text and computer science. As an English teacher and a computer enthusiast, this was my favorite section. The third section discusses the effects of the intertwining of our lives with the Internet. The chapter titled, "The Church of Google" is worth the price of the book, as it gives us a side of Google that causes me to question its company motto, "Do no harm."

Aside from the intriguing topic, I also enjoyed Carr's writing style. This book is filled with excellent quotations and stories about books and reading. One story that is particularly vivid is his recounting of Nathaniel Hawthorne enjoying a peaceful time of contemplation in Sleepy Hollow when the noisy locomotive arrives in town. The juxtaposition of these two worlds powerfully captures how we are distracted by the Internet "railroad." My copy of the book is marked up, and I intend to return to it for these reminders.

This book has given me an impetus to make some changes in my Internet usage. I am online far more than I want to be. Like Nicholas Carr, I have a difficult time concentrating on longer novels or books, due to my constant checking email, Facebook, Twitter, and IMDB. Writing pieces like this are often punctuated with non-stop searches for other distractions and procrastinations. Because of reading many small headlines or articles, I do not have time to process them so I don't really "know" them. All I have at the end of a surfing session is three fewer hours in my life.

This is not the life I want to lead. In Mark 12:30, Jesus tells us to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." Not only do I want to redeem the time to worship Him rather than wasting it on Facebook, but I also want every neuron and synapse to glorify Him as much as it is possible. If I am shrinking those connections that shorten my thinking, something must change. How can I love God with my mind if I am short-circuiting my brain with distractions and interferences?

The Shallows is one of the best books I've read on this list of [...] so far. Nicholas Carr has written a powerful book that I'll think about every time I'm tempted to check my email or Facebook "real quick." He has also, perhaps inadvertently, offered some spiritual advice to help in my improvement as a Christian. I see that even reading Christian blogs or religious news or even Bible study tools can, in effect, act as a stumbling block in our faith if they are distractions interrupting our mediation or contemplation of deeper things.

Is our constant exposure to electronic stimuli good for us? Can we transform the data we receive into the knowledge we need? Are we swapping deep understanding for shallow distractions?

In this book, Nicholas Carr argues that our constant exposure to multiple and faster data streams is changing the way our brains are wired. This change, which is due to the inherent plasticity of the brain, tends to reduce our capacity to absorb and retain what we read. Mr Carr cites a number of different studies to support his views, and the book makes for interesting reading.

Mr Carr acknowledges that the digital world brings both advantage and disadvantage: `Every tool imposes limitations even as it opens possibilities.' The Internet is a wonderful tool for finding information, but value usually requires some analysis, and often requires a context which is not always immediately obvious. How do we find a balance between those aspects of life that require self-awareness, time and careful consideration, and those aspects of life where an automatic (or semi automatic) response is more appropriate and perhaps even required? Do we understand what choices we have, or are we responding in line with the immediacy of the medium we are using? Are we consumers of data or evaluators of information? Does it matter? I think it does: `The more distracted we become, the less able we are to experience the subtlest, most distinctly human forms of empathy, compassion, and emotion.'

The most valuable aspect of this book, to me, was thinking about the short and long term consequences of the Internet. Those of us who grew to adulthood before the Internet shaped the way we work and communicate have (to varying degrees) embraced the benefits and new possibilities afforded.

A return to the past is neither possible nor desirable - but conscious choice is both.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

This is an outstanding book that does a superlative job of presenting in a cogent manner the history of the written word, the art of reading, the science of memory, and how the internet disrupts the neurological processes that are at the heart of comprehension.

It is a testament to the incendiary nature of the topic, to suggest that the internet may affecting our minds in in ways that may not be always positive, or it may actually be harming our capacity to focus, and doing so by actually altering the way our brain is wired, that even smart and reasonable people as John Battelle, author of the bestselling and an excellent book on the history of search engines on the net, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, become unhinged when commenting on the topic (see his post, no, more a hasty, flustered rage, "Google: Making Nick Carr Stupid, But It's Made This Guy Smarter from June 2008", in response to Nicholas Carr's article, "Is Google making us stupid?" in the July/August 2008 issue of The Atlantic).

Carr's book, however, is a very well-written book on the topic. Even if you disagree, for whatever reason, with the premise of the book, you owe it to yourself to read it. This is also not to gainsay the fact that Carr does have a predilection for sometimes succumbing to provocative, almost needling, sensationalistic headlines. Which can sometimes overwhelm the sound reasoning underneath. A minor broadside against Google (and Google Books) notwithstanding in the book (to sample, "The last thing the company wants is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. Google is, quite literally, in the business of distraction", pg 157), this is not an incendiary hatchet job against the internet or any company. Whether you are convinced or not is besides the point, this book will surely enlighten you in at least some ways on how we think and and how we remember what we remember. And this is worth something, surely.

At some point in the past, we all remembered stuff we needed to know. The written word did not exist. Then humans started writing, on caves, and then on tablets, then papyrus, then paper. The history of the written word can be traced back several thousand years, when the Sumerians started to use clay tablets inscribed with a reed. The Egyptians used scrolls made from papyrus (a plant) around 4500 BCE. The Greeks and Romans adopted these scrolls for their writings. And the writing then was hugely different than what we know it today. Like how? Well, it turns out, there were no spaces between the words. Right. So a sentence like "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" would have been written as "thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog". Rather painful to read, right? The reason seems to be that the "lack of word separation reflected language's origins in speech. When we talk, we don't insert pauses between each word--long stretches of syllables flow unbroken from our lips". Not good. Certainly not good. Writing was not read as much as it was read out loud. The practice of reading silently came much later.

When the practice of placing spaces between words did occur, it "alleviated the cognitive strain involved in deciphering text, making it possible for people to read quickly, silently, and with greater comprehension. Such fluency had to be learned. It required complex changes in the circuitry of the brain, as contemporary studies of young readers reveal."

"Readers didn't just become more efficient. They also became more attentive. To read a long book silently required an ability to concentrate intently over a long period of time, to "lose oneself" in the pages of a book, as we now say. Developing such mental discipline was not easy. The natural state of the human brain, like that of the brains of most of our relatives in the animal kingdom, is one of distractedness. Our predisposition is to shift our gaze, and hence our attention, from one object to another, to be aware of as much of what's going on around us as possible."

And herein lies one of the reasons why the internet functions as a distracter, a destroyer of attention. Why? Because the internet presents information in a way that requires us to evaluate all available information, like hyperilnks, text-boxes, adverts, popups, tooltips, the chrome, everything, and make assessments as to their utility.

It is about two-fifths of the way through the (on page 111 or thereabouts) that the question that really forms the title of the book makes an appearance.

"Now comes the crucial question: What can science tell us about the actual effects that Internet use is having on the way our minds work?"

"Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, educators, and Web designers point to the same conclusion: when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. It's possible to think deeply while surfing the Net, just as it's possible to think shallowly while reading a book, but that's not the type of thinking the technology encourages and rewards."

"Our senses are finely attuned to change," explains Maya Pines of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "Stationary or unchanging objects become part of the scenery and are mostly unseen." But as soon as "something in the environment changes, we need to take notice because it might mean danger--or opportunity." Our fast-paced, reflexive shifts in focus were once crucial to our survival. They reduced the odds that a predator would take us by surprise or that we'd overlook a nearby source of food. For most of history, the normal path of human thought was anything but linear.

"Whenever we, as readers, come upon a link, we have to pause, for at least a split second, to allow our prefrontal cortex to evaluate whether or not we should click on it. The redirection of our mental resources, from reading words to making judgments, may be imperceptible to us - our brains are quick - but it's been shown to impede comprehension and retention, particularly when it's repeated frequently."

The brain becomes better at what it is made to do. Simply put, practice makes perfect. Perfect at good things, perfect at not-so-good things. Perfect at insane things. Fungibility is a term used more in an economic sense, as in when money is termed as fungible, capable of being spent on interchangeable things. We can use money to buy a popcorn or a soda at the movies, or we can use the same money to buy a book and a coffee. The mind is not dissimilar. If we use it for something, then it is not being used for something else. It then becomes good at performing task A, and in fact it becomes over time less capable of doing task B. The mind allocates resources, in a recursive loop almost, to the task it is made to do most often.

Sometime during the industrialization of society, with the advent to machines, and calculators, and computers, and recording tape, and so on, the ability to memorize became more a sign of primitive mind unwilling to adapt with the times, ridiculed as nothing more than trying to "learn by rote", something frowned upon, as old-fashioned and out-of-tune with the modern direction the world was moving towards.

"...by the middle of the twentieth century memorization itself had begun to fall from favor. Progressive educators banished the practice from classrooms, dismissing it as a vestige of a less enlightened time. What had long been viewed as a stimulus for personal insight and creativity came to be seen as a barrier to imagination and then simply as a waste of mental energy."

"When our brain is overtaxed, we find "distractions more distracting." (Some studies link attention deficit disorder, or ADD, to the overloading of working memory.) Experiments indicate that as we reach the limits of our working memory, it becomes harder to distinguish relevant information from irrelevant information, signal from noise. We become mindless consumers of data."

Hyperlinks are, simply put, distractions. They distract from the text we are reading. Visually, mentally, cognitively.

"Deciphering hypertext substantially increases readers' cognitive load and hence weakens their ability to comprehend and retain what they're reading. A 1989 study showed that readers of hypertext often ended up clicking distractedly "through pages instead of reading them carefully." A 1990 experiment revealed that hypertext readers often "could not remember what they had and had not read.""

"...research continues to show that people who read linear text comprehend more, remember more, and learn more than those who read text peppered with links."

"A series of psychological studies over the past twenty years has revealed that after spending time in a quiet rural setting, close to nature, people exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory, and generally improved cognition."

So the internet is an unmitigated disaster, huh? So you are a luddite who would send us back to the good old days when there were no computers, no internet, no telephones, no television, no telegraph, no paper? No, the author does not say that. Quite the contrary.

"The ability to skim text is every bit as important as the ability to read deeply. What is different, and troubling, is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of reading. Once a means to an end, a way to identify information for deeper study, scanning is becoming an end in itself..."

...

"Research shows that certain cognitive skills are strengthened, sometimes substantially, by our use of computers and the Net. These tend to involve lower-level, or more primitive, mental functions such as hand-eye coordination, reflex response, and the processing of visual cues."

Maybe technology and science will evolve where they don't place such a distracted burden on our cognitive senses. Maybe humans themselves will evolve, as they continually do. Maybe not. In which case the winners in this world of technology will be the ones who learn to keep technology at arms length while learning the technology itself. Maybe.

Reading some of the reviews here, I notice that one of the main gripe against the book is that it does not provide a solution or suggest a course of action. I think the author does! There are some problems for which you lay out a solution once the problem is identified. For some others, the solution to the problem is implicit in the identification of the problem itself. Carr says that the net--with its bi-directionality, reach etc. etc.--makes us shallow thinkers; not just that, it alters our brain itself. So what do we do about it? Maybe we should minimize these effects by limiting our addiction to the latest snippet of bits/tweets, and make sure we achieve a fine balance between the breadth of knowledge and the depth of thought. There aren't any other solutions, because the net/technology has a personality of its own and will continue to move at its own style and pace. Agreed, the book sounds McLuhanesque, but Carr has massaged the message--The medium is the message--and presented it in the context of the Internet, and that has a value in itself. It comes across as pretty well researched to me; studies from Cognitive Psychology, Neuroplasticity, his own anecdotes all make a nice mix. I did think he was meandering a bit sometimes, but then again there is a value in repeating the same message in different words, scenes and perspectives; maybe this lack of interest in slowing down and absorbing/cud-chewing is part of the problem. To the question, Where's the tofu? - I think it's a great book, in not that it points out something that is totally new to us and gives us that 'Aha!' moment, but in that it takes the obvious and adds some depth and validity to it. A smooth read, though, I do have to say that the chapter on Google seems to have a tone and style that is markedly different from the rest.

This was kind of an intellectual circle-jerk for me. As someone who attended a school which militantly enforced a program of sustained deep reading of difficult books I don't need much convincing that reading an 800 page novel or an ancient historical chronicle is more meaningful and often more enjoyable than say, watching 8 hours of youtube video remixes in a row. But it's nice to know that Carr has now given people like me some scientific evidence for our own haughty cultural superiority. The first half of the book is a really great, wide ranging history of how our cultures and our physical minds are shaped by our technology, and as someone who reads little hard science type stuff, I was amazed to learn how human brains are at a literal, anatomical level shaped and molded by the kinds of media they consume. Carr's examination of how the internet is nascently re-mapping our neurons, to my mind, manages to be sharply critical, without being needlessly alarmist. This isn't the work of a crabby Luddite, but of someone who is genuinely concerned about the sort of critical mental processes we risk weakening if we pretend that the internet is a totally neutral force in our minds. And it's refreshing to read a take on the net that's grounded in some actual, critical research instead of just a mindless, knee-jerk celebration/condemnation. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to post this and go plumb the depths of reddit for a few hours...

The title of Carr's book makes no bones about his thesis, and the implied negativity may dissuade some from picking up the book. This would be a shame. This is an enjoyable read, both thought-provoking, well-researched, and, in the end, a melancholy call to arms. I admit to approaching it with some skepticism. In the introduction, Carr describes a newfound lack of focus and concentration which he attributes to time spent online. That anecdote didn't resonate with me. While I'm online many hours of the day, I have no problem switching gears and reading a book for hours at a time without the distractions of phone, internet, or any other device. However, once I got past that, I was engaged. The first half of the book outline an intellectual history which touches on philosophy, neuroscience, and a short history of intellectual revolutions or paradigm shifts. And if this sounds dry or heavy, well, Carr has a deft touch for gleaning the interesting and relevant details and weaving it into a coherent whole without getting too dry or academic. However, it's the second half of the book where I felt it really took off. The chapter on Google and the philosophy driving its founders was worth the price of admission alone. What makes this book exceptional in my opinion is Carr's ability to juggle history, science, and ethics/philosophy with ease. Don't be fooled by the title -- this is not a simple Luddite rant. As Carr himself describes another writer, this is a cry of the heart.

This is an extension of Carr's influential article "Is Google making us stupid?", and is in many ways a fascinating look at the possibility that the medium of the internet changes our ability to process information deeply. Carr is at his absolute best when he brings up the issue, pointing out what is at stake and drawing our intuitions out.

Word for word, this is not as interesting or well-written as his original article. In many places it tends to be stretched a bit thin -- which seems odd for a book on this topic. For example, since he is essentially expanding on an originally limited argument, he feels obliged to include a lot of well-worn history to expand the scope of media. We really don't need to know about Sumerian cuneiform or wax tablets or Greek philosophers (beyond the very obvious point that there is a history of media) for the argument he's making, since they don't fundamentally affect his argument.

Another weak point about the book is the writing on the brain and neuroplasticity. Since Carr is not a scientist himself, he doesn't have the background to write about this in a really authoritative way. What he has done is to work mainly off secondary (and tertiary) sources; basically taking for granted what other people have said. This shows through in a few areas where he relies too heavily on books such as Doidge's "The Brain that Changes Itself", already a pretty diluted look at neuroscience written by a psychoanalyst. If you want to know how reading and writing have changed the organization of the brain, there is a much better book out there called "Reading and the Brain" by Stanislas Dehaene. (a little digression here -- reading/writing have changed our perceptual mechanisms in the brain, while the internet is probably changing something like attentional control and executive function, so there are some important caveats to the phrase that "the medium is the message")

However, the chapter on memory was excellent, and brought me back into his argument. He makes the very important point (and one that won't be as obvious to most readers) that memory doesn't function like a hard drive; that instead it forms a central part of the way that we think. So there is a fundamental error in trying to "offload" our memory onto the web -- by not internalizing information, and instead thinking that we can just look at it later -- and one that we are probably not aware of.

Overall, I can't help but thinking that, despite his argument, it's a better world with the internet. Carr points out that the strategy that he used in writing the book was to rely on the best of both systems -- the fast internet for preliminary thinking and gathering sources, and quiet contemplation away from the internet to gather his thoughts and write the book. To have that option is something that is useful to be aware of.

The Shallows is a great read. I often wondered why reading books seemed so much more like collaboration than does Internet reading. I love reading books and it is very different than the Internet. I don't want a Kindle really and now I think I know why. That doesn't mean I won't get one, but I think I will ALSO always read books. The Shallows makes a great case for why that is a very good idea.

I took a lot of affirmations away from this book. Here are a few:

Book reading (linear) fills the long term memory like a thimble would fill a tub. A little at a time. This seems to happen kind of like a schema for the mind. Very useful in being able to problem solve and understand.

The unconscious mind can deliver answers to consciously posed problems, but only if the goals are clear to the conscious mind. A great example for understanding "how" something works. A very valuable tidbit.

The Internet and hyperlinks are terrific, but I never liked the reading experience of it. Truth be known I likely would not have found this book or many others had it not been for the web, specifically the store.com. The web is such a great value, but it is more for prospecting for knowledge nuggets or prospecting whereas reading seems to be to understand things better.

The chapter on Google was really interesting. The simple things that made Google great really helped my understanding. The end of the chapter and the campus scene as a the best place for the Devil to hide cracked me up, but I get the point.

All that said, the book spends a lot of time on the effect of new media on the literal brain. And, I suspect that is true. The genie is kind of out of the bottle, but the author's point is something I will pay even more attention to. So called multi-tasking has an impact on thought in general. Too much jumping around can't be good. Moderation and balance are keys to the good life.

While I agree that computers, like anything we do a lot, directs our evolution. I am not as troubled by that as the author and some of his references seem to be. I do agree that we ought to pay attention. Something needs to more than interesting, it needs to be important too.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I'm a strong believer in
reading. I think it changes lives. I feel that the ability to read
deeply and to think critically about what you read is especially
crucial both in the practical sense if you want to be able to live
without making lots of stupid mistakes, and in the intellectual
sense if you want a rich and rewarding inner life. But, on the
other side, I've learned so much from the Internet and it is so
important to the work I do, that I am unwilling to give it up. (I'm
a programmer, and the technical information that I need in order to
write the code I do is available on the Net.)

So, in reading this book, I'm looking less for proof that I must
give up the Internet and more for techniques and strategies that
will help me to get the best and the most from both modes or styles
of reading and thinking.

And, one technique that I use when I want to "go deep", or at least
to avoid "the shallows", is to take notes as I read, then to read
those notes, to write comments on those notes, and to write a book
review like this one. Taking notes forces me to concentrate on what
I'm reading. Writing comments on those notes and writing a review
forces me to *actively* work through some of the content from the
book. That's very much, I believe, in the spirit of what Carr is
trying to guide us toward.

But, perhaps some of the best guidance that you'll get from Carr's
book is the encouragement to increase your awareness while you read,
whether you are reading magazine articles on paper, books on paper,
Web pages, downloaded PDF files, and (soon) ePubs. Try to be aware
of when you do need to focus, and give yourself time to do that
concentrated, more linear form of thinking. And, conversely, try to
be aware of when you do need to read or even skim a variety of
related topics, when you are following a number of different
hypertext links. And, when you do, make sure you have a rational
for doing so.

On the other hand, listening to Jake Shimabukuro play "While my
guitar softly weeps" on the Ukulele at [...]
... well, I'll have to rationalize that one as a break and as
recreation. He is a master at that instrument, by the way.

Perhaps Carr's most ominous claim is that reading, skimming,
browsing the Web changes your brain physically, and not, according
to Carr, for the better. How much you worry about this might
depend on who you are and whether you have kids. A parent might
want to worry if a young (or not so young) child is spending most
of her life on the Web or with a mobile phone on the side of her
head and is no longer reading. That might have a lasting effect on
a growing brain, and possibly not a good one. However, at my age
(60+), any and all mental work and exercise is likely to the good,
as long as I get some variety.

So, what do you do, if, like me, you want to avoid a degenerating
attention span? Here are some suggestion you will find in Carr's
book, in some cases by reading and inferring between the lines:

- Do at least some of your reading on paper, or if on the Internet,
read something that does *not* have hyperlinks. Doing that will
reduce the lure of being distracted by every seemingly interesting
related idea.

- Read something long. Yes, you can read deep when you are reading
short pieces, but the ability to focus for long periods of time is
one that you do not want to lose.

- Take notes while you read.

- Write a critique of what you read. Analyze and criticize the
quality and the content. Try to specify some of the consequences
and implications.

- Read something that has *no* multimedia: no audio, no video, and
very few if any photographs. In addition to reducing
distractions, the lack of images and video will encourage you to
use your own imagination.

What is the future of reading? There are a aspects to a full answer
to this question. Here are a few:

- Paper will be gone. And, that's good. We cut down too many
trees.

- But, we will still have book-like content. There will still be
novels and stories that you will read sequentially, without
skimming and without skipping around. You might read them on an
ePub/eBook reader, but the experience will still be very
book-like.

- Our reading material will all be search-able. In fact, we
likely have cross indexing software that will enable us to quickly
search the content of all the books and ePubs we've ever read.

- We will be able to keep huge libraries. It will not be
unreasonable to expect to keep a library of all the books you have
ever read. Tera-byte sized hard disks are getting cheaper (less
than $100 in the U.S.A. as I write this). And, perhaps in the
future we will store much of our content on the Internet or in the
(virtual) cloud.

- And, reading in a focused, concentrated, and attentive way will be
up to you, your choice, just as it *always* has been.

If we no longer or seldom write on paper, will it change the way and
style and content of our writing? Yes, it's likely to do so. It
already has done so for many of us. In the following ways:

- Frequent edits and easier changes -- Cut, copy, and paste, as well
as search and replace give us writing powers that paper cannot

- Easier collaboration -- We can pass our documents among us and can
share our work and the work of others more easily with electronic
documents. Plus, our use of electronic documents will lead to the
development of tools that enhance our powers of collaboration
across geographic distances. (The ability to post a book review
like this one is one aspect of that extended ability to
collaborate.)

Still, there is something enjoyable about making marks on paper ...

What we really need to ask is: why is writing valuable? I think
part of the answer is that writing forces us to have something to
say and to express it in words. Plus, writing encourages us to
organize our thoughts, for example to produce a coherent, logical
argument and to support that argument in a 5-paragraph essay. And,
writing, possibly in the form of taking notes, helps us to be more
attentive to what we read, and to think through the ideas we
encounter. This leaves aside the most obvious benefit of writing,
which is that it produces a record that we or others can review and
rethink later.

But, these benefits depend very much on the kind and style of
writing that we do, and also, it's likely, on the amount of effort
we put into it.

Summarizing a bit: We need to be aware of and attentive to many of
the ideas and problems and disputes that Carr discusses. Carr
discusses lots of research from the fields of psychology and
neurology to prove his points. That research is questionable, it
seems to me, especially given the use to which Carr puts
it. Thinking these issues through, however, and then being aware of
them as we use computers and the Internet and as we read will
trigger suggestions about how you and I can become better readers
and better computer users. You and I will need to define for
ourselves what we mean by "better".

The Shallows is an insightful book on how digital media are changing the way we think. It is not a call to Luddism, not an alarmist warning of a Brave New World, nor a paean to a digital utopia, but a sober investigation - personal and empirical - of how media affect cognition.

Nicholas Carr cites numerous studies demonstrating the association between learning and attentiveness, how attentiveness is disrupted when using digital media, and consequently how learning becomes shallower. The reason is obvious to anyone who might be reading this - dissipation of a thousand avenues of distraction. How often are we diverted by email, Facebook, the headlines, our favorite forums? The list is near endless. The result is that we are now consumers of unrelated bite-size bits of knowledge, most of it trivia, and find ourselves increasingly unable to engage in sustained linear thought.

We may yet be at an early age in our cognitive development and future generations will have a better mastery over the technology than those of us from Carr's generation, those who grew up analog and were among the first cadre of producers and adopters of digital technology. Undoubtedly, a new type of mind will emerge. The repetitive, interactive, and addictive experience provided on the net is exactly the kind required to make lasting changes to cognition. We don't yet know where such changes will lead. We can't say we will be worse off. What we can say is that we will be different. "In the choices we have made, consciously or not, about how we use our computers, we have rejected the intellectual tradition of solitary, single-minded concentration, the ethic that the book bestowed on us. We have cast our lot with the juggler." P114

But perhaps this is the appropriate choice, given our circumstances. The world of knowledge has grown immensely since the dawn of the age of literacy, when an individual could read most, if not all, of the major books in his or her field, plus have a good reading knowledge in one or two other others. Today one can hope to master only a subset of any given subject. Perhaps it is now (and will continue to be) more important to know where to look for knowledge.

And as Carr discovered for himself when he set out to write this book, it is imperative to learn how to manage our use of technology. Basically, Carr had to cut himself off from the net in order to engage in sustained thought. His experience echoes that of William Powers, who relates in his book Hamlet's BlackBerry how he managed his exposure to the net in order to be able to also spend time with his family, and to read and write books. Our more difficult problem may well lie in convincing young people of the benefits of sustained thought. How will they know unless they try? And how can we even get them to try when they are unwilling to be disconnected for more than a few minutes?

For a magazine-size summary of his argument, see Carr's 2008 piece in the Atlantic, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

#

Is our constant exposure to electronic stimuli good for us? Can we transform the data we receive into the knowledge we need? Are we swapping deep understanding for shallow distractions?

In this book, Nicholas Carr argues that our constant exposure to multiple and faster data streams is changing the way our brains are wired. This change, which is due to the inherent plasticity of the brain, tends to reduce our capacity to absorb and retain what we read. Mr Carr cites a number of different studies to support his views, and the book makes for interesting reading.

Mr Carr acknowledges that the digital world brings both advantage and disadvantage: `Every tool imposes limitations even as it opens possibilities.' The Internet is a wonderful tool for finding information, but value usually requires some analysis, and often requires a context which is not always immediately obvious. How do we find a balance between those aspects of life that require self-awareness, time and careful consideration, and those aspects of life where an automatic (or semi automatic) response is more appropriate and perhaps even required? Do we understand what choices we have, or are we responding in line with the immediacy of the medium we are using? Are we consumers of data or evaluators of information? Does it matter? I think it does: `The more distracted we become, the less able we are to experience the subtlest, most distinctly human forms of empathy, compassion, and emotion.'

The most valuable aspect of this book, to me, was thinking about the short and long term consequences of the Internet. Those of us who grew to adulthood before the Internet shaped the way we work and communicate have (to varying degrees) embraced the benefits and new possibilities afforded.

A return to the past is neither possible nor desirable - but conscious choice is both.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

This is an outstanding book that does a superlative job of presenting in a cogent manner the history of the written word, the art of reading, the science of memory, and how the internet disrupts the neurological processes that are at the heart of comprehension.

It is a testament to the incendiary nature of the topic, to suggest that the internet may affecting our minds in in ways that may not be always positive, or it may actually be harming our capacity to focus, and doing so by actually altering the way our brain is wired, that even smart and reasonable people as John Battelle, author of the bestselling and an excellent book on the history of search engines on the net, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, become unhinged when commenting on the topic (see his post, no, more a hasty, flustered rage, "Google: Making Nick Carr Stupid, But It's Made This Guy Smarter from June 2008", in response to Nicholas Carr's article, "Is Google making us stupid?" in the July/August 2008 issue of The Atlantic).

Carr's book, however, is a very well-written book on the topic. Even if you disagree, for whatever reason, with the premise of the book, you owe it to yourself to read it. This is also not to gainsay the fact that Carr does have a predilection for sometimes succumbing to provocative, almost needling, sensationalistic headlines. Which can sometimes overwhelm the sound reasoning underneath. A minor broadside against Google (and Google Books) notwithstanding in the book (to sample, "The last thing the company wants is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. Google is, quite literally, in the business of distraction", pg 157), this is not an incendiary hatchet job against the internet or any company. Whether you are convinced or not is besides the point, this book will surely enlighten you in at least some ways on how we think and and how we remember what we remember. And this is worth something, surely.

At some point in the past, we all remembered stuff we needed to know. The written word did not exist. Then humans started writing, on caves, and then on tablets, then papyrus, then paper. The history of the written word can be traced back several thousand years, when the Sumerians started to use clay tablets inscribed with a reed. The Egyptians used scrolls made from papyrus (a plant) around 4500 BCE. The Greeks and Romans adopted these scrolls for their writings. And the writing then was hugely different than what we know it today. Like how? Well, it turns out, there were no spaces between the words. Right. So a sentence like "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" would have been written as "thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog". Rather painful to read, right? The reason seems to be that the "lack of word separation reflected language's origins in speech. When we talk, we don't insert pauses between each word--long stretches of syllables flow unbroken from our lips". Not good. Certainly not good. Writing was not read as much as it was read out loud. The practice of reading silently came much later.

When the practice of placing spaces between words did occur, it "alleviated the cognitive strain involved in deciphering text, making it possible for people to read quickly, silently, and with greater comprehension. Such fluency had to be learned. It required complex changes in the circuitry of the brain, as contemporary studies of young readers reveal."

"Readers didn't just become more efficient. They also became more attentive. To read a long book silently required an ability to concentrate intently over a long period of time, to "lose oneself" in the pages of a book, as we now say. Developing such mental discipline was not easy. The natural state of the human brain, like that of the brains of most of our relatives in the animal kingdom, is one of distractedness. Our predisposition is to shift our gaze, and hence our attention, from one object to another, to be aware of as much of what's going on around us as possible."

And herein lies one of the reasons why the internet functions as a distracter, a destroyer of attention. Why? Because the internet presents information in a way that requires us to evaluate all available information, like hyperilnks, text-boxes, adverts, popups, tooltips, the chrome, everything, and make assessments as to their utility.

It is about two-fifths of the way through the (on page 111 or thereabouts) that the question that really forms the title of the book makes an appearance.

"Now comes the crucial question: What can science tell us about the actual effects that Internet use is having on the way our minds work?"

"Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, educators, and Web designers point to the same conclusion: when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. It's possible to think deeply while surfing the Net, just as it's possible to think shallowly while reading a book, but that's not the type of thinking the technology encourages and rewards."

"Our senses are finely attuned to change," explains Maya Pines of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "Stationary or unchanging objects become part of the scenery and are mostly unseen." But as soon as "something in the environment changes, we need to take notice because it might mean danger--or opportunity." Our fast-paced, reflexive shifts in focus were once crucial to our survival. They reduced the odds that a predator would take us by surprise or that we'd overlook a nearby source of food. For most of history, the normal path of human thought was anything but linear.

"Whenever we, as readers, come upon a link, we have to pause, for at least a split second, to allow our prefrontal cortex to evaluate whether or not we should click on it. The redirection of our mental resources, from reading words to making judgments, may be imperceptible to us - our brains are quick - but it's been shown to impede comprehension and retention, particularly when it's repeated frequently."

The brain becomes better at what it is made to do. Simply put, practice makes perfect. Perfect at good things, perfect at not-so-good things. Perfect at insane things. Fungibility is a term used more in an economic sense, as in when money is termed as fungible, capable of being spent on interchangeable things. We can use money to buy a popcorn or a soda at the movies, or we can use the same money to buy a book and a coffee. The mind is not dissimilar. If we use it for something, then it is not being used for something else. It then becomes good at performing task A, and in fact it becomes over time less capable of doing task B. The mind allocates resources, in a recursive loop almost, to the task it is made to do most often.

Sometime during the industrialization of society, with the advent to machines, and calculators, and computers, and recording tape, and so on, the ability to memorize became more a sign of primitive mind unwilling to adapt with the times, ridiculed as nothing more than trying to "learn by rote", something frowned upon, as old-fashioned and out-of-tune with the modern direction the world was moving towards.

"...by the middle of the twentieth century memorization itself had begun to fall from favor. Progressive educators banished the practice from classrooms, dismissing it as a vestige of a less enlightened time. What had long been viewed as a stimulus for personal insight and creativity came to be seen as a barrier to imagination and then simply as a waste of mental energy."

"When our brain is overtaxed, we find "distractions more distracting." (Some studies link attention deficit disorder, or ADD, to the overloading of working memory.) Experiments indicate that as we reach the limits of our working memory, it becomes harder to distinguish relevant information from irrelevant information, signal from noise. We become mindless consumers of data."

Hyperlinks are, simply put, distractions. They distract from the text we are reading. Visually, mentally, cognitively.

"Deciphering hypertext substantially increases readers' cognitive load and hence weakens their ability to comprehend and retain what they're reading. A 1989 study showed that readers of hypertext often ended up clicking distractedly "through pages instead of reading them carefully." A 1990 experiment revealed that hypertext readers often "could not remember what they had and had not read.""

"...research continues to show that people who read linear text comprehend more, remember more, and learn more than those who read text peppered with links."

"A series of psychological studies over the past twenty years has revealed that after spending time in a quiet rural setting, close to nature, people exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory, and generally improved cognition."

So the internet is an unmitigated disaster, huh? So you are a luddite who would send us back to the good old days when there were no computers, no internet, no telephones, no television, no telegraph, no paper? No, the author does not say that. Quite the contrary.

"The ability to skim text is every bit as important as the ability to read deeply. What is different, and troubling, is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of reading. Once a means to an end, a way to identify information for deeper study, scanning is becoming an end in itself..."

...

"Research shows that certain cognitive skills are strengthened, sometimes substantially, by our use of computers and the Net. These tend to involve lower-level, or more primitive, mental functions such as hand-eye coordination, reflex response, and the processing of visual cues."

Maybe technology and science will evolve where they don't place such a distracted burden on our cognitive senses. Maybe humans themselves will evolve, as they continually do. Maybe not. In which case the winners in this world of technology will be the ones who learn to keep technology at arms length while learning the technology itself. Maybe.

Reading some of the reviews here, I notice that one of the main gripe against the book is that it does not provide a solution or suggest a course of action. I think the author does! There are some problems for which you lay out a solution once the problem is identified. For some others, the solution to the problem is implicit in the identification of the problem itself. Carr says that the net--with its bi-directionality, reach etc. etc.--makes us shallow thinkers; not just that, it alters our brain itself. So what do we do about it? Maybe we should minimize these effects by limiting our addiction to the latest snippet of bits/tweets, and make sure we achieve a fine balance between the breadth of knowledge and the depth of thought. There aren't any other solutions, because the net/technology has a personality of its own and will continue to move at its own style and pace. Agreed, the book sounds McLuhanesque, but Carr has massaged the message--The medium is the message--and presented it in the context of the Internet, and that has a value in itself. It comes across as pretty well researched to me; studies from Cognitive Psychology, Neuroplasticity, his own anecdotes all make a nice mix. I did think he was meandering a bit sometimes, but then again there is a value in repeating the same message in different words, scenes and perspectives; maybe this lack of interest in slowing down and absorbing/cud-chewing is part of the problem. To the question, Where's the tofu? - I think it's a great book, in not that it points out something that is totally new to us and gives us that 'Aha!' moment, but in that it takes the obvious and adds some depth and validity to it. A smooth read, though, I do have to say that the chapter on Google seems to have a tone and style that is markedly different from the rest.

This was kind of an intellectual circle-jerk for me. As someone who attended a school which militantly enforced a program of sustained deep reading of difficult books I don't need much convincing that reading an 800 page novel or an ancient historical chronicle is more meaningful and often more enjoyable than say, watching 8 hours of youtube video remixes in a row. But it's nice to know that Carr has now given people like me some scientific evidence for our own haughty cultural superiority. The first half of the book is a really great, wide ranging history of how our cultures and our physical minds are shaped by our technology, and as someone who reads little hard science type stuff, I was amazed to learn how human brains are at a literal, anatomical level shaped and molded by the kinds of media they consume. Carr's examination of how the internet is nascently re-mapping our neurons, to my mind, manages to be sharply critical, without being needlessly alarmist. This isn't the work of a crabby Luddite, but of someone who is genuinely concerned about the sort of critical mental processes we risk weakening if we pretend that the internet is a totally neutral force in our minds. And it's refreshing to read a take on the net that's grounded in some actual, critical research instead of just a mindless, knee-jerk celebration/condemnation. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to post this and go plumb the depths of reddit for a few hours...

The title of Carr's book makes no bones about his thesis, and the implied negativity may dissuade some from picking up the book. This would be a shame. This is an enjoyable read, both thought-provoking, well-researched, and, in the end, a melancholy call to arms. I admit to approaching it with some skepticism. In the introduction, Carr describes a newfound lack of focus and concentration which he attributes to time spent online. That anecdote didn't resonate with me. While I'm online many hours of the day, I have no problem switching gears and reading a book for hours at a time without the distractions of phone, internet, or any other device. However, once I got past that, I was engaged. The first half of the book outline an intellectual history which touches on philosophy, neuroscience, and a short history of intellectual revolutions or paradigm shifts. And if this sounds dry or heavy, well, Carr has a deft touch for gleaning the interesting and relevant details and weaving it into a coherent whole without getting too dry or academic. However, it's the second half of the book where I felt it really took off. The chapter on Google and the philosophy driving its founders was worth the price of admission alone. What makes this book exceptional in my opinion is Carr's ability to juggle history, science, and ethics/philosophy with ease. Don't be fooled by the title -- this is not a simple Luddite rant. As Carr himself describes another writer, this is a cry of the heart.

This is an extension of Carr's influential article "Is Google making us stupid?", and is in many ways a fascinating look at the possibility that the medium of the internet changes our ability to process information deeply. Carr is at his absolute best when he brings up the issue, pointing out what is at stake and drawing our intuitions out.

Word for word, this is not as interesting or well-written as his original article. In many places it tends to be stretched a bit thin -- which seems odd for a book on this topic. For example, since he is essentially expanding on an originally limited argument, he feels obliged to include a lot of well-worn history to expand the scope of media. We really don't need to know about Sumerian cuneiform or wax tablets or Greek philosophers (beyond the very obvious point that there is a history of media) for the argument he's making, since they don't fundamentally affect his argument.

Another weak point about the book is the writing on the brain and neuroplasticity. Since Carr is not a scientist himself, he doesn't have the background to write about this in a really authoritative way. What he has done is to work mainly off secondary (and tertiary) sources; basically taking for granted what other people have said. This shows through in a few areas where he relies too heavily on books such as Doidge's "The Brain that Changes Itself", already a pretty diluted look at neuroscience written by a psychoanalyst. If you want to know how reading and writing have changed the organization of the brain, there is a much better book out there called "Reading and the Brain" by Stanislas Dehaene. (a little digression here -- reading/writing have changed our perceptual mechanisms in the brain, while the internet is probably changing something like attentional control and executive function, so there are some important caveats to the phrase that "the medium is the message")

However, the chapter on memory was excellent, and brought me back into his argument. He makes the very important point (and one that won't be as obvious to most readers) that memory doesn't function like a hard drive; that instead it forms a central part of the way that we think. So there is a fundamental error in trying to "offload" our memory onto the web -- by not internalizing information, and instead thinking that we can just look at it later -- and one that we are probably not aware of.

Overall, I can't help but thinking that, despite his argument, it's a better world with the internet. Carr points out that the strategy that he used in writing the book was to rely on the best of both systems -- the fast internet for preliminary thinking and gathering sources, and quiet contemplation away from the internet to gather his thoughts and write the book. To have that option is something that is useful to be aware of.

The Shallows is a great read. I often wondered why reading books seemed so much more like collaboration than does Internet reading. I love reading books and it is very different than the Internet. I don't want a Kindle really and now I think I know why. That doesn't mean I won't get one, but I think I will ALSO always read books. The Shallows makes a great case for why that is a very good idea.

I took a lot of affirmations away from this book. Here are a few:

Book reading (linear) fills the long term memory like a thimble would fill a tub. A little at a time. This seems to happen kind of like a schema for the mind. Very useful in being able to problem solve and understand.

The unconscious mind can deliver answers to consciously posed problems, but only if the goals are clear to the conscious mind. A great example for understanding "how" something works. A very valuable tidbit.

The Internet and hyperlinks are terrific, but I never liked the reading experience of it. Truth be known I likely would not have found this book or many others had it not been for the web, specifically the store.com. The web is such a great value, but it is more for prospecting for knowledge nuggets or prospecting whereas reading seems to be to understand things better.

The chapter on Google was really interesting. The simple things that made Google great really helped my understanding. The end of the chapter and the campus scene as a the best place for the Devil to hide cracked me up, but I get the point.

All that said, the book spends a lot of time on the effect of new media on the literal brain. And, I suspect that is true. The genie is kind of out of the bottle, but the author's point is something I will pay even more attention to. So called multi-tasking has an impact on thought in general. Too much jumping around can't be good. Moderation and balance are keys to the good life.

While I agree that computers, like anything we do a lot, directs our evolution. I am not as troubled by that as the author and some of his references seem to be. I do agree that we ought to pay attention. Something needs to more than interesting, it needs to be important too.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I'm a strong believer in
reading. I think it changes lives. I feel that the ability to read
deeply and to think critically about what you read is especially
crucial both in the practical sense if you want to be able to live
without making lots of stupid mistakes, and in the intellectual
sense if you want a rich and rewarding inner life. But, on the
other side, I've learned so much from the Internet and it is so
important to the work I do, that I am unwilling to give it up. (I'm
a programmer, and the technical information that I need in order to
write the code I do is available on the Net.)

So, in reading this book, I'm looking less for proof that I must
give up the Internet and more for techniques and strategies that
will help me to get the best and the most from both modes or styles
of reading and thinking.

And, one technique that I use when I want to "go deep", or at least
to avoid "the shallows", is to take notes as I read, then to read
those notes, to write comments on those notes, and to write a book
review like this one. Taking notes forces me to concentrate on what
I'm reading. Writing comments on those notes and writing a review
forces me to *actively* work through some of the content from the
book. That's very much, I believe, in the spirit of what Carr is
trying to guide us toward.

But, perhaps some of the best guidance that you'll get from Carr's
book is the encouragement to increase your awareness while you read,
whether you are reading magazine articles on paper, books on paper,
Web pages, downloaded PDF files, and (soon) ePubs. Try to be aware
of when you do need to focus, and give yourself time to do that
concentrated, more linear form of thinking. And, conversely, try to
be aware of when you do need to read or even skim a variety of
related topics, when you are following a number of different
hypertext links. And, when you do, make sure you have a rational
for doing so.

On the other hand, listening to Jake Shimabukuro play "While my
guitar softly weeps" on the Ukulele at [...]
... well, I'll have to rationalize that one as a break and as
recreation. He is a master at that instrument, by the way.

Perhaps Carr's most ominous claim is that reading, skimming,
browsing the Web changes your brain physically, and not, according
to Carr, for the better. How much you worry about this might
depend on who you are and whether you have kids. A parent might
want to worry if a young (or not so young) child is spending most
of her life on the Web or with a mobile phone on the side of her
head and is no longer reading. That might have a lasting effect on
a growing brain, and possibly not a good one. However, at my age
(60+), any and all mental work and exercise is likely to the good,
as long as I get some variety.

So, what do you do, if, like me, you want to avoid a degenerating
attention span? Here are some suggestion you will find in Carr's
book, in some cases by reading and inferring between the lines:

- Do at least some of your reading on paper, or if on the Internet,
read something that does *not* have hyperlinks. Doing that will
reduce the lure of being distracted by every seemingly interesting
related idea.

- Read something long. Yes, you can read deep when you are reading
short pieces, but the ability to focus for long periods of time is
one that you do not want to lose.

- Take notes while you read.

- Write a critique of what you read. Analyze and criticize the
quality and the content. Try to specify some of the consequences
and implications.

- Read something that has *no* multimedia: no audio, no video, and
very few if any photographs. In addition to reducing
distractions, the lack of images and video will encourage you to
use your own imagination.

What is the future of reading? There are a aspects to a full answer
to this question. Here are a few:

- Paper will be gone. And, that's good. We cut down too many
trees.

- But, we will still have book-like content. There will still be
novels and stories that you will read sequentially, without
skimming and without skipping around. You might read them on an
ePub/eBook reader, but the experience will still be very
book-like.

- Our reading material will all be search-able. In fact, we
likely have cross indexing software that will enable us to quickly
search the content of all the books and ePubs we've ever read.

- We will be able to keep huge libraries. It will not be
unreasonable to expect to keep a library of all the books you have
ever read. Tera-byte sized hard disks are getting cheaper (less
than $100 in the U.S.A. as I write this). And, perhaps in the
future we will store much of our content on the Internet or in the
(virtual) cloud.

- And, reading in a focused, concentrated, and attentive way will be
up to you, your choice, just as it *always* has been.

If we no longer or seldom write on paper, will it change the way and
style and content of our writing? Yes, it's likely to do so. It
already has done so for many of us. In the following ways:

- Frequent edits and easier changes -- Cut, copy, and paste, as well
as search and replace give us writing powers that paper cannot

- Easier collaboration -- We can pass our documents among us and can
share our work and the work of others more easily with electronic
documents. Plus, our use of electronic documents will lead to the
development of tools that enhance our powers of collaboration
across geographic distances. (The ability to post a book review
like this one is one aspect of that extended ability to
collaborate.)

Still, there is something enjoyable about making marks on paper ...

What we really need to ask is: why is writing valuable? I think
part of the answer is that writing forces us to have something to
say and to express it in words. Plus, writing encourages us to
organize our thoughts, for example to produce a coherent, logical
argument and to support that argument in a 5-paragraph essay. And,
writing, possibly in the form of taking notes, helps us to be more
attentive to what we read, and to think through the ideas we
encounter. This leaves aside the most obvious benefit of writing,
which is that it produces a record that we or others can review and
rethink later.

But, these benefits depend very much on the kind and style of
writing that we do, and also, it's likely, on the amount of effort
we put into it.

Summarizing a bit: We need to be aware of and attentive to many of
the ideas and problems and disputes that Carr discusses. Carr
discusses lots of research from the fields of psychology and
neurology to prove his points. That research is questionable, it
seems to me, especially given the use to which Carr puts
it. Thinking these issues through, however, and then being aware of
them as we use computers and the Internet and as we read will
trigger suggestions about how you and I can become better readers
and better computer users. You and I will need to define for
ourselves what we mean by "better".

The Shallows is an insightful book on how digital media are changing the way we think. It is not a call to Luddism, not an alarmist warning of a Brave New World, nor a paean to a digital utopia, but a sober investigation - personal and empirical - of how media affect cognition.

Nicholas Carr cites numerous studies demonstrating the association between learning and attentiveness, how attentiveness is disrupted when using digital media, and consequently how learning becomes shallower. The reason is obvious to anyone who might be reading this - dissipation of a thousand avenues of distraction. How often are we diverted by email, Facebook, the headlines, our favorite forums? The list is near endless. The result is that we are now consumers of unrelated bite-size bits of knowledge, most of it trivia, and find ourselves increasingly unable to engage in sustained linear thought.

We may yet be at an early age in our cognitive development and future generations will have a better mastery over the technology than those of us from Carr's generation, those who grew up analog and were among the first cadre of producers and adopters of digital technology. Undoubtedly, a new type of mind will emerge. The repetitive, interactive, and addictive experience provided on the net is exactly the kind required to make lasting changes to cognition. We don't yet know where such changes will lead. We can't say we will be worse off. What we can say is that we will be different. "In the choices we have made, consciously or not, about how we use our computers, we have rejected the intellectual tradition of solitary, single-minded concentration, the ethic that the book bestowed on us. We have cast our lot with the juggler." P114

But perhaps this is the appropriate choice, given our circumstances. The world of knowledge has grown immensely since the dawn of the age of literacy, when an individual could read most, if not all, of the major books in his or her field, plus have a good reading knowledge in one or two other others. Today one can hope to master only a subset of any given subject. Perhaps it is now (and will continue to be) more important to know where to look for knowledge.

And as Carr discovered for himself when he set out to write this book, it is imperative to learn how to manage our use of technology. Basically, Carr had to cut himself off from the net in order to engage in sustained thought. His experience echoes that of William Powers, who relates in his book Hamlet's BlackBerry how he managed his exposure to the net in order to be able to also spend time with his family, and to read and write books. Our more difficult problem may well lie in convincing young people of the benefits of sustained thought. How will they know unless they try? And how can we even get them to try when they are unwilling to be disconnected for more than a few minutes?

For a magazine-size summary of his argument, see Carr's 2008 piece in the Atlantic, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

#

Just finished this and must admit, I understand the examples given and agree, to a large extent, with the observations noted by the author. While it would be hard for me to give back all the technological crutches I've acquired over the years, it would be naive for me to deny that there are ways in which I just don't think anymore. Impatience and an insatiable appetite for information are probably symptoms of this trend I act out every day. Definitely a great if troubling wake up call - but to what end? There is no putting the genie back into the bottle, is there?

In spite of the books strong points, there were some parts that meandered down the path of filler text (going down the rabbit hole of overly technical details of scientific studies of the effects - ok, we get it - the net is screwing with our brains. Now stop talking about the lab, already. Whoops - there I go again, impatient and seeking the conclusion...!) Occasionally the credibility was taken to the limit, particularly when referencing the philosophy student who did not read actual books. I am not sure what level of academic excellence and in what area of philosophy this supposed student matriculated, but it's difficult to imagine anyone taking the discipline seriously would never, ever have to read an actual paper book. Much of the necessary material is so esoteric as to be simply unavailable in any other form but (old) books - particularly if one reads any jurisprudence. Wikipedia will not help you there, kid - sorry. So perhaps this example was fictitious and fabricated for expediency, but again, we get it - the internet is rotting the brain and destroying the attention span of everyone under thirty. And again, we're left with the question - what can we really, truly do about it, other than manage it and try to focus on the truly important?

Having a hard time remembering what you just read? Do you find it more difficult to complete a whole book or a long article? While advancing age may be a factor, perhaps a bigger one could be how the Internet is reconfiguring our brains, as Nicholas Carr persuasively argues in this book. This book comes in the line of previous cultural critics skeptical of technology, such as Neil Postman a couple of decades ago, but he goes beyond it by showing how this particular technology changes not only the way behave, but the very wiring of our brains. Yes, all upbeat articles we read recently about research that shows how our brain remains malleable until well into adulthood has the implication that the technologies we use could alter the brain to adapt to a world of constant electronic interruptions. While this makes us better informed than ever, and by some measures our intelligence can improve, we also lose something important, which is the ability to concentrate long and hard and have deep thoughts and insights.

In making the argument Carr presents a concise and vivid history on how past technological changes altered the life of the mind, such as when going from oral to written knowledge, from longform writing to the one we know today, and more importantly, when going from handwritten to printed books, which led to our modern culture and made possible the breakthrough ideas of the last centuries. He also warns on misguided notions of artificial intelligence and how we become shallower and presumably less human when we completely outsource our memory to machines.

The fact that Carr is no technophobe, he clearly appreciates the benefits of modern information technology and has in fact was an early adopter of personal computers, gives greater credibility to his argument. Perhaps a downside of this book is that it's a bit too one sided, it leaves us with no hope that life can be much better because of the Internet, when in fact it's too early to know the lasting impact these technologies will have. But in these days of techno-utopianism, when we idolize companies such as Facebook, Google, and Apple, this countercultural book, well written and diligently researched, brings a welcome change and deserves a good reading.

Though I would not have picked this book off the shelf and bought it of my own accord, I was pleasantly surprised by this book after reading it for a graduate college course. I agree with Carr’s thesis that using and reading on the Internet is changing our brains and our culture for the worse.
I agreed with that sentiment before reading the book, having observed myself the degradation in deep reading and thought-provoking intellectual discourse among my own and younger generations who have grown up with the internet, but now I have evidence to strengthen my own arguments with those who disagree with Carr and myself.
The increase in diagnoses of ADD and ADHD correlate with the exponential growth of and first world societies’ reliance on the web. Carr explains the reason for these disturbing increases in The Shallows by stating and showing that the disease of distraction is due to the Internet’s effect on neurons in the brain.
The science behind these intellectual and societal changes could easily be dry, dreadful reading, but Carr’s matter-of-fact tone and clarity of language make this book an engaging and easy read.
I recommend this book to anyone who uses the Internet, whether you love it or hate it.

The irony is a spongy wad, so thick the fine edge of your keyboard or netbook would be enough to cut it.

I'm trying to write a review of Nicholas Carr's new book, The Shallows, and all the while, I can't seem to stop myself from checking TweetDeck every few minutes (there just did it again); or a quick dip in to my email, or to check my blog comments...

This is the welter of distractions we face every day, for those of us who are wired, reading, and working. Even if you're disciplined, the distraction is there -- it takes an act of will to resist it, and what happens to your brain in that instant while you're deciding if you should click on that link, open up that Facebook app, or make a comment on the article you've been reading between tasks?

A lot. In fact, your brain is being rewired while we you read this, assuming, of course, you've made it this far in the review and you're still reading.

This is why I believe everyone who has any interest at all in the Internet, the web and reading should study this book. If you're intrigued by the ultimate the fate of the human species, and where this information age is taking us, you'll want to have a look. Hell, probably anyone who uses the net should consider at least scanning it. (Yes, more irony.)

Carr's writing and research is excellent, and his thesis is straightforward: we're giving up part of our humanity in the headlong rush to absorb as much information as we can, as quickly as we can. The book discusses the history of media, and how our brains have changed before -- first with the advent of writing, and then with the development of Guttenburg's press; he carries the argument from current studies of the brain and consciousness to the flawed model of our brains as computers and our minds as software; he delves into how philosophers and other thinkers have meditated on this subject throughout history.

And it is exactly the discipline of meditation, and "deep reading" as he calls it, that we are starting to lose with the web. It's changing our writing, our thinking, and ultimately, it's changing our culture.

If nothing else, this book will help you be more aware of what is happening to you on a daily basis. I've already been aware of some of the effects he discusses -- for example, when I'm writing a piece of long fiction, I always make sure my computer is disconnected from the net, and I don't have any other programs except for my word processor (and iTunes) open. Now, I see that I need to give my brain at more of a break from the constant info-dump of the net than that.

We're all altering human evolution with this experiment, and who knows where it will end? Carr is not optimistic, and he worries that when it is all over, we will no longer be homo sapiens, we will be homo informavore.

It's funny that I should rush to the internet to write a review of this book now that I've finished it. This is one of the most sobering books I've read. In it the author presents the case that the internet is a tool that is making it harder and harder for us to focus, harder for us to engage in contemplative thought, harder to remember things, maybe even harder to experience higher emotions like empathy. He discusses study after study in which the distractions of hyper-linked text have been proven to make it harder for us to focus & remember. As our brains are hyper-stimulated we become excellent at processing information extremely fast, but we lose the ability to retain it or to think deeply about it. The author is concerned that we will lose much of what has been gained over the past 1,000 or so years in culture & thought as we turn increasingly to computers to do everything. He is especially concerned as we turn things "requiring wisdom" over to computers. I think his fears are well founded, I can see it so easily in my own life & mind. As a result of reading this book I have turned from my online (private) blog/journal & am dedicating myself to writing long hand, in that forgotten skill cursive. I'm struggling a little to remember letters - and here is the paradox - so I looked up the strokes on the internet. The author said he moved to the country & deliberately cut himself off from the internet, blogs, RSS, etc - and this helped him complete his work. However, having completed, he says he has gone back to the 'net, at least some; I think the important thing is to find a good balance & I hope I can do so. Certainly, I need to turn down my connectedness & work on doing things that build my ability to concentrate.

In "The Shallows" Nicholas Carr makes a passionate defense of the brain reared in the reading of long sprawling novels ("War and Peace" is his favorite example) by attacking the brain abandoned to the caprices of Internet text. Mr. Carr tells us what has recently been known but has been proven without a doubt: that the brain is "plastic," and it is what you make of it. A brain that has been reading novels from childhood can approach every task with concentration and focus, diligence and nuance because that's the way the brain has been programmed. A brain that has been "reading" blogs on the other hand probably approaches every task with impatience and erraticness, shallowness and indifference. As individuals we no longer think deeply.

Mr. Carr writes that the entire reading experience transforms from a linear, logical experience to something fleeting and erratic. That's because of "multi-tasking," whereby when you're trying to construct an e-mail you're also chatting online and getting live updates on your favorite bloggers just as you're doing internet banking and shopping for a birthday present for your mother -- because your mind is everywhere it's ultimately nowhere. (Mr. Carr tells a touching anecdote of how back in 1974 when computer scientists were experimenting with the now omnipresent windows display format and one was bragging how this permitted one to be interrupted while composing a personal e-mail, another scientist asked, "Why would I want to be interrupted while I'm composing a personal e-mail...." -- ah, the particular sentimentalities of the the ancients.) Also, links within the text invite readers to jump around, scattering their concentration. Experiments show that readers who use multi-media hyperlinks embedded within a reading passage don't come away with an enhanced understanding of the text, but can't even seem to recall the main points. Another way of looking at this is that the reader was overloaded with information that was not managed and narrated to him, which is what he was seeking from the reading in the first place -- in other words, the Internet reading process undermines and destroys reading in the first place. But Mr. Carr also points out that the the store Kindle has thousands upon thousands of links for classic novels (this means it's now very convenient to read footnotes and endnotes, but who actually read footnotes and endnotes anyway?)

All in all, Mr. Carr makes a compelling case that the Internet is bad for reading, and that's bad because reading is good. So it's very hard to see the point for this book. Also, half of the book focuses on how language and reading were developed, and then Mr. Carr jumps into the Internet without discussing in detail the rise of movies and television, and the growing dominance of the image over the word -- if he's going to tell the story of modern commmunication then at least tell it right. He also relies too heavily on popular books, but sometimes you wonder if he's just trying to squeeze in as many books as possibleF I can see why "The Proust and the Squid" and "The Brain that Changes Itself" would be constantly mentioned (both very excellent books, by the way), but why Steven Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good for You?" (which is a terrible book, by the way).

I also thought that one last failing in the enterprise is Mr. Carr's failure to mention video games. Because they're so addictive and such a much more real and concrete experience than reading online video games probably are radically changing the circuitry of human beings. Mr. Carr can consider researching and discussing video games for his sequel.

I agree with the over-arching summary of the book, that the internet, and all the techno-gadgets that came along with it, is changing the way our brains operate. We create the technology, and the technology changes us. The Shallows presents enough evidence to raise anyone's eyebrows and induce the reader to think and question the future of where we are heading as a species. How much will we allow ourselves to be changed and altered by technological developments? I think the book mostly succeeds in getting this point across. The only downside is when the book gets sidetracked in the first couple of chapters when it focuses too long on prior technological developments, like Gutenberg's printing press for example, which also helped to fundamentally alter human society and consciousness. I can understand why the author decided to use these prior examples from history but I think too much space was devoted to them while more could have been devoted to the main focus of the book. Overall this was a very good read, 4 out of 5.

In simplistic terms, your brain operates with 2 levels of memory, short and long term. Over time, and with repetition, short term memory turns into long term memory.

The general thesis of this book is that (over) use of the internet is creating so many distractions (via the number of hyperlinks and other ways to click to something else) that we never really engage our brain's short term memory in a way that allows us to eventually put ideas into long term memory. Our attention span for any topic is "scattered" with all the options on the internet, compared with say a book on the topic. Research indicates that the constant "interruptions" offered by the internet actually reduces a person's knowledge and ability to use logic or concentrate on a topic.

It's hard to disagree with this, given the research that's been done to date. Of course, changing the way we use the internet might solve this dilemna.

One thing I had a problem with in the book is the portrayal that we are using the internet as "external memory" and that this is harming us. Of course we are ... there's no way our brain can hold the amount of information the internet allows access to. It's not about what's stored in our brain vs the internet, it's are we learning to "think" and remember any better.

The Shallows is a thoughtful analysis of the impact of internet media (*this* media) on various aspects of human cognition. It is more a salad bowl than a single blend, one-part experiential, one-part history, one part study-analysis, etc. There are various pieces designed to consider the 'media problem' of the modern age from different angles, though it would be difficult to say that the work centrals on a single thesis. There is much to choose from here, though little in the way of an outstanding, paralyzing and conclusive analysis. The Shallows is a sketch of future, more critical analyses of the human mind in the 21st century. It explores various problems at the introductory level, and for this reason I highly recommend it as an introduction to media analysis.

Well there are 184 reviews of this book at this point, so here's another one.

This is the second book I've read of Carr's, the other being "The Big Switch". Both books, in my opinion, went a little overboard in establishing historic and cultural context and gave short shrift to the purported subject of the book. Still, the context was fascinating and, while I didn't learn much I didn't already know about the subject, I do have a better feel for where it sits in context.

Reading through the reviews, people seem to either think it's a great book or think it's an unfocused mess. If you read the whole book, I think Carr ties all the loose ends together in the end and I got an appreciation for how clocks are like computers. McLuhan, Socrates, Seneca, Larry Page, Norman Doidge, Eric Kandel, General Sarnoff: it's a long and winding road.

In the end, I think the chapter on Google could have been dropped. You can get by with just reading chapters 6,7, & 9 and get the key bits (if you're not able to concentrate long enough to read an entire book because surfing the web has fried your mind :).

Bringing together recent research and trying to interpret and extrapolate it in context are challenging and I think Carr pulls it off pretty well. I wish more of the book were spent focused on that.

This is a provocative and very important book. Its genesis was the author noticed his inability to focus and not be distracted as he used the Internet more and more. As befits the author of Does It Matter? and The Big Switch , he looked at the impact on many technologies on thinking/the brain along with the commentators of the time. This included the advent of clocks, writing (clay to parchment) , printing press , telephone, phonograph and now the World Wide Web. Along the way he talks about the evolution of the brain, using eBooks, how interruptions affect learning, how he unplugged to write this book, is Google good or evil, and general comments about writers on these and many subjects,. By the end the writing of the book seems to have allowed him to rationalize where the Web can and will fit and where we need to be careful. He even notes that our attention deficits may be rooted in pre web learned behaviors and we will learn new ways of sorting information. I read this almost in one sitting - it is very well done, thoroughly researched and annotated, with lots of further reading noted. Great four hour coast read.

I thought, "oh no", not another idiotic book about the Internet. Then I noticed Carr started with a quote from Marshall McLuhan, and I thought, hmmm, this book might be OK. Except it's not a quote. It's just a paraphrase of a main idea from MM, that the form of a medium has influence as well as the content, or, famously, that the medium is the message. There are a thousand MM quotes that say this in different ways. Carr quotes none of them. That's the first problem. This book jumps back and forth between his own story, which would be interesting in an autobiography, and the anecdotes of others, which is OK. The rest of the book is "research" and padding to support a thesis which is rather obvious, that being on the Internet or online a lot changes your brain, but following McLuhan, the form of this book says as much about it as the content (the writing).

This book began as a magazine article, and some of it reads that way. All to the good, like the interesting chapter about the monkeys. For the uninitiated reader, and I might almost say the uninterested reader, Carr is forced to take a lot of side detours to write the backstory of computers, in one way, so there's a bit on Turing, which everyone knows who has ever read a history of this topic. In the interesting first person parts of this book, Carr says he likes doing research on the Internet, and the entire book has the cut and paste, search on Google, even, trust what's on Wikipedia sense to it. It seems like Carr never read any books on these topics at all, so he keeps reinventing the wheel. But he may have a reason for doing so, as follows.

One of his subpoints is that he can no longer read an entire book or even a long article because he's so wired. He cites others who say the same thing, and also brings up the non-readers who are "post-literate". If he can't read a book, how can he write one? These two things generally go together. Who are the readers for this book, if no one can sit still long enough to read it? Tellingly, this book is reprinted by Norton, a traditional publisher, for, presumably, traditional slow readers who can enjoyably read it and comment from the sidelines, "my, my". And it is a very enjoyable read for the most part, and I who have been spared the Internet addiction (and am merely a social user) can leisurely read it. But I could also write a book-length argument against it, or wrangle with it, and again, this has more to do with the form (the writing style) than the content.

This book was written in 2011, and everyone knows things in the online arena change fast, so some of it seems like old hat. But there are some amazingly contradictory bits that the Internet-addicted, according to Carr's thesis, will just skim over anyway, and they occur early on. What he continually does is make a minor premise (or point), taking for granted a major premise or point, which is not in any way argued or supported, but which makes the writing seem, well, unedited. Here's an example. He cuts and pastes in (from older books) the unsurprising revelation that Descartes and other scientists centuries ago were wrong about how the brain works. They were wrong because they compared it to the science or technology of their day. Freud, for instance, was influenced by the idea of the steam engine, and thought the brain built up pressure which had to be relieved. We are told on page 37 of the Norton edition that "Our modern microscopes, scanners, and sensors have disabused us of most of the old fanciful notions about the brain's functions." Really? Who knew?

There is a somewhat interesting bit about the plasticity of the brain, that it can rewire itself, sometimes in only a matter of a few days, as it were, in response to new situations, something most of us think of as adapting to its environment. This, however, is an entirely different idea than was previously held around a century ago when, say, Darwin wrote. But Carr nevertheless falls back on this old (and here discredited) model to support this new idea: "Evolution has given us a brain that can literally change its mind--over and over again." No it hasn't. Or, if it has, Carr presents not one tiny stick of evidence. It's also a misuse of the word. "Evolution" means "change over time" usually over long periods of time, say millions or billions of years. This is about change over a few days, which, you notice contradicts the other idea. Carr doesn't present any studies at all to show that brains today can change quickly, but that thousands of years ago they could not. In short, there is no "evolution" here at all. He also shows that the brain is far more complicated than was ever imagined in, say, Darwin's time, which we all know from watching science shows like Nova. But this is simply evidence for design and intelligence, and again entirely contradicts the old model of "Evolution". Nevertheless, Carr concludes (p. 34) "There are many reasons to be grateful that our mental hardware is able to adapt so readily to experience, that even old brains can be taught new tricks." Grateful? To whom?

I don't say not to read this book, merely that some of the underlying premises remain unsupported and unexamined. The bits just mentioned come from a chapter which can be read at leisure as an interesting article, and it's certainly better written than a newsmagazine. However, being an old school reader (who is actually reading the book, and looking forward to the times of snuggling down with it, I would suggest that anyone interested in this topic, or the myriad topics brought up in this book, read the actual books or "sources" these ideas came from, as they predate this book by decades. Carr, I think, unless his brain is now rewired so that he can't read a book, as he implies, would agree.

Carr's McLuhan reference is to Understanding Media, which I don't recommend unless one wants to read a rather in-depth book. Rather, read the McLuhan one-liners gathered together in The Book of Probes The Book of Probes. Also, the fantastic book by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business a Edition by Postman, Neil published by Penguin Books (1986) Paperback. For the history of computers, the early history is the most interesting. A seminal book is Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics from 1947 Cybernetics, Second Edition: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (skip the math if you're math challenged; the writing is still wonderful. There's also a simpler book, The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics And Society (Da Capo Paperback). Or John Von Neumann's early lecture, The Computer and the Brain (The Silliman Memorial Lectures Series), and the history, ENIAC Eniac: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer. Also the wonderfully readable book by Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences) (I put this version in, but the older Bantam paperback has a better cover). Another great book (also Bantam) is The New Story of Science The New Story of Science: Mind and the Universe. Another great read is The Devil's Delusion by mathematician David Berlinski The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions, his answer to "The God Delusion".

Business author Nicholas Carr enters Malcolm Gladwell territory with an insightful, far-reaching book of essays on how your brain works, how the Internet alters your perceptions and habits, and what the consequences of those alterations might be. Stretching from Aristotle to Google, Carr seeks to understand the magnitude of the change the Internet presents, and to gauge whether that change is for good or ill. He does not offer answers to his more provocative philosophical questions, preferring that the reader sort those out. But he frames these fascinating queries in detailed disquisitions on futurism, the creation of computing, the history of the written word and the evolution of science's notions of the brain and how it functions. His relaxed writing style provides a companionable read, as if you were having a great conversation with a brilliant stranger. getAbstract recommends this enjoyable, nourishing book to everyone who's ever wondered how working on a computer might be affecting their lives and their brains.

I started reading this book with interest and finished it with a strong feeling of urgency. This is one of two books that have had a serious impact on my thinking in the past couple of years. (the other was `The Black Swan' by Nassim Taleb). The core of Carr's message is that the tools of our digital age are changing our brains. The frenetic pace of our lives and consequent inability to concentrate for long periods over the past few years is closely related to the new and almost magical potential of the internet.

If you are feeling that you would have liked me to summarise this review in a couple of lines, you could be suffering from the effects of `shallow' thinking yourself, and should read on.

Carr is not arguing that this new way of thinking is necessarily a bad thing - but that there are obvious consequences. He takes us on an interesting journey to show how tools throughout history have affected the development of our brains. In fact he claims that `The net is the latest in a long series of tools that have helped mold the human mind.' I was particularly interested in his history of language from clay tablets to the present day. He clearly connects changes in our culture with use of language based technologies such as the book, radio and TV. Carr argues that the consequences of the internet are likely to be far more important than any of these previous technologies because it is changing the very essence of our thinking as human beings.

Without awareness of the way in which it is changing our brains, we could be `outsourcing' or thinking to the net and losing the human potential of our minds. The consequences of this could be a loss of the ability to develop and use wisdom individually and in society as a whole. He does not deny the incredible power of the World Wide Web and search engines such as Google. In terms of data collection and sharing, it opens up an opportunity for collective knowledge that simply couldn't exist before the net. However, the price we pay for this is that we can become addicted to the use of the technology and over a short time our brains become reprogrammed to develop `shallow' thinking - the type required to surf the net effectively. While skimming content we become distracted by the constant temptation of hyperlinks, we want to move at the speed of the net and become agitated if things take time to process. Over a relatively short time, research shows that the brains of those who regularly use the internet become less able to think deeply about issues and more interested in `skating' across the surface.

Carr admits that throughout history people have always thrown dire warnings out when new technologies have appeared and that in most cases, the tools have propelled us forward. Commentators on this topic of internet distraction are certainly `thick on the ground' at the moment. He simply suggests that we become more aware about how our brains are being changed and to intervene where it matters.

Wisdom is the judgement of best action in context built upon connected knowledge and ethics. This knowledge is based on data and experiences that are stored in long term memory for connection and retrieval when needed. `Shallow thinking' interferes with our ability to think deeply. Deep thinking is the process of connecting and combining knowledge and committing it to long term memory for retrieval and judgement at a later time. Deep thinking requires a calm and attentive state of mind. It is the product of quiet time and reflection. Recent research in the area of brain plasticity clearly shows that our physical brains are in constant change; whatever we think, say or do regularly is more strongly embedded. Constant shallow thinking, over time, creates a brain less able to think deeply and lay down long term memories that are the basis of wisdom. Lack of time for quiet reflection also impedes deep thinking.

If you are the CEO of Google, you would respond by claiming that there will be no need for us to be able to use wisdom ourselves - it will exist in the `cloud' of interconnected knowledge produced by search engines. I don't know about you, but I prefer Carr's suggestion that we all preserve the deep thinking capabilities along side the superior search capability of the net. However, we need to be aware that, unless we do something consciously to add to the power of the new technology, we will fall into the trap of depending on it.

This quote from Carr shows why I feel urgency to make `deep thinking' a conscious priority: `we programme our computers and thereafter they programme us'. Read this book and become more aware; I thought I knew about the topic until I did.

The Shallows: A Pessimistic View on a Technological World.
When reading Carr’s “The Shallows” for a graduate course, I found it relatively interesting and informative. When I was a classroom educator I used very little technology in my lessons and interactive materials, using instead the ‘old school’ books, chalkboard and paper method. I personally don’t integrate much technology in my everyday life other than using my cell phone to make calls or send texts and the occasional ordering online. It is not a necessary part of my life and until reading this book I was unaware of the impact that technology can have on our lives and the way we think. I agreed with many of Carr’s points and see the validity in his arguments for the detrimental effect of technology on our ability to use our own minds and thought process affectively. However, I found some of the information to be slightly dense and hard to follow at times. Carr tends to draw out some issues that, while they are valid supporting details, the length at which he examines them tends to take focus away from his main argument. I also believe that, while I can see the effect that technology has had in its integration into society’s day-to-day activities, Carr presents an exaggeratedly pessimistic view of technology in general. Technology has become a massive part of not only an individual’s life, but our children’s education system as well. The ease of access limits the effort that students must exert to track down information, but I don’t believe that the assimilation of technology into their learning experiences has limited or stunted their intellectual abilities. Instead, it has broadened the amount of information that they have access to. Carr forcefully asserts the disadvantages of technology but I believe his flaw is in not exploring the good aspects as well, for there are as many advantages as there are disadvantages. Overall, the book presented one side of a very prominent argument in today’s society and Carr did a very thorough job of exploring the detriments of technology. However, at times the book seemed to digress from major topics, causing me as a reader to become unfocused and confused (oh wait, maybe technology is already having an impact on my thinking ability). A dense book, but one I would recommend for older readers who have little experience with current technological applications and advancements.
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I liked that this book really makes you think about the impact the internet has had on human behavior and the way our brains work. While it seems assumed that instant access to limitless information is a good thing, the author argues there can be downsides. People are increasingly finding it difficult to concentrate on reading long, complex information. There is less time spent in quiet contemplation. People find it hard to focus on tasks because they are constantly distracted by the lure of web pages, texts, emails, etc. I find myself experiencing this somewhat despite efforts to restrict my net use, but I especially see it in smart phone users who often literally cannot look away from their phones for longer than a minute or two--their brains have become addicted to the little "hits" of information.
While I enjoyed this book overall, I did find it sometimes slightly redundant. It seems as if a reader could have gotten the gist of the premise from just a long magazine article. But then again, maybe my attention span has just gotten too short for books because of the internet!

I finally finished The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (2010). I purchased this book last year, having seen a review on Tim Challies blog. The essence of the book is that the increasing dominance of the Internet is having a considerable effect upon our capacity to focus and think deeply. Further, the author cites numerous research studies examining the psychological and neuropsychological effects of the Internet.

Practically, this book resonated deeply with me. I have discovered, in my own life, that with increased time on the web, my capacity for focus has diminished. More broadly, I have seen numerous patients who complain of attention problems, but I suspect their primary issue is that they live in a world of distraction.

In future years, I suspect we will see increased attention to this issue. With all of the benefits offered by the Internet, the wise person will employ discernment in how it is used.

This book makes some really fascinating and relevant points. Much of the author's key discussion actually is present early in the book. I have no doubt that many of the psychological and neuroplasticity arguments made by the author are true. And yet - as many other reviewers have noted - the Net is definitely here to stay. The wealth of what it enables us to do is truly incredible. If any of us were to have suddenly had the modern-day Internet dropped on us in say, 1980, or some other pre-Net time, no doubt we would have considered ourselves wealthy, at least in the sense that information represents a form of wealth. And yet we now take it all for granted. One cannot imagine functioning - or at least making a living in a white-collar job - in early 21st century society without some degree of connection to the Net. As they often say in industry, adapt or become irrelevant.
Given all this, I would have appreciated even more information from the author about, in his opinion, what all of us should do to manage the drawbacks and effects of the Internet, given that it is an ingrained and mostly unavoidable part of making a living in the 21st century.

If you've found yourself feeling withdrawal pains when you can't get online or struggling with anxiety or information overload, you need to read this book. He makes a compelling and well-researched case that the constant distraction of the web, e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter is actually changing the way we think and the way our brains process information. He's by no stretch a Luddite or a technophobe, he's just taking a dispassionate look at how technology is changing the way we think. It's up to the reader to decide whether this is good or bad and what it do about it.

This is probably one of the better books on the subject of our present digital age. I enjoyed the history of literacy from the earliest tablet writings to codex to the Gutenberg press and on and on. I especially enjoyed the sections on McLuhan. Lord knows what he would be saying about all this media! In fact, it is a media shower, and I think the only solution for me is to minimize its presence in my life.

This is not an impossible task!

Discerning what is important and what isn't has worked for me. I can live without Twitter or "instant messaging". There are rooms in my home where there are no electronics save a CD/stereo system for listening to music. And I keep it this way. Most importantly, after the computer is shut down for the evening, I take a few hours a night to simply read--as I did with this very book--cover to cover in only a few nights.

Very substantive study on the subject and where it might all lead.

This was a fantastic introduction to the ideas at hand, but, ironically, I found the title a bit brief. Just as I was really getting into the material and becoming excited about what I was reading, the book ended abruptly; I turned the page after reading chapter 10 and "WHAM" there was the epilogue. (I guess this is why the author included a rather extensive Further Reading section at the end of the book?)

I found the section on the history of writing and print media to be especially interesting. Being a musican I have a good understanding of how and why music is the way it is, but it was interesting to delve into text and speech in a similar fashion.

(EDIT: I realized that my first paragraph sounds odd. How can you not see the end of a book coming? I should have noted that I read the kindle edition, so, yes, the end of a book CAN come as a complete surprise. This particular book ended at just 80% of "completion.")

Nicholas Carr weaves together scientific studies, philosophical meanderings, and stories from history in a highly relevant exploration of the impacts of internet usage on our brains within the book "The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains". He argues convincingly that our brains are influenced (neuroplasticity) by our actions, patterns of thoughts, and the tools we use. He focuses specifically on how tools influence us and society by providing two illuminating examples.

Take for example the societies increasing use of the clock for timekeeping purposes. Peoples schedules have evolved from being agrarian influenced where we arose and went to bed in accordance with the sun. Holidays and other days of importance were influenced by seasons and crop schedules. As time became more important to commerce and trade, large clock towers were erected in the middle of cities and towns. And now time is at the bottom right hand corner of almost every digital screen today. Alarms are set to inorganically wake us up from our slumbers. We segment out our workday by the hour. The clock is so fundamental to our way of life now we hardly even think about how it influences us.

Another example from history is how storytelling has shifted from oral tradition to that of the written word. The earliest written words had no spacing because that's how it sounds and would look like to an society largely used to the oral tradition. As the written word became more prominent and writing technologies evolved (stone tablets, paper, printing press, computers, etc), spacing and grammar evolved because these were tools that assisted with the ease of reading. Written word has been growing in complexity ever since adding paragraphs, chapters, tables of contents to clarify meaning and purpose. Books have largely evolved into a new intellectual ethic that of which is to communicate a personal synthesis of ideas and information.

History shows us that as new technologies are introduced and adopted by our culture, our brains adapt to that usage of such a new median. Interestingly, when culture chooses a new technology there is little choice by the individual to opt out, a sort of technological determinism. Carr is concerned that with the introduction of the e-reader and the internet as science tells us we are becoming distracted by our technologies to the point where our working memory is so overloaded that we are having trouble retaining information and committing things to long term memory. Another study has indicated that scholarship has already grown more shallow by using less citations and using the same citations as other studies.

Carr weaves together historical, philosophical, and scientific elements into this very interesting, highly relevant story. Carr does a good job of not trying to label the increasing internet usage as "good" or "bad". In despite of this, anyone who reads this will be hard pressed not to believe that we aren't losing something within our mental capacities as we go further down this path of a internet distracted society.

I really enjoyed this book.I found it informative, thoughtful, and a well written and well reasoned presentation of his points.
I also really enjoyed the historical perspective, in particular the social clashes and controversies surrounding the introduction of reading, of reading aloud, and of the start of mass production of books.

The combination of this history- which was indeed relevant to Carr's story line- together with very recent updates sumarizing some of the research studies of how the brain processes information and how people read and learn, was a very enjoyable and relevant combination for me to digest.

Over the years, I have done a great deal of "serious amature" reading on cognition and learning. while I am not an expert specialized in this area, I periodically follow books and articles written for those who want to keep up on the research of the original principal investigators.

Also, I have worked as an adacemic and industry practitioner in the information technology area, including both infomation and automation, for several decades.

Given these long term interests, this book was especially relevant to my work and long term professional interests. Overall, I was pleased with the book, and really enjoyed the time spent digesting it.

I have a confession. This book led me to reevaluate my views of Nick Carr. When he purposely titled his prior book "IT Dosn't Matter" in such a provocative, in your face way, purposely to get attention and shake things up in the business community, he instantly moved to my "NOT Doing the World a Favor" list, which means I was not taking him seriously, though he had some valid points. I felt he was not being honest in how he was going about it.

I thought he did a beautiful and honest job on this book however. The title is thought provoking, but not purposely incendiary, and he has a balanced approach to the topic.

So I highly recommend this book for those of us- the dwindling population of us-- who will still put time aside for DEEP READING-- as in reading something that takes more than 30 seconds or two minutes to ingest, and where reading and thinking are more important than sheer sensory stimulation.

If you invest in reading the book, you will find out why this type of Deep Reading (which in the case of this book is easy to do, since it is so well written and flows so easily) can lead to longer term retention and comprehension than only skimming headlines and short videos, and web surfing through a million links.

Nick, thanks for investing the time to bring this work to us. And you are now restored on my "good and reasonable person" list. So I will look for your next work.

Steve Miller
Dean, School of Information Systems,
Singapore Management University

This book is surely one of the best I read in 2015, and I recommend it with tremendous enthusiasm. Nicholas Carr... your research and writing were VERY influential in a TV series called "TechVersify" I've been producing for PBS down here in South Florida. The show is about the intersection of technology and happiness, and your contribution earned you a spot in the "Special Thanks" part of the credits!!! So far we've released 6 webisodes across all PBS digital platforms...and the 30-minute special edition will be broadcast this March. Go see your name! Here's the first one... THANKS AGAIN! TechVersify.com/1

From the ancient Greek fears of what writing would do to mankind, to the 1600s complaint about too many books, to the present day distractions of the Internet, Carr pulled together a tapestry of how our mind works, and how it has changed over time (as well as how it changes day to day). I found myself pausing, or even stopping, many times to reflect on the personal impact of what he was describing. (I read books - and I spend a lot of work time and personal time on the Internet) Thankfully, this was not a rant for or against - rather it was an invitation to do the kind of deep reading he sees going the way of the dodo bird. I regret that I read a library book, and not a personal copy that I could have marked up.

I was attracted to this book as I have long felt that there was a difference in the way that the more modern generation treats information, compared to those of us who grew up before the days of search engines and wikis. The evolution of reading and literary mediums is fascinating and provides an enriching glimpse of how much our society and needs have changed overtime and what else is to come. There is also an insightful lesson, particularly from an artificial intelligence perspective in the dangers as well if we are not cautious and just embrace new technologies blindly without any due consideration.

Carr, in his epilogue to this work, warns that we as a species have to be 'attentive to what we stand to lose.' In his view, the brain's adaptation to the newer and newer technologies in effect flattens our minds and deprives the individual human of the depth that once could be called wisdom. I agree with him more because I am an avowed Luddite than for the wonderful argument he lays out.

For example, I am enrolled in a science class at this time. As the semester comes to a close, I have an average approaching 100. The problem is that I have actually learned little of the actual science but I have instead learned to utilize the electronic tools built into the shell; the entire evaluative framework of the class is on-line. I have learned how to find the answers but I do not know the answers. Compare this to a literature class, where you have to maybe read and analyze and memorize things and your own wisdom is grown because you build long-term memories that give crucial context. This may not matter, per se, in the terms of the professions of the future, but they have a real impact when it comes to human-to-human interaction or aesthetic enjoyment.

The ironic thing is that I did not read this book. I instead listened to it on my mp3 player as I worked and from time to time flipped through to look at the store or Facebook or Gmail. My own mind has developed according to the standards of the internet -- I am hyperlinks not a straight narrative. I can no longer read one book, but have to be 'reading' many simultaneously. This factor will only increase as time and technology advance as we see ourselves more in terms of machines, and the machines start to see themselves in terms of us.

By being our auxiliary, supplemental memory, and by its constant interruptions and distractions, the net has made us less competent. At least this is what author Nicholas Carr is warning us. He backs it up with examples and with studies of what the net is doing to us, and says the net is using us instead of the other way around. By relying too much on the net, we are forgetting how to remember and not allowing `schemas' to form in our brains for deeper understandings of related concepts. Our brains don't have a chance to cogitate over ideas and make new connections. We are forgetting how to think.

`The Shallows' is a good and thoughtful book, and worth considering. Maybe it's time to think for ourselves? Of course, but the net is part of our thinking - as long as we don' allow it to take over!

This book is a mess.

I was expecting a very good explanation of how the internet affects the structure of the brain, not a book about history and philosophy.

The author struggles a lot to make his points and I found it extremely annoying that he used so many quotes. I'm not interested in Socrates or poetry or the evolution of the book, I'm interested in neuroplasticity.

I read about half the book, but I just couldn't finish it. I found it to be extremely boring and dull.

Very incoherent, the author has no idea how to get to the point.

This was a pretty excellent book on the effect of the internet and other digital technology on the human brain. The first half of the book was basically a look at developments of different technology on the human mind in the past couple millennia, mostly focusing on books and how they developed the mind in certain ways, and nicely set up for the second part on how the internet is reverting us to the pre-literary age full of more relational knowledge. The book is primarily a secondary work--using primary sources, and not using much original research--but he does a great job in combining the sources into a coherent thesis. Well-researched, well-documented, and well-written, Carr proves his point well on how the internet is actually changing the way we think.

My only qualm with the book is that Carr is working from a purely materialist view of the brain and how it works. Thus, while he can show how the internet rewires our brain, he also can't fully adequately understand the internet's full impact on the human since, from a biblical perspective, the mind/soul is more than just the physical brain.

Overall, Carr proves his point well: the internet encourages a broad knowledge of a lot of things, but a more shallow knowledge in each individual thing, in contrast to a previous, literary age which encouraged more deep thinking. Carr leaves me with much food for thought. The questions he raises aren't easy to answer. But they must be answered.

Rating: 4.5-5 Stars (Excellent).

This book was extremely interesting, lots of history, studies and observations and some personal honesty mixed in. I thought it fascinating. He has brought to my mind some interesting and disturbing reflections.

One primary drive of humans is to make life easier. We can't help but want to produce more with less effort, so this has resulted in inventions such as the tractor which plow in one day what it once took a month to accomplish by hand. We likewise seem to have a drive to create devices to make mental life easier. We no longer need to remember phone numbers, times and dates, for they're in our phones. why needlessly fill our brain with mathematics when our calculator can do the work for us? Our computer faithful reminds us how to spell words and we no longer need look at maps and remember how to get around, because we have the GPS. Why memorize anything anymore for we can google it in a moment on our iphone. Its as if mentally we've thought walking to much effort, so we've made machines to walk for us. This seems fine and dandy, until we learn our legs have withered and have lost strength. Have you ever watched the movie Wall-E? Remember the people on the space ship, hovering around on full-time entertainment machines? It almost seems that this is where technology is leading us!

Now here is the problem, if kids had the choice, most would choose the cushy life; To be physically attractive and rich, to have parents that let them have their way and who spoil them with every toy, electronic and gadget. Yet this is a recipe for the making of a shallow, miserable and wretched individual with no character or integrity. But most of us would choose this as a kid if we could have. The easy feel good way has a strong pull. Fortunately we don't have that option as children and as we've grown up, we've learned that muscles must be strained to grow. Even though we may hate the fact, difficulty, struggle and hard work develops depth and character.

But Technology is offering our adult brains a choice, we can spoil it and let a computer do all the work for us or we can do things the hard way.

It is interesting how our tools become part of us, when we take a hammer, it is to our brain as if its an extension of the hand and it will be able to accomplish what our physical hand could not do, yet it has limitation. Just as binoculars help us see far away but limit our peripheral vision and blind to what is right in front of us. Likewise, our computers will help us to do a lot we could not do otherwise, but it will also have a negative limiting effect.

We program our computers only to find they're programing us. The internet is not only addicting, but it is distraction machine; with links, new messages and ads everywhere, encouraging us to hop from one thing to another thing. Because we spend so much time on it, its wiring our brain to have a short attention span, it may be a big factor in the rise attention deficit disorders. As it becomes more apart of our lives, it becoming harder to focus, think deeply, read a book and harder to remember things.

Yet as the author acknowledges, he is addicted, and I must say I am too, we have grown dependent upon our external brain and could not imagine living without it. It is just to helpful. But as with the writer, all this does cause me to want to limit my time in front of a screen and to force myself to do more actual reading. Disciplining myself to think deeply and make memorization an activity that I partake in again. For I will either use it or loose it.

Lately I've been questioning the impact of the Internet. I've been catching myself doing things I normally would never do: waking up in the morning checking my cell phone before I'm even out of bed. Having dinner with a friend and wondering if someone has sent me an email. Reading only two lines of an article online before distracting myself with a link that takes me to YouTube, then to Wikipedia, then to Twitter, then to another article. Spending hours at night inefficiently working, then waking up and doing it all again.

And it doesn't stop there:

I'm more anxious than ever before about foolish things.

I don't think as deeply about important ideas, because there's always some other distraction.

I find myself reading the same ideas on Twitter over and over, just phrased differently.

I spend less time outside.

My conversations with people are shorter and less intimate.

I read a lot more online, but remember less of the details: who the author is, what the title was, what some important quotes were. All I can remember is the main idea.

Then I stumbled upon a book called "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains" by Nicholas Carr, and it seemed to speak to me like all of those break-up songs from high school. I was lost, and the only cure was to know that someone else understood my suffering as well.

I just finished it today, and here are some quotes that resonated with me the most that I want to go back to periodically:

Socrates struggled with a similar back in the fourth century BC. He worried that the invention of writing would "make us shallower thinkers...preventing us from achieving the intellectual depth that leads to wisdom and true happiness" (55).

In a study from 1990, "One group searched through electronic hypertext documents, while the other searched through traditional paper documents. The group that used the paper documents outperformed the hypertext group in completing the assignment." And "research continues to show that people who read linear text comprehend more, remember more, and learn more than those who read text peppered with links" (127).

"Erasmus's recommendation that every reader keep a notebook of memorable quotations was widely and enthusiastically followed...Through the eighteenth century, according to American University linguists professor Naomi Baron, 'a gentlemen's commonplace book' served 'both as a vehicle for and a chronicle of his intellectual development" (179-180).

According to Torkel Klingberg and other memory experts, "'The amount of information that can be stored in long-term memory is virtually boundless.' Evidence suggests, moreover, that as we build up our personal store of memories, our minds become sharper. The very act of remembering...appears to modify the brain in a way that can make it easier to learn ideas and skills in the future. We don't constrain our mental powers when we store new long-term memories. We strengthen them. With each expansion of our memory comes an enlargement of our intelligence" (192). The problem with the Internet, he goes on to say, is that it "places more pressure on our working memory"[a.k.a. short-term memory] and very little of what we look up on the Internet makes it to long-term memory.

"If we're unable to attend to the information in our working memory, the information lasts only as long as the neurons that hold it maintain their electric charge--a few seconds at best. Then it's gone, leaving little or no trace in the mind" (193).

"Outsource memory [to the Internet], and culture withers" (197).

"The great danger we face as we become more intimately involved with our computers--as we come to experience more of our lives through the disembodied symbols flickering across our screens--is that we'll begin to lose our humanness, to sacrifice the very qualities that separate us from machines" (207).

"A series of psychological studies over the past twenty years has revealed that after spending time in a quiet rural setting, close to nature, people exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory, and generally improved cognition. Their brains become calmer and sharper. The reasoning...is that when people aren't being bombarded by external stimuli, their brains can, in effect, relax. They no longer have to tax their working memories by processing a stream of...distractions. The resulting state of contemplativeness strengthens their ability to control their mind" (219).

"'In sum,' concluded the researchers, 'simple and brief interactions with nature can produce marked increases in cognitive control'" (220).

"It's not only deep thinking that requires a calm, attentive mind. It's also empathy and compassion" (220).

The book presents an interesting analysis of the effect of internet usage on our brain. We might believe that use of technology is benign, but the book presents numerous studies and research results explaining that internet and use of computers is affecting our cognitive abilities and reducing our abilities to focus on complex tasks and thought process. The arguments are not just arguments, but have a proper backing and proven research as well. Besides psychological arguments, the book also presents the opinions and thoughts of various writers/philosophers on their personal experiences with using a new technology and how it affected their art. Overall its an interesting perspective and analysis on the use of technology and it presents numerous example to drive the point.

I was afraid when I stated this book that I would get another grouping of research telling me the sky is falling and our only hope was to stop using the internet. What I got was an entertaining journey though some neurological history, and well grounded, approachable, analysis of some dense research. The central message here is less about whether our technology is good or bed, but to describe what we know about how these developments are changing our brains and how that compares to other things which change our brains.

If you want to know what using the internet is doing to your brain and you want to enjoy the process this is the book for you.

This book is very timely and raises awareness of one of most important concerns for the 24x7 wired human race – the impact of internet on human cognition. As a leader, I am already observing the impact of the internet on critical thinking and problem solving capabilities at the workplace. The internet provides answers to so many of our daily problems that we end up not exercising critical thinking muscles of our brain. Anytime you have a problem, just search for it and then follow step-by-step instructions to solve it. In other words, no need to use your brain. The internet helps in many ways – you have access to information and information is power, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel or learn the hard way, you can spend your time and energy somewhere else. But what happens when you have to solve a novel problem? A problem that does not have a solution on the internet. When you cannot access internet? When you have to think on your feet? The book does not provide answers to the problem, but it raises very important questions that we (parents, leaders, influencers, policy makers) must answer.

"Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything" is part one.
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything]
Carr's The Shallows is part two on how we have progressed on the road of knowing more and more.
Of course owning a book which one can read at the time and place of ones choosing is different from memorizing the content of the same book by heart. But owning a bookshelf of books is far easier than memorizing the same book shelf of books. And to the extent that one could not memorize a bookshelf of books by heart, having access to the books is the inevitable second best. Similarly, having access to "a library of snippets" is far easier than reading a library of books and the inevitable second best.
With printings, we become readers. With internet, we become librarians. Librarians do not read all books, they place all books in the right place such that they can find the right book at the right time. Interesting readers should try: How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read."
[[ASIN:1596914696 How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read

Author:
Nicholas Carr has written many books regarding technology and has been nominated for Pulitzer Prize Awards. He is a very accomplished and successful writer. However esteemed he may be in the literature world his technical expertise may be found wanting. He does not have the knowledge that someone like Jaron Lanier, who is mentioned in this book, has about computers and the cutting edge stuff that places like Google and the store are doing. Although I am sure he researched relevant topics like psychology and neurobiology. I would say Carr is definitely biased towards not wanting technology to change how our brain is wired and works. He is very aware of his surroundings and down to earth but clearly has an agenda for his readers to think more linearly like a print book rather than scattered as it seems to be on the internet.

Content:
Published in 2010 it is still applicable today in 2014. Four years can be a long amount of time in the tech world but the internet has not changed all that much since then. It has grown for sure but the overall structure and content is the same as when this book was written. He focuses on how the internet has already impacted our brains. Using examples from past technological advancements he hypothesizes how the internet is doing the same thing today as it has done in the past.

Controversial Views:
In all honesty I would not say that Carr has any outlandish ideas or opinions about the internet at all. For me, reading books on a computer is much more difficult than a printed book and it is hard to stay focused and follow along. His ideas are very rational and observable, plus he backs himself up with studies and experiments that have been done already. The only criticism is that the way our brains are changing from the traditional ways of linear, deep thought we experience in a novel into the more observant, scattered ways of thinking may not necessarily be bad. In the book he talks about how people used to only communicate through spoken words but with the invention of writing a different style of information processing was created but it was better because it allowed for different ways of thinking. What the internet is doing to our traditional way of working could be what writing did to cultures thousands of years ago. Carr seems to be dismissive of this change being beneficial however, with no real evidence to back up either side of the argument.

Overview:
Carr discusses the origins of the net and how he feels his brain is like HAL from 2001: A Space Odessey being ripped out form the computer by the character Dave. He introduces his notion that he can no longer focus on long works of writing as he once was able to. He also chronicles his own experience learning about computers for the first time and how society has changed around the development of the web. He wants to go back to the old ways.

He then talks about Friedrich Nietzsche and how he did his writings. Nietzsche found power in the first typewriters of his time since his vision was failing and could not focus on the pen and paper when he was working. The typewriter, however allowed him to work with his eyes closed and use only his fingertips. With this, people have said, he gained a more powerful and commanding way of writing, like the metal and machinery of his typewriter became part of his writings. Carr uses this as an example of the human brain's plasticity, or rather the way that neurons are created, molded, or destroyed based on incoming stimuli and repetition. Everyday our brain makes adjustments to how it works and percieves information. This is how the internet has been changing how our brains work, because everyday we use the internet to reinforce those neural pathways.

And because of this plasticity we create tools to fit our minds. Every new invention or advancement in technology has changed how we live our lives. The clock has allowed us to parcel out each day into specific tasks we must take care of, it has allowed humans to be more organizational. Every change has brought with it new ways of thinking and a remapping of the brain to go along with that. It happened with the development of written languages and it is happening again with communication on the internet.

Ever since the beginning of information sharing humans have adjusted the way they absorb the content being passed. Beginning with oral traditions of stories and orators like Socrates to handwritten books of the previous 2 thousand years the way we experience thought has changed. Where once people wrote as if they were speaking, fluidly and with no spaces, that changed into a more organized way of reading to facilitate comprehension while reading to oneself. The way our brains saw the information changed in that way and it is changing again now with the introduction of the internet in place of printed books.

The web has changed how people communicate, socialize, and share information. It has really revolutionized the way the world functions. Yet Nicholas Carr is skeptical of those changes being beneficial to humankind. The brain will always adapt to how a person uses it, but the internet could very well be destroying vital components of the way brains are meant to work.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I am 30 years old and have used the internet since I was very young, but have noticed my attention span slipping dramatically since I started using social media, Wikipedia, Google, etc. in my mid-20s. I initially chalked this "adult onset ADD" up to a lack of personal discipline. After reading Carr's book I understand that there are underlying biological processes that is not only changing my brain, but those of everyone around me. Although Carr has his own take on what the potential impact of this biological shift might be (hint: bad), I find it interesting to consider for myself all of the changes (good and bad) that might accompany our increasing usage of the internet as a tool.

In general I found the book to be very engaging and informative. The only issues I had were Carr's somewhat-preachy anti-Google rant, and the sort of general anti-technology bias that permeates the book. In general Carr is able to explain *why* the changes that technology is driving are bad, but sometimes he slips and takes on the air of the old man in the rocking chair: "Back in my day..."

The book is worth the time - the fact you're reading this on the store means you're technology savvy enough to identify with Carr's analysis.

What Nicholas Carr does in this book is articulate many observations we may have been having on how technology affects this generation. He draws on a deep well of literature ranging from Aristotle to neuroscience to arrive at an explanation of how shallow and distracted we have become.

However, drawing from and synthesizing such a broad selection of fields is one of the book's major challenges. Carr belabors the first half of the book only to establish the individual components of his framework. By the time you've gone halfway, you would have been given a fragmented crash course on maps, bells, clocks, the internet, education, cognitive psychology and neuroscience. At every step of the way he wonders on the philosophy and sociology of technology, liberally quoting countless authors to make the same point. The end result is a contrived roundabout attempt at being philosophical and profound. While citing others in itself is not wrong, it can be overdone. It makes you wonder who's writing: Carr or the cacophony of authors he borrows from? I couldn't distinguish Carr's voice from the others'.

Once you have persevered through the pseudo-profundity, the book picks up pace. It makes progress as Carr synthesizes the individual pieces of his framework into an explanation of why we are so shallow. If there were some credit due, it will be here as this is the first time the book actually shows an original idea. The explanation is not very elegantly presented, but if you've been paying attention to Carr's assemblage of others' ideas, Carr has a valid and disturbing point. The book climaxes when Carr takes his framework, trains its crosshairs at Google and dedicates a chapter to make a potshot. Only the author can tell why he singled Google out when there are many other websites and services that are guilty of his accusations. Nevertheless, Carr drives home a point.

Overall, the book responds to an important and timely question through a long and tedious answer. The problem that mars the book until the very end is Carr's writing. He draws from a very wide range of disciplines in a very fragmented and disjointed manner. The result is a frankenstein framework comprised of clunky pieces put together with duct tape. I expected more from a Pulitzer prize nominee. The consolation here is that Carr's frankenstein works.

I can see that Carr has a point and I sympathize with his deep concerns, but his mediocre writing does not arrive at a very cohesive and solid argument. Carr's book deserves a revision and hopefully he's not too busy checking Facebook, updating Twitter and checking mail. But then perhaps this could be a reflection of Carr's admission of his own distracted- and shallowness. Indeed, as Marshall McLuhan once said, "The medium is the message."

I will keep this short so I can get off the internet! The information in this book is well documented, well presented, timely, and (imho) mandatory reading. But indeed, after reading the book, I have to wonder how many people will actually pick up a book and read it from cover to cover? How many (IF any) will tweet about the book dismissively to their thousands of absentee friends? How many will wisen up and leave Facebook and invite a friend for a face-to-face meetup? And assuming that a significant number of people absorb the information here, how many will change their behavior in order to save his/her ability to think beyond the sound byte? Fascinating book. HIGHLY recommend.

I thoroughly enjoyed Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows", while hard to get past the first 3 chapters, once in and going it was an informative and thought provoking read. I admit that it took me a while to understand the concept of what Carr was saying, it took my brain a while to "click"! As our brains gain access to a wealth of information, we go on overload. Our brains do not function the same online as they did when I had to go to the library and shift through books for resources. I read this book on my Kindle app on my iPad. It was hard to focus on my book when all I wanted to do was search for cabinets for the house I just bought, or check my Facebook. After all, they are just a click away and I can get back to reading just as fast. Wanting to do these things, proves Carr's theories correct, for me at least.My favorite quote from the book is "We become, neurologically, what we think." (page 29, location 598) on my iPad Kindle app. This appealed to me because when online I am constantly doing 100 all at one time. I have started to notice that in my job I am trying to do 100 things at one time, instead of just finishing one task and moving on. I never used to be like that! Even though I felt as though Carr did a lot of quoting of other people and using of their ideas without much of telling us why they fit his theory, I enjoyed the book immensely. I have actually recommended it to a few people already.

Much like Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, this book pushed me to see the bad of our most consumed technology, the internet. Nicholas makes a strong case that the internet is impacting our brains in a real way, and not necessarily for the better.

I appreciated his approach. He didn't fall into the trap of nostalgia, as if everything was better before the internet. He even took time to show the negative impact of other technologies that we could be nostalgic about. And he doesn't act as if the internet is all bad. In the end the volume of consumption is what makes the internet stand apart from other technologies. It is impacting us more because we consume more of it than any other technology.

Well Done, Nicolas Carr. Now for the hard part, applying it to my life.

Any simple summary of the The Shallows will surely be inadequate and incomplete, but I understand the argument of the work to be that we now know the brain is much more plastic than we once believed to be the case. It is capable of rewiring its neural system with surprisingly limited inputs in order to become better at tasks, whether these be perceptual or cognitive ones, or those impacting memory. This neuroplasticity is innate, continuous, and perhaps a key function enabling human evolution.

Carr's argument is a very elaborate and complex one and no simple review in limited space, such as Interface affords, can possibly do it justice. Neither do I have the requisite expertise to fully consider, let alone refute, most of the research which Carr discusses. The book itself seems somewhat repetitive at points, and at others it seems to move rather quickly and perhaps too facilely along very complex chains of logic. But, however much we may cavil, perhaps in attempts to protect our own cherished views of the Internet, it remains irreducibly a work which must be read, and considered by all those interested in the impact of the Internet.

For a full review see Interface Volume 10 Issue 8.

What you get out of this book will depend on how familiar you are with this material and the degree to which you agree with Nicholas Carr's assessment of it. The Shallows has a foot in many doors, which grants it one sort of thoroughness and denies it another. To a reader new to it's ideas, it has the potential to be a very exciting work, while others may be frustrated with it's sacrifice of depth for scope. That's the short of it; here's the long -

I may have had some overly lofty expectations for this book. Like some others, I've been waiting through the rise of the smartphones, the social networks and the interactive TVs for a new Marshall McLuhan or Neil Postman to bring us a genuine account of how the new information technologies are affecting us, culturally and individually. There were places in this book where it seemed like Nicholas Carr might be the man for that job. It has it's own strengths, certainly, even a few that distinguish it from the works of the aforementioned authors. However, they set the bar and inspired this book, so I must compare them.

The chief distinguishing benefit to The Shallows is that Mr. Carr has done an excellent job of presenting much of the current work in nueroscience and psychology as it pertains to his subject. We get a layman's explanation of neuroplasticity and the brain's processes for learning and memorization. We also get the results of all kinds of related experiments and studies made possible only recently by our ever more savvy medical tech. These are new windows into the body and mind that Carr's predecessors never had the benefit of. The connections between our usage of and behavior with these new technologies and the physical, anatomical changes taking place in our brain is some pretty interesting stuff.

Where these subjects are successfully interwoven with Carr's descriptions of our current habits for acquiring information, like how the net is changing our reading and learning habits, the book strengthens significantly. Just as often though, he simply plops out raw data that never gets the benefit of much or any rumination. This gives the book a kind of conflicted feel. The emphasis is on including information here, and that sometimes meant that the information must be swallowed before it can be chewed. A few pages will read like journalism, with long barrages of quotes and references, then the next will jar back to a more relaxed anecdotal passage.

For all his sources, there's very little that Carr himself adds to the conversation. He makes it clear enough that he finds it a necessary one, if only by reiterating earlier points in the historical discussion of culture, philosophy and technology. A little passion from the author( he almost let some slip out in the chapter on Google) might have made the book feel more cohesive and less a list of cold hard fact(oid)s. He carefully avoids politics and individual ethics and makes scant suggestion for any interpretation of all of the foreboding information he's laying at our feet. He may have wanted to avoid miring his book in any of these contentious subjects for fear of being marginalized, but unfortunately the alternative was being sterilized.

I don't want to be too hard on The Shallows because for every book that comes out asking questions and expressing doubts there are fifty that sing the praises of the web and the shining examples of Facebook, Apple and Google, or hail science as the new religion. We need books like this one, certainly. The huge recommended reading section will be a boon to anyone who still wants more after reading The Shallows. I definitely did, but I also wanted a little more from it.

This book is a more fully fleshed out attempt to answer the question that Carr first posed a couple of years ago in an article titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains explores the ideas of his Google article in much more detail.

To fully understand what the Internet is doing to our brains, we must first understand our brains. Carr highlights results from a variety of iconic and recent studies that illustrate the plasticity of our thinking organs. We see experiments ranging from the severed sensory nerves of monkeys' hands in the 1960's (and their brains subsequent `rewiring') to London taxi drivers whose posterior hippocampuses (the "part of the brain that plays a key role in storing and manipulating spatial represenations of a person's surroudings") were much larger than normal. In short, we see plenty of evidence that the brain can reorganize itself, and is certainly not fixed in one state for all of its adult life.

The Shallows then explores the history of the written word and its explosion due to Gutenberg's invention, and even further back to the argument between Socrates and Plato concerning the value of the written word. Socrates argued that if we committed all of our thoughts to paper, we would not have to remember anything. How do we know this? From the writings of Plato, of course. The soundwaves of Socrates' voice, as wise as he was, cannot travel through time like written words can.

With the first half detailing the brain's plasticity and our species' history with the accumulation of knowledge, Carr sets up the latter half of the book perfectly, and his ideas might be grossly simplified into something like this:

P1: Experiments of brain plasticity have proven that our brains change over time.
P2: We are using the Internet for an increasing amount of our activities, including work, entertainment and commerce.
P3: The Internet is a medium that encourages distractedness and makes our brains inept at remembering.

C: We are all becoming a lot more dependent upon our digital devices, and in doing so, are increasingly distracted in everything we do, both online and off.

Carr's book is a giant caution sign on the side of the road that we ride into the increasingly digital future. The caution sign might be too far behind us already, as we've blazed ahead and rewired our minds to think like computers - logical, task-switching, and distracted at every second of the day. If people in their 30's and 40's (who may have had the Internet for approximately 25-40% of their life times) are experiencing these changes in their brains, imagine the effect the Internet is having on our youth. The Net Generation is defined to be those who have grown up with the Net for more than half their lives. There are some who have had the Internet in 100% of their life spans. Imagine that, never knowing a world without the Internet. Yes, some children are younger than Google. Imagine explaining to your grandchildren that you grew up in a time that didn't have the Internet, let alone the information organizing superpower known as Google.

Will we look back at this period of transition from print to digital and see it as being as momentous as the shift from an oral culture to a print culture? What would Socrates have thought? Have we become lesser human beings, inextricably tied to the addictive external memories of our computers and mobile phones?

Could it be that George W. Bush infamous "the Internets" quote was just a sign of the stupidness to come? Perhaps Bush was ahead of his time. Perhaps the Flynn effect is about to peak, or already has. Could the greatest learning tool ever created be so useful that we forget how to think as we use it?

This is a great book for anyone who's interested in our society as a whole, how our brains work, the effects of technology, and the process of learning. Highly recommended.

Let me start by saying I found this book interesting and informative, which is always a good thing.

The problem with it is that it is too long for its topic, which is that the Internet, like all technologies, is altering our brains in ways both good and bad, with the potential that this time the Frankenstein monster our science creates will be us! As a result, you find the author interjecting digressions [which he honestly names as such!] and veering into unrelated topics, such as the ultimate purpose of Google [under its 300 year plan!].

While even the extraneous stuff is interesting, it creates the impression that filler was needed to reach a book-like length, and thereby justify the price.

Some reviews have referred to an article previously written that covers the same material more succinctly. I have not seen it, but it may be worth your time to seek it out before you purchase this book. You may just find that by reading it you can still learn how your brain is being rewired by the Web and why you are more distracted than you used to be while saving yourself some money all at the same time. Talk about multitasking!

I couldn't put this book down...which after reading it gave me hope that not all of my brain cells were fodder. Like other reviewers, I can't ignore the patience and depth of this book that is couched in solid academic research. I had been spending several hours a day on the internet for my job, then a few more in the evening for social pleasure. Since reading this book the cursed computer is off in the evenings and I have a pile of books that WILL BE READ!

It has taken me more than a week to recapture some of my attention span; but it is coming back. So Carr's assumptions and the research are right on target. It takes very little time to change our brain. For me however, it's going to be for the better!

My second book of Carr's and it's a good one. What fundamentally makes us human: a) is our capacity to decide, rather than follow pre-determined logic, procedures and routines and b) our capacity for empathy and compassion. We cede either or both of these human capabilities to technology at our own (great) individual and collective cultural peril, according to Carr. The book explores our interactive relationship with technology/media in very well-researched historical and biological contexts: specifically, how the brain, memory and attention work at anatomical levels.

The upshot of Carr's argument is that we need to commit ourselves to consciousness in our decision-making with regard to technology.

A fantastic book for people like me who are history buffs and love ideas. The book gets jargon-laden at times and requires the kind of commitment (to following a linear argument) that he argues is diminishing right now. For those able to follow the argument to its conclusion, you may find yourselves convinced that progress has its trade-offs and intellectual and interpersonal balance/moderation are important; some alone and quiet time is probably important as well. I guess I finish the book wondering if Carr is just Nostradamus, ringing a bell and warning us, but ultimately not calling us to any specific cause that can stem the tide ...

Carr starts with the subjective feeling that the more he used the web the more certain faculties began to change; his long term focus, the ability to do deep reading, memory, began to be impinged upon. These are effects I had noticed myself so when I picked up his book it immediately struck a chord. His delve into the world of cognitive science, brain plasticity, the history of reading, brought these effects into a clear contrast. As a result I have deliberately begun to change my own habits, so this is truly an impacting work. A must read!

In In The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, author Nicholas Carr examines technology and the impact that it has on our lives. Carr examines both sides of the technological debate. He willingly admits to not just loving but relying on technology himself, as well as commending all the good that technology has brought us. What he does question, however, is how this technology changing us, and is it changing us for the better? Is it affecting our brains and our minds in a way that is good, or a way that, ultimately, will hinder us?

Carr focuses primarily on the idea of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the ability of your brain to reorganize or rewire itself by forming new neural connections. Neuroplasticity allows the brain to adjust in response to new situations and changes in its environment. Carr discusses how, during the age of the book, the brain had to rewire itself in order to focus on reading pages of text for long periods of time and be able to think about the text they were reading on a level deeper than the surface. Over time, our minds became more and more used to taking in information in a more rapid manner, as well as on a deeper level, allowing the person to contemplate on the information they were reading as they process it. This rewiring of our brains helped to create deeper thinking individuals. Carr then raises the question of what now? What happens now that we are in this technological age of point and click, of smart phones and iPad's and touch screen phones? What, exactly, are we sacrificing in this new era of technology?

Carr uses many research studies to try and answer this issue, going through time and the history of our technological advances as well as research into brain functions. While Carr is seemingly appreciative of technology, he also seems critical of it, mostly because of our dependence on it. In Chapter 7, for example, Carr discusses the invention of the Internet and how it is an engine of distraction that has caused a deep change in the way that we read and the way that we think. The Internet, he argues, has changed the way that we read, the way that we think, and the way that our brain processes information. Yes, he states that the changes may have benefits, but the costs of these benefits far outweigh them. The ease of the Internet (amongst other technological advantages) has caused laziness, and has prohibited the ability that we - and our brains - have to think reflectively. One quote in particular that stood out was towards the end of the book where he states, "We need to work in Google's `world of numbers,' but we also need to be able to retreat to Sleepy Hollow. The problem today is that we're losing our ability to strike a balance between those two very different states of mind. Mentally, we're in perpetual locomotion."

While Carr does seem to condemn technology slightly for what it has done to us, he does express appreciation for what technology has given us. What I feel that he is trying to tell us by the end of his book is that there needs to be a balance. Technology and technological advances have done great things for us, but if we continue to rely so heavily on it, we will lose our ability to think deeply and help make ourselves smarter. Technology doesn't have to define us as long as we allow time for other pleasures in life such as reading and enjoying the outside world. The key to dealing with all that the world is giving us is by creating our own balance that will allow our minds to grow with technology as well.

This is my second encounter with the concept of neuroplasticity - A General Theory of Love by Lewis, Amini and Lannon being the first. Carr's inquiry is also more narrowly focused: how does digitally presented information change our thinking? Carr says, "... an honest appraisal of any new technology, or of progress in general, requires a sensitivity to what is lost as well as what is gained. We shouldn't allow the glories of technology to blind our inner watchdog to the possibility that we've numbed an essential part of our self." Carr's assessment is that what is lost - the ability to engage in "deep reading" - is more important, more "human" than what is gained - the possibility of instant access to ever larger amounts of information focused around things of interest to us.

The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr is among my favorite books on the topic of the digital age. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, the book offers an intricate weave of the history of the written word, the popularization of books and "deep reading" with a review of neuroscience research that examines reading and the impact the digital age has wrought on our cognitive functioning.

Noticing his own cognitive short circuiting since falling into the digital abyss with the rest of us, Carr took a step back (and a break from the digital playground) to explore related neuroscience research. His hunch: our hyper-focus on the Internet may be having an actual physiological impact on our brain functioning. His conclusion: our hyper-focus on the Internet is having an actual physiological impact on our brain functioning.

The book, an extension of his 2008 article published in the Atlantic, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" validates what most of us realize but have trouble acting on: regularly unhook from your computer, get some balance in your life and ignore book reading to your peril. If you're looking to broaden or deepen your thinking, deep reading that comes from sitting with a page without links on it trumps the constant interruptions and the increasingly short packets of online information.

One could argue that Carr's presupposition biased his work but then, 'tis the author's right to take a position and back it up with aggressive fact gathering and intelligent analysis - which Carr has done beyond any doubt. The beauty of this book is the author's ability to edify in compelling prose. While a history of the written word and a review of related neuroscience could sound like a sleeper, this is a fascinating page-turner. Carr does a great job of summarizing research in plain-speak and strikes the perfect level of technical detail. This was perhaps the most fluid and engaging non-fiction book I've had the pleasure of reading. Kudos to Carr for his skill and diligence in the writing.

Related Reading:
Digital Manners & House Rules: A Handbook for Parents

I really, really wanted to like this book. I wanted the question, "What is the Internet doing to our brains?" to be systematically answered. Instead, the author gives us a technical description of brain plasticity and a history of intellectual technologies. Granted, these things were interesting. And, granted, they could have been used to answer the question that should have been answered. But instead these things were left to sit there on their own. The author did not bring his arguments to closure.

There were little bits here and there that answered the question. But there wasn't a well-organized thesis. And there also wasn't a "solutions" chapter. Like, things you can do to bring sanity back to your life.

I was really disappointed that I spent my time reading this book.

I was attracted to this book as I have long felt that there was a difference in the way that the more modern generation treats information, compared to those of us who grew up before the days of search engines and wikis. The evolution of reading and literary mediums is fascinating and provides an enriching glimpse of how much our society and needs have changed overtime and what else is to come. There is also an insightful lesson, particularly from an artificial intelligence perspective in the dangers as well if we are not cautious and just embrace new technologies blindly without any due consideration.

I enjoyed this book but am surprised publisher Norton & Co. failed to discover how much Carr obviously borrowed without attribution, from Theodore Rozack. Much of this book simply confirms with current research what Rozack presciently outlined long ago about the dangers to literacy and privacy posed by the computer. All of this might be fine, if the author had even bothered the mention 'The Cult of Information', published 30 years prior. If Carr cannot remember where 80% of his book came from, perhaps it is he who is working the shallow end of the literary pool not just Google.

Do not be dissuaded by the cover of this book. What I thought was going to be an aggressive narrative on why the internet is ruining our brains, I was instead treated to a narrative that is quite varied and objective about the idea of 'too much information.' The author begins by explaining what prompted him to research this topic in the first place: his disappointing revelation that he has begun to tire of the prospect of reading long articles and even books (his mind just can't seem to focus anymore). Refreshingly, the author does not spend the entire book rehashing and uncovering social science experiments. Note: there is a fair share of these experiments detailed in the book, but that is not everything. He talks about the history of language and books, and how Socrates was fearful that humans would soon need not memorize anything; he delves into the chemistry of the brain and what the internet and information-age may be doing to it; and, most respectably, he tells us that he himself is not immune to the desires of modern entertainment. He didn't write this book to chastise a generation (he, in fact, indulges in the luxuries he suggests may be harmful), rather he wanted to compile a narrative of a topic that he thinks needs to be discussed and considered.

I really enjoyed the history lessons in this book. And, as I have suggested, the author is cautious about prescribing any type of life style change upon us. If you can handle some in-depth social science experiments, and are open to even the suggestion of the idea that he is discussing, I think you will find his narrative insightful.

Asking the hard questions
I just finished reading Nicholas Carr's book, The Shallows - how the internet is changing the way we think, read and remember'.
Carr provides lots of historical and scientific background material - all of which I found relevant and stimulating. In many respects I found myself identifying closely with Carr's own experience - wondering what impact my increasing involvement with the online world is having on me. I am also trying to understand the threats and opportunities for my kids as they grow up in this web centric world.
I suppose the first theme is Carr setting out to substantiate his theory that the mind is impacted by the tools we use. He refers to its `plasticity'. He quotes a range of authorities (and experimental evidence) to support this. And I found this conclusive.
He also takes us back as far as Socrates and his concerns as to the impact on the mind of writing down details of events - the potential negative impact on mind/ memory.
I was most struck by the discussion about memory and how the mind commits detail to `long term' memory. Carr talks about the current processing and the long term storage. In particular he focused on the importance of focus/ concentration when reading - the impact on the ability of the mind to process and store information being related to this ability to concentrate (and, it would seem, the impact of your immediate surrounds e.g. quite rural v. busy metropolitan).
In this context it is interesting to compare the online, hypertext enhanced, web experience with reading a book. The web experience is immediately more attractive (and vastly more distracting). Generally the online experience is accompanied by interruptions from social networks, email, instant messaging, text on the side of pages, etc. Reading a book, as I have just done, in a quiet room, with no online distraction, is quite different.
I would not suggest that reading a book in a quiet room is without distractions. As a consultant, reading a book such as `Shallows' I find myself inevitably thinking about recent experiences in client situations, current client issues and, more generally, other books/ materials I have read on related subjects. Carr references some of this in an interesting observation on the difference between computer memory and human memory. At different stages we recall detail from long terms memory to current memory, associate it/ correlate it with current memory content and eventually, depending on quality of our experience, may restore it in an enhanced way in long term memory. And we would describe this as a richer memory storage than any we may `outsource' to computer memory.
Carr admits he has not changed much in his own behaviour. While writing the book he withdrew from much of his online interactivity. He readily admits to his own `withdrawal' symptoms during this period. Having completed the book he returned to the web. He also acknowledges that for many working in this web centric world they have little choice but to participate actively. However none of this is to undermine his analysis - there is a real need to distinguish between genuinely human thinking and memory and that which is driven/ influenced by search engines, social networks and online content. Fail to make time for quality, offline, reading/ research/ contemplation at your peril.
I would very much like to see a discussion of Carr's book incorporated into secondary school education - if there is an appropriate subject/ class in which to discuss it.

This is a well researched and well written book on a tremendously important topic. Everyone should read it.

I enjoy science and history, and this book had a nice mix of both. While I am not an MD, I have studied a bit about brain science, learning, and cognition and this book is consistent with my research. Equally important, I observe the effects he describes in myself and the people around me.

If the author had suggestions for what to do about the problem it would be perfect.

The Shallows expands on the evolutionary notion that the digital age is, for all its advantages and benefits, contributing to a dumbing-down of the generations. The premise behind this idea is that rapid access to facts and new information may actually reduce the depth at which people consider ideas, develop arguments, construct debate, perform analytics, create concepts and engage in learning. The distractive forces of a rapid fire internet stream of data are real according to Carr and the neuro-references he cites.

One of the major challenges is distraction and the risk of training our brains to pay attention to "crap" according to neuroscientists. In addition, the author has concerns that these distractions can undermine empathy, compassion and emotion as we lose track of reality and context. Another concern is that we take on thinking as a more superficial act, and we lose touch with challenging ideas and perhaps innovation as we rely more on conventional lines of thought. This general theme has been bubbling in education circles.

While this points to a rather negative and damning view of intellectual life in the internet age, critics might suggest that digital access and engagement are in fact leading to a new culture of learning, exposure and intellectual life. One could argue the effects, pro and con, of the digital age, including those presented by Carr, as detriments to society. Opponents might argue that these effects are not universal, and in fact, they must be put into balance with the broader exposure afforded to those who have been less educated, less exposed and less engaged in intellectual life.

As with any argument on the origins of stupidity, we have to consider the balance of neurological development, educational practices, individual roles and responsibilities, expectations of society and the power of the human spirit. When we think of mindlessness or mindfulness, we are talking about knowledge and knowledge management. There is more to the equation than simply sourcing data and organizing information. In fact, the whole KM discipline speaks to the acquisition arrangement and application of knowledge, not simply searching for data. This is where "deeper smarts" have a major role.

The bigger story here may be how we guide our people to consider information, knowledge, data, perspectives and the value of content. Carr speaks to a challenge and a risk. He also opens the door for arguments about a society's value for intelligence, learning and consideration. This work touches on philosophy, neuroscience, learning models and the responsibility of a learned society. This is an especially provoking text for those in education, information technology, business analysis, planned innovation and organization development. It has broad applications for leadership and management.

Early in this excellent book Nicholas Carr describes how amazed St. Augustine was to find St. Ambrose (bishop of Milan) actually reading without moving his lips! For around the year 400, everybody (except Ambrose apparently) had to sound out what they read: there were no spaces between the words, writing was just transcribed speech, and spoken words had no fixed gap between them (ergo, no blank spaces, right?).
And I never knew that the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, going blind and unable to focus on a page and write with a pen, began using an early typewriter-- and then noticed (as did a friend) that his style had become "tighter, more telegraphic".
Carr goes on to describe how the very plastic human brain is "rewired" by our tools for communicating throughout history. He thinks the way this is happening with the internet, despite the good stuff, is rewiring us in some disturbing ways. And he backs this up, reporting on some fascinating studies by medical and psychological researchers.

Nicholas Carr does an excellent job supporting the argument that despite what many may think, the internet is actually doing more harm then help to our ability to learn and our overall intelligence as a species.

Book starts by describing brain neuroplasticity with snippets mainly from Doidge and as Doidge does, from the studies of Merzenich.
Parts about memory are likewise referring to from Kandel's.
Since the writer is not a neuroscientist himself, it might be fair to cite the well known publications in the field, however I would recommend anyone to read Doidge and Kandel before reading this book.
Book starts getting interesting when the writer starts talking about the reading / writing experience and its history with all the milestones until the internet and the way they have changed human comprehension and perception of the world. Lots of novel studies about reading and comprehension are cited and the way the non-linear reading experience and heavy multitasking are changing the gray matter and the overall human experience is described.

If you want to learn how the internet creates distraction seeking shallow minds with smaller hippocompi and thinner gray matter with very blurry memories read this book.

The shallows seems to be more of a cautionary tale, rather than internet condemnation. As we become accustomed to and dependent on our computers we become tempted to entrust them with “tasks that demand wisdom”. Carr warns that the more power we give to computers, to internet, to technology, those things will become indispensable and there is no turning back. “We have to be attentive to what we stand to lose”. Human elements are cannot become outmoded and dispensable; there is something about us that makes us uniquely human; our emotions, our character, and our autonomy. For technology resisters and supporters alike, this book contains stories, fears, and insights with which anyone and everyone can relate.

This book is right on target.

In my daily exercise walk to the coffee shop, I meet two types of people who are so different I wonder if they are the same species:

The dog walkers in the park are: Aware of the real world; Generally say hello and smile; and Sometimes stop to chat.

The people in the Coffee shop are: Fully occupied on their cell phones or computers; Rarely look up; and Never say anything.

The author's brain has been rewired due to improper Web/email use and parts of the
book are written in bursts, bullet points, blog diary style and irritating to
read if you have a normal brain like me. If you can't concentrate for over 1
hour reading just one thing without interruptions, distractions...you are rewired too.

However, he makes alot of salient points which make it a worthwhile read.

How Google's founders would like to replace your brain with an AI one.
How the pocket calculator relieves pressure on your working memory(short-term)
and Internet does the opposite.

Due to the influx of competing messages, your memory consolidation
doesn't occur and the more you use the Web, your brain is trained to be distracted.
Concentration suffers in a self perpetuating loop. Your brain becomes
adept at forgetting and you become a Shallow thinker and rely more on the Net.

Read this book before you are unable to concentrate long enough to finish it.

The start is very in depth regarding how your brain processes information and seems to drag on for too long. Once you get through that section, the book opens up and really goes after the web with factual and well researched information that will really open your eyes to changing your habits before its unrepairable. Worth a read for sure. Would love to see where he stands 5 years from the release of this book.

If you are using the Internet right now, then you really ought to read this book. The Shallows is about how the tools we use shape our brain and our thinking, and how the Internet in particular changes us. This isn't a Luddite treatise; it's a balanced and relevant look at the effects of the Internet.

I, too, have been sensing for quite some time a growing feeling of distraction and fragmentation. Nick Carr's The Shallows helps me understand why I have been feeling this way. After reading his book, I am better able to take more responsibility for how I go about using the Internet and regain the senses of tranquility and focus that every writer cherishes. I will be certainly reading all of his books.

Authors and avid readers of books have got to love ‘The Shallows’. It expounds the benefits of reading books (or long-text) preferably in a quiet place, as opposed to the site hopping, text hopping, link hopping, distracted way we acquire information via the Internet. Carr tells a cautionary tale about the debilitating effect using the Internet has on our brains as we blithely embrace it in our everyday lives. His case is well-supported with research, and written in a lively (but not distracted), accessible style which can do nothing but enhance the reputation of books. An excellent read.

A cumbersome scientific explanation of what we already know: the internet is changing our way of thinking, acting and doing, everything about our lives.

Good, interesting points, observations and explanations here, but for most readers, too much justification of his ideas, thoughts and positions. The reader sometimes wishes for Sgt. Joe Friday, Jack Webb's character in the old "Dragnet" TV series: "The facts, mamn, the facts, nothing but the facts..." There is a lot of superfluous thought here and too much specific scientific justification.

Just tell us what is happening, make your points, and get out of the way. Mr. Carr refuses to do that making his book read more like an academic scientific treatise than a book for public consumption...

All of which is to say that this very review makes Carr's point: our way of thinking, writing, and our attention spans are changing due in part to our reliance on the internet.

As people grow and evolve so does technology. In the book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr, the main concern is how the internet and new technologies are destroying our brains. Nicholas Carr is the author of many books such as Is Google Making Us Stupid?, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google and Does it Matter. Carr has also written articles in many newspapers and magazines. His main concern is how the internet is making people stupid. He believes that people rely too much on technology.

Carr talks a lot about how our brain actually works and transmits information. He also uses many examples and anecdotes to show how people have always used some sort of technology. Throughout his book, Carr uses these examples to illustrate how technology has evolved and how with this evolution people have become "stupid". He provides supporting evidence to show how people, in a sense, are becoming stupid. But at the same time does he not realize that people had to create and invent these new technologies? Some of the newest technologies are very complex. Not only did people have to come up with these new inventions, but they also have to be able to memorize how to use the machine.

Many people do not memorize things like they used to in the past. Before computers people would memorize as much as they could so they would not have to look through multiple books. But now within seconds, anyone around the world can find out anything they can imagine. Carr states that this is possibly destroying our capability to memorize anything, whether it is for work or school. But in one of Carr's examples, he talks about how people used to use "commonplace books". "Commonplace books" were notebooks that people would write quotes or any other important information in. Then if they could not remember something they would simply look it up in this book. In a way this is closely related to looking topics up on Google. So even way before the internet was created, people were slowly using memory capabilities.

Carr makes some good points though. He talks about how people rely too much on the internet and machines to do work for them. This may be true, but humans can not possibly do everything. By inventing and creating robots, we are able to do things we would not have been able to do before. For example, robots and machines do heavy lifting and dangerous work in the military and industry business.

Carr contradicts himself a lot. He talks about how helpful technology is and can be if it is used properly. But then you turn the page and he talks about how people are unable to memorize information and process information like they used to. In a way this implies that people are becoming stupid from advancements in technology. Carr, himself, admits to falling victim to the attraction of the internet. He had to completely cut himself from all technology in order to write this book.

Today's technology helps people in their everyday tasks, whether it is in hospitals saving people's lives, in the car industry, or in time of war. I completely disagree with Nicholas Carr and his opinion that the advancements in technology, primarily what we do on the internet, are destroying people's brains. There are a lot of people out there that rely so much on the internet and other sources of technology that they do not know what to do without it. Some people are crazy when it comes to the internet but not all people. These people are a great example of what Carr is referring too. I can not speak for all people but I can still pick up a book and read it without looking at my phone or computer. I also have no problem memorizing and retaining information. Carr should have made this more of a personal story as an example of what can happen to people's thoughts and behaviors by using his life as the main example. He should not have generalized it to all people.

A book whose thesis is deep reading and reflective thought prompts this review by Chance York:

"I'm 50 pages into this book and it is, by far, the WORST book I've ever read."

That someone wrote that review after reading only 50 pages of a book about book reading almost made me fall out of my chair. Chalk one up for Nick Carr and The Shallows as you this reviewer couldn't have made his point any better. As an aside, to claim this extremely well written book is the "WORST", in upper case no less, book Chance has ever read (perhaps he should say "partially read") is obvious hyperbole.

Carr's argument, whether you agree with it or not, deserves serious consideration. The book is interesting and very well written. It goes deep and if you go deep with it, you will be the better off for it. I'm still struggling with what I think about all this, but The Shallows led me into a lot of careful thought about the topic. That's the whole point after all.

This is a relevant topic that warrants a critical review and analysis. However, apparently Carr is not the one to tackle such a task. He does not know nor understand the literature on memory and cognitive psychology (which is certainly of greater relevance here than Kandel's micro-neuroscience work); he really doesn't comprehend the concepts of "neuroplasticity" and "consolidation" which he appeals to so frequently; he doesn't seem to appreciate the differences between semantic memory (much of which can reasonably be offloaded to the computer) and declarative memory (much of which cannot be--and no one would either want to or be able to, at least at present); he cites almost entirely secondary, rather than primary sources (and not the most scholarly of secondary sources at that). Even taking Carr's arguments on their own terms, the book is a notable failure, e.g., the term "neuroplasticity," rightly applied, can be turned around to refute Carr's case for the major, lasting effedts of internet use; citing Heidegger and Kandel's research in the same train of argument is, at the very least,appealing to strange bedfellows, and for an author so concerned with preserving "deep thinking" and "deep reading," Carr's arguments are certainly not deep nor tight nor well-reasoned, but rather are discursive, rambling, and opportunistic (cherry-picking). There is a lot of interesting information in this book that I did not know (e.g., about the history of writing and the early ramifications of the printing press, the way in which Google does its research, the law suits against Google's attmepts to digitize all books), but I certainly have no intentions of boarding his small boat on the basis of this book--not with the equipment for paddling that he provides--even if I do, at some point, feel my intelligence slipping as a result of my interner use (which I don't expect).

Nicholas Carr's _The Shallows_ began life as an essay on whether Google use (and computer-related work in general) is making us stupid. An interesting premise for sure, and one that needs an in-depth treatment.

Much like the title, though, Carr's work never makes the transition from essay to full-fledged book. It avoids the deep end, reading like a meditation on consciousness when it should be a hard-hitting science book that repeatedly backs up its premise that Internet use is diminishing us. _The Shallows_ better resembles the brain physiology equivalent of _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek_ than a hard-hitting exposé and warning.

Problems with Carr's direction manifest early on, as the buildup to the core premise takes forever to unfold. While Carr will argue that today's readers can no longer follow an extended argument because they spend too much time scanning text for keywords, his own book only adds grist for that mill. It is one thing to lay out a nuanced argument, but eventually one must present that argument. That we get too much of a history of learning at the beginning of _The Shallows_ only forces the reader to acknowledge that perhaps not much real argument follows, as the remaining bundle of pages look slighter and slighter as one reads on.

And this is too bad, as _The Shallows_ does eventually present some interesting facts about our use of computer-related tech and gadgetry. The problem is that extracting meaning from those facts eludes the author. What can we truly make of the reality that our use of tech is making us more like machines and less like humans beings? If the way we work online does alter the physical layout of our brains in harmful ways, we need to see worst case scenarios. Sadly, there's a sense of guilt in Carr that appears to prevent him from delivering the death blow to the detrimental effects of Internet usage, allowing himself an out in case he's wrong. Indeed, after detailing his own fast from tech that allowed him to finally concentrate enough to write _The Shallows_, Carr confesses to lapsing back into the wired lifestyle he supposedly decries.

All this leads the reader to ask, "Well, is the Internet bad for us or not?" The hints are there that it is, but Carr never goes all-in. Worse, even the points he makes in favor of the premise that it could be harmful don't lead to much conjecture about the fallout of such a slide. His section on the shallowness of multitasking COULD have been a profound indictment of the modern work world, but we instead get more of a meditative answer than anything hard-hitting. We read how traditional facts are no longer memorized (such as dates of events), as we instead relegate them to databases and fill our minds with "other" things. Yet is this a good or bad course? And how would the negative course alter society for the worse? Carr hints at negative outcomes, but we need more than hints and a few philosophical musings.

The lack of substantive premise support and forceful, dystopian warnings renders _The Shallows_ shallow. It's a book that could have been a contender, but instead it reads like a padded essay that was rushed into print. How sad that a book that decries reading by skimming almost forces readers to skim it as they search for something substantive to latch onto.

I thought he presented a great point of view to the growing popular trend in the use and implementation of technology in society. He makes some great insights, backed up by research. Not only does he provide these insights, but he also does a pretty good job of presenting the other point of view of issues so that you are left to draw your own conclusions. A couple main points that stick out for me and I thought were interesting was the idea that technologies can utilize and improve some of our cognitive abilities (memory, problem solving,...) while at the same time slowing or weakening other abilities. He also discusses how the internet and computers may lead us to be somewhat 'less human' in certain respects due to the way we interact with these technologies, and how that might impact us. Good read, definitely recommended.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book to write a review from a non-the store.com source

This book is just another in a long line of fatalistic works which claim that technology is turning us in to machines. While it is well-written and entertaining at points, the argument is lacking the very depth that the author claims we no longer have due to the new world of distractions caused by being online. Carr's history of the impact of technology is incredibly shallow. His analysis of brain changes needs fuller support as well. I'm not saying that the support doesn't exist, but I am saying that Carr doesn't delve deep enough to be fully convincing.

However, the book is interesting to read. There are anecdotes throughout which support the authors claims regarding more than just the internet. The work also helps to put our use of the internet in perspective. One leaves the book wondering if our increased "connectedness" with online things really is pulling us away from real connections. Perhaps the most troubling section to read is one of the final chapters where Carr explains how we are dumping our "on-board memory" for "online storage." The implications are quite frightening, indeed.

Wow! I have felt the same thing happening. I scan emails for important messages and the same with FBI don't read everything- and I what I do read I'm looking for ways around it. Have I seen this somewhere else? Is it the same as the other em I got? Do I really need to read it? Wow, think of ll the time I wasted to get to this point. Is it really better? I wonder? Nothing or little gets our full attention anymore.

I can't decide whether I can't concentrate on reading this book because the internet has hardwired my brain for lack of concentration, or whether the author's arguments are simply incoherent.

given that I had no problem concentrating on the last two non-fiction books I've read, I'm inclined to believe that this book is simply incoherent. There are a lot of unsupported assertions and, I think, some post hoc prompter hoc thinking - it just seems to me that, in some of his arguments, he's got the directionality of causality reversed.

The Shallows made a good train read, but ultimately I felt that the book fell thin. Instead of presenting a careful examination into living meaningfully in a distracted world, Carr regurgitates of others' ideas and gives us highly readable history of technology and summary of academic papers, but little more.

Speedy delivery, interesting fact filled book. A great read for those who wonder about the affects on the brain of humans using technology especially the computer. All educators Grades 4k-18 should read this book.

Nick Carr ,in my opinion, has a gift of looking at the other side of the coin on anything. He does a good job on looking at the internet and the way it is changing our brains. For me,after reading the book,although I am not going to stop using the internet,I am certainly going to look for opportunities to train my brain to go deep on topics.Maybe in the form of yoga/meditation or deliberately reading deep articles and books.

This book was fascinating for a few pages but then I browsed reddit for a while before being interrupted by checking email. After that I had to run, but got bored a mile into it so I went back home and ended up checking reddit, but all the links were purple so I had to stop myself from being frustrated by that by checking emails but there were no new ones so I decided to sleep for a while.

The Shallows was a welcome book in 2011. It was well-researched and makes a convincing case for an issue that still hasn't been addressed by our society: tech devices and the internet can be more distracting than productive when used improperly. However, there's a better book for this topic. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal will show you the features of tech services that distract you, so you can either overcome these distractions or build them into your own products. And since Carr is not a technologist by trade, his section about the infeasibility of building a human brain-like computer comes across as naive and is now outdated. Read Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom (2014) for a more updated and pragmatic analysis of the history and future potential of artificial intelligence.

One of those rare books that suggests implications for almost every aspect of everyday life -- for parents, for working people and for everyone who just wants to understand that the way we process information will never be the same.

interesting read. Made me evaluate the different aspects of my life and how i use the internet daily. one of the things i learnt was the idea of taking time out to "do you" without the influence of the technology, being mindful. Although one sided, i did enjoy reading the book....

Carr presents a compelling case that underscores my own experience, both in social interactions with friends, but also in corporate effectiveness degradation due to a skimming mentality that hardly ever experiences anything under the surface.

I'm going to throw my computer through the window, so watch out below. This book and "In Defense of Food" stand as the two books that have changed the day-to-day experience of my life more than any others. Many thanks to Carr for taking the time to do the mountains of research necessary to make this very important case.

Interpersonal communications seems to be deteriorating at an alarming rate in sectors characterized by constant to heavy use of 'social media' and the cyber mentality. Our modern society is in dire need of norms and guidelines regarding the use and compatibility of such a culture.

The only thing keeping Carr's book from receiving 5 stars was the "shallow" look at statistics, case studies, and other supporting data that supported Carr's claim. Also, while I found the brief histories of language, books, and tv/radio interesting, the time at which it took to get to the "meat and potatoes" almost caused me to put the book down. I blame the internet.

I love to read. Apart from blogging here about books, I also blog a few other places about what I read. The problem is of course, having money to read. Books are not cheap and I am not saying that they should be, I'm just pointing out that occasionally, a book reader has to make choices. There are books I only buy when they are on sale, at a used book store or other such reduced price venue. Occasionally, I want to read a book that I simply cannot justify buying. More accurately, I want to use my book money on other books and I'm not sure if I want to dip into my emergency book fund money to purchase this book. So, I go to Barnes & Nobles and I read the book there. I start out just skimming chapters. Kind of reading it piece meal. Then I read some online reviews of the book. If by this point, I'm still not sure I want to buy the book but I am sure I want to continue reading it, I will continue my Barnes & Noble approach over a period of time.

This is what I did with the book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. I had two separate people recommend it in real life (one liked it, one hated it) and I have read reviews of it on a few other book review blogs.
The short of it is that I am not a fan of Mr. Carr's book. As a therapist, I believe that the foundation of his argument is built on either debatable science or science that contradicts his point.

He talks about "the Flynn effect," which is the name given or the fact that our raw IQ scores have constantly been going up. Later, the same scientist who made this discovery realized that simply because those scores are going up doesn't mean that we are actually smarter or that our brains are better, they are simply different. He then goes on to lay out his case that short snippets of internet surfing make our brain "dumber" not just different. Well, why is one only different, not better or worse, while the other is not just different but worse? It makes no sense. It is an incongruent argument at best.

Much of the research that he quotes is not peer-reviewed as he would like to make the reader think it is. Yes, I looked up more than one article. Even the ones that are peer-reviewed don't seem to support his hypotheses all that much. The book is full of anecdotal evidence, not research. That's OK, if this book is going to be pitched as his idea and not some sort of science book. His arguments ring hallow and tired when you realize that they are the same sort of arguments used against TV, radio, and even music itself throughout various stages of history.

The last thing that he did that drove me nuts was his use of subjective statements given as though they were objective. For instance, his chapter on Google is supposed to be the money chapter of the whole book (proponents all seemed to mention this chapter as being worth the price of admission on its own) but I found so many distraction subjective statements that it made reading intolerable. For instance he says,

"By freeing us from the struggle of decoding text, that form that writing came to take on a page of paper, parchment or paper enabled us to become deep readers, to turn our attention, and our brain power, to the interpretation of meaning. With writing on the screen, we're still able to decode text quickly--we read, if anything better than ever--but we're no longer guided toward a deep, personally constructed understanding of the text's connotations. Instead we're hurried off toward another bit of related information, and the another, and another. The strip-mining of `relevant content' replaces the slow excavation of meaning." (I don't have the page number because I took a picture of the text on my blackberry)

Do you see what's missing in this highly subjective statement? It's missing any grounding at all in a cited source or research. This entire book is based upon an article that the author wrote because he came to the conclusion that he could no longer read deeply because he had trained his mind to read news snippets and blasts, chasing each new link. He came to this conclusion on his own. I wonder, did Mr. Carr stop reading books during this time because he decided to allocate his time differently? Did he age? Could that have had an impact on his ability to "read deeply?" Did he go through a medical issue? Did he have a troubling life event occur?

In fact, the entire premise of the book is based on a rather subjective term; namely the term, "deeply." What does that mean? When did Mr. Carr's ability to read "deeply" begin to slide? There are numerous other potential answers to the cause of this loss that may have nothing to do with the internet at all. Perhaps, it was something as simple as he just needed to start reading "deeply" again.

This book will not make it to my shelf as it seems to be a rather agenda driven book that lacks real substance beyond the author's unqualified opinion. In the end, Mr. Carr didn't really convince me at all that he knows what the internet is doing to our brain or if I should be concerned about it all.

I'd give it 2 out of 5 stars.

I am not one of those people who will defend what is going on the internet as good. I even agree with the thesis that the internet is making us more impulsive, and more superficial. But in the end, that is really the only thing the book says. Yes, he discusses what neuroplasticity is, and how technology affects civilization. But these topics only loosely support his thesis, and really are off topic. It feels like he is using the "I am going to say things way above your head to make you think I smart" argumentation strategy. As someone who understands that type of stuff, I realize when he actually gets to the meat of his book, he doesn't say much more than what should be said in a small essay.

While I don't buy into the doomsday predictions that Carr predicts, to say that the only negative effect that the internet has on us is a lack of focus really shows a strong lack of research. The increase in internet usage decreases the amount of face to face time people have with others. Research shows that this (more than the lack of focus) has had a huge effect on social relationships among the young. Moreover, the fact that we can selectively read news from from like-minded people makes the internet a huge echo chamber. This is narrowing our viewpoints rather that diversifying our opinions on issues, and adding to the polarization in this country.

But what is most annoying about the book is the lack of organization in his book. He has no rhyme or reason to how his book is organized. Furthermore he repeats himself quite a bit. The book is poor writing. I would recommend reading elsewhere if you want to read about how the internet is changing our brains.

Pieces of this book were brilliant, enlightening and exceptionally well done. Other portions were painfully slow to slog through or disjointed. All in all, this is worth reading but I suggest taking it in small chunks to alleviate the struggling during heavier, less coherent portions.

This book is an expansion of an August 2008 article in The Atlantic entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid? What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains." In the article -- downloadable for free -- the author uses all of the same examples, most of the same quotations and makes exactly the same point as the full-length book. The point he wishes to make is dead simple and pretty obvious: the internet is endlessly distracting, and promotes short attention spans. Ta-da!

Is this really worth a book-length treatment?

Well maybe if your attention span needs to be trained to read for hours at a time, without significant data input. Maybe, if you wish to gift a Luddite tome to a relative without internet access. Maybe, if you are starting a library that won't stock periodicals.

Otherwise, I can't see much point. Oh, there are some interesting correlations brought out by the book that weren't in the article; such as the fact that Marshall McLuhan and the Beatles hit US shores at approximately the same time, that Star Wars and the Apple computer debuted in the same year, that pornography followed Guttenberg as inevitably as VHS tapes and the internet. But these are slim rewards for many hours of concentrated attention, when the exact same gist can be gleaned from an 8-page article -- or (irony of ironies!) less.

The author himself missed a golden opportunity. On page 106 he quotes, "'Soon,' says Ben Vershbow of the Institute for the Future of the Book, an arm of USC's Annenberg Center for Communication, 'books will literally have discussions inside of them, both live chats and asynchronous exchanges through comments and social annotation. You will be able to see who else out there is reading that book and be able to open up a dialog with them.'"

Unless I miss my bet that already exists -- right here in the store reviews.

This is a very well-written book in which the author provides a thorough--and exceptionally understandable--discussion of how the brain processes information, especially information from the Internet. Specifically, he addresses the problems in comprehension and analytic reasoning that result when people are constantly exposed to the quality and quantity of information that the Internet provides.

Best book on 21st century. Quintessential topic and take on it. Well researched, ya think? - a decade of reading! But best is beautiful lyric prose - I include in every course, actually read parts aloud to MBA's.

I have to own and read this book for English Comp 1. I find the author's premises very shaky. He is constantly insisting correlation equals causation, while ignoring other facts going on at the same time. A very good example would be his wring on Nietzsche, where he is claiming that the purchase of a typewriter to do his writing changed how the man wrote, his tone and thoughts. He ignores that the reason that the man bought the typewriter was that he was going blind from syphilis, which also causes brain changes. This sort of slip occurs through out the book. He claims that the creation of the internet has caused us to be no longer able to read in depth, based on the testimony of a handful of people who no longer read but scan texts looking for keywords. It ignores the large masses who continue to read for relaxation in favor of peoples different research methods.

Carr painstakingly makes the case that we are helplessly losing our minds and humanity to computers and the Internet. I found the sweeping generalizations hard to swallow and the lack of emphasis on personal responsibility (try stepping away from the computer) disappointing. Many of the problems he brings up could be the result of a combination of issues, like over-scheduling our lives, misguided education policy, environmental pollution, etc. Compared to maps, written language and books, computer technology is still in its infancy, and how we will end up using it is yet to be seen. Caution is wise; paranoia makes a really long read.

This book takes a really negative view of how the internet affects people. There is also no real since that he is going some where with this information. I feel like I was left waiting for the advice after all the info.

This book was good, but only had around 1-2 chapters devoted to the topic of the title. The rest of the book consisted of a history of books, a history of computers, and how books changed the early world. Really. That's about it. I was sorely disappointed with this. Not at all what I was expecting.