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

Many argon still quoting from Nicholas Carrs 2008 Atlantic article Is Google make Us Stupid? Here in The Shallows What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, he elaborates to illustrate precisely how the Internet changes our lives. on the way, Carrs highly entertaining obligate reminds us of how the great thinkers of past centuries did just fine without a hyperlinked database of all the worlds knowledge at hand.In the 21st century, we be facing the consequences of our confuse and scattered society, and we make choices about the impact of technology, weighted with assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. The Shallows What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains presents a thoughtful, if frightening, look at what were doing to ourselves.We learn to take in teaching the way the Internet distributes it, in a swiftly moving stream of take aparticles. At best we skim the surface, rather than go dense into information, and our fragmented journey results in lack of conce ntration and comprehension.Pay attention as the fountain cites his hold difficulties with reading and that of others who find problems with their powerfulness to read and absorb. Sadly untold of our reading has become skimming and scrolling.In just twenty years, since the webs graphical browser was created, the Internet has become the communication and information medium of choice. Those of us who grew up in an analog youth can still remember when AOL was the outmatch consumer choice for web use. Do you remember AOLs weekly allotment of a limited add up of web surfing?Carr colors his analysis with interesting stories and profiles of some of the worlds greatest thinkers and writers, including Socrates and Plato. He reaches far back in time to bring us a full understanding of the exploitation of human intellect over centuries.In the late 19th century, when first using a typewriter, Nietzsche rapidly found a difference in his work when not using paper and pen. Our writingequipm ent takes part in the forming of our thoughts.The Shallows illustrates that every technology is an expression of human will and changes how we think. The typewriter, sextant, globe, book pertlyspaper and computer are all tools for self-expression, our identity and relations with others.In Chapter Four, The Deepening Page, Carr creates an interesting parallel mingled with todays technology divide and Johannes Gutenbergs printing press invention, developed in the mid-15th century. While it was as telephone exchange an event as the Internet is today, it too was out of reach for the poor, illiterate, isolated or incurious. The biggest difference between the printing press and the web today, other than speed, is the webs bi-directional communication ability. Yet, Carr quotes Marshall McLuhan stating, A new medium is never an addition to an old one. Nor does it leave the old one in peace.Today, when a printed book is transferred to an electronic device connected to the Internet, it tur ns into something very like a web site, says Carr. Yet, he reflects on what this means, when the ability to continually update a book removes the sense of closure from book writing. He raises the question of whether an authors pressure to achieve perfection will diminish, along with artistic rigor that pressure imposed.The Jugglers Brain, Chapter Seven, should be mandatory reading for us to understand effects of technology in the school system, after(prenominal) a decade of using hypertext on computer screens instead of printed pages. Over time, it was apparent that evaluating links and navigating paths was mentally challenging, and extraneous to the act of reading. Studies readily determined that hypertext increases readers cognitive load and is more than than the average reader is commensurate of handling and remembering.As skimming becomes our dominant mode of reading, we as a society and individually, pay a price. With lessened comprehension and compulsive multitasking, wer e easily distracted, compounding our problems. As Carrsays, The Net is making us smarter, in other words, only if we define intelligence by the Nets own standards.Do yourself a favor and turn off your browser and email while you read the section on attentiveness. It points to a problem many of us experience without understanding, thinking were faced with too much information. The reality may be that changes in our brains, as we use the web, turn us into shallow thinkers.The Shallows is more than a report on the current state of technology in society. The greatest problem is the more we use the web, the more we train our brain to be distracted to process information very quickly and very efficiently but without sustained attention. Its worth reading this book to remind ourselves that we are responsible for the priorities we set and the choices we make.Reviewers note In the complexity of todays technology, and as proof of the melodramatic changes the simple act of reading a book, Th e Shallows is available in hardcover, as well as a Kindle edition, audio book, CD, Audible Audio edition, cassette and MP3. Such is the reality in the modern world.