The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains in Daily Show / Colbert Report / Nightly Show / The Opposition

Jul 14, 2010 Renee rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

If you want to be kept awake at night over the state of society, you could go over the usual suspects - media violence and/or pornography, political upheaval, economic decline, etc. - or you can read The Shallows: what the internet is doing to our brains. Of course, the other societal problems are more glaring, but the issue outlined by Nicholas Carr is insidious, and therefore harder to fight. The whole book is interesting and telling, and if nothing else, I suggest that readers pick it up for If you want to be kept awake at night over the state of society, you could go over the usual suspects - media violence and/or pornography, political upheaval, economic decline, etc. - or you can read The Shallows: what the internet is doing to our brains. Of course, the other societal problems are more glaring, but the issue outlined by Nicholas Carr is insidious, and therefore harder to fight. The whole book is interesting and telling, and if nothing else, I suggest that readers pick it up for the chapter entitled “The Juggler’s Brain.”

These days the internet is not only everywhere, for individuals to function well in most societies, it is also absolutely necessary. Even if you are someone who in general eschews net-surfing, think of your electronic debit cards, being paid by direct deposit, searching for a job (newspapers just don’t have enough prospects anymore), or even watching TV (show me a major network that has not been affected to the net, I dare you). All of this is fine and good, perhaps, unless Carr’s thesis is true. On the net, which is rife with distraction-inducing hyperlinks, and information clustered with pictures, video, and sound, the human brain is basically on a constant state of overload and cannot create stores of new long-term information. He asserts that humans are also losing their ability to think deeply - to sit down and focus on a single thing for any long period of time:

What we’re not doing when we’re online also has neurological consequences. Just as neurons that fire together wire together, neurons that don’t fire together don’t wire together. As the time we spend scanning Web pages crowds out the time we spend reading books, as the time we spend exchanging bite-sized text messages crowds out the time we spend composing sentences and paragraphs, as the time we spend hopping across links crowds out the time we devote to quiet reflection and contemplation, the circuits that support those old intellectual functions and pursuits weaken and begin to break apart. The brain recycles the disused neurons and synapses for other, more pressing work. We gain new skills and perspectives but lose old ones.

Carr cites quite a bit of research to support this thesis, and I don’t dispute his premise. Quite frankly, I have experienced the causes and fallout of minds that are completely scattered and unable to focus. Actually, I include myself in this fallout - though I can still sit and read for hours with the right book, there are times when I will - in a fifteen minute time frame - check Facebook, read news articles, find new music to listen to, and be thinking of other things I need to do when offline. As for how this world can affect daily life, take a couple of real-world examples from a different office jobs I have held:

1. A man is test-driving the new format for the company’s website. Some individuals are asked to come in and review it, including myself. When I mention that the new, visually pleasing website is not really intuitive for searching (for individuals who need to find specific, in-depth information), I am told that this type of thinking is archaic librarian thinking (the man actually seems angry at the idea that librarians would have anything to teach IT professionals). In his mind, it is more important to impress the visitor to the site with pretty pictures and interactive links than it is to allow them to find pages of in-depth information. According to Carr’s research, this type of thinking will result in a bunch of visitors who may like the new website, but will retain little to no information regarding their visit there. A trip to the site will become just so much background noise in a world that is increasingly nothing but background noise.

2. A woman comes to me for help on an issue. I explain to her the process for her problem. After about a minute of explanation, her eyes glaze over and she starts to look impatient. She retains the information just long enough to complete her task…and then…She comes to me again, not once, but five times asking for help with the same problem. After explaining it in detail for the sixth time the concept finally sinks in. I can’t help but wonder…if she had been able to focus properly on what I said the first, or perhaps second time, would it have sunk in to begin with?

And these incidents happened at fairly simple office jobs. I, for one, am concerned that one day I will see a world in which the people filing my tax returns can’t focus for longer than 30 seconds at a time, or heaven forbid, doctors are distracted during important tasks like…making sure the combination of drugs they prescribe don’t kill you, or while completing major operations. If we are training our brains to not retain important information, and further, not be able to focus in a way that allows to them learn information in the first place, how will society progress?

Technology is great, as a tool, but I would prefer to retain my ability to process and draw conclusions from large, complex pieces of information myself.
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Dec 20, 2010 Al Rowell rated it liked it

I was drawn to this book after reading the author's article "Is Google Making us Stupid" in The Atlantic, and I share some of the author's concerns about becoming less attentive and finding it difficult to concentrate on tasks for any length of time. Carr does a remarkable job of bringing together relevant research, and he provides an impressive history of how technology has changed how people think over time. Obviously new information technologies draw our attention and distract us in many ways ...more

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Sep 02, 2010 Max rated it really liked it

Carr's arguments aren't always convincing -- at times, I felt his arguments were based more on a generational gap (get off my lawn!) rather than the cold, hard facts. But overall, this is a thought-provoking book, and I'd say essential reading for anyone who partakes in the offerings available in our new media age (which is to say, pretty much anyone). ...more

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Jul 20, 2010 Daniel rated it liked it

Carr develops an interesting idea about the changes in our thinking thanks to the Internet and technology's constant distractions. I totally appreciated the perspective and... hey, look, a penny. ...more

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