Critique of The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
Nicholas Carr, the author of The Shallows (2011), is a columnist and author of several publications on technology and culture who holds an M.A. in English from Harvard. Mr. Carr, believes that due to the Internet, the human brain is changing from a linear mind that was once calm, focused and undistracted to a new mind that wants and needs to take in information in short, fragmented rushes. Similarities in thought to Gary Small’s book, iBrain are referenced throughout which brings consciousness to the idea that, well, maybe these guys are onto something and that quite possibly the Internet is creating a culture of shallow thinkers.
Carr begins the book by describing an uncomfortable sense of someone, or something interfering with his brain, rewiring his neural circuitry, and destroying his memory. He knows that he doesn’t think the way he used to when he was reading lengthy articles and books before he spent considerable amount of time searching the Internet. Carr has come to the conclusion that the Internet is detrimental to our capacity for concentration and contemplation. The ability to focus on long pieces of writing and in-depth text is being given up for hyperlinks, advertisements and the myriad of distractions that appear on a web page. He states, “The shift from paper to screen doesn’t just change the way we navigate a piece of writing. It also influences the degree of attention we devote to it and the depth of our immersion in it.”
Using clocks and maps as vehicles for discussion, Carr makes reference to inventions and developments from the beginning of time and how those creations tend to create a sense of “hype” within a culture of people. When a popular medium comes along and catches on, it has the ability to change who we are as a society. Possibly we’re too busy being dazzled by the newness of the object to realize how it affects us mentally.
The process of our mental and social adaptation to new technologies is evident in how maps that began as primitive, cartographic sets of pictures are now interactive on Google Earth. Rather than using our senses to navigate time and space, we are now dependent on external devices outside of our own brains to tell us where we are and what time it is. Interestingly, Carr brings up GPS devices. He uses an example that cab drivers in New York who depend on GPS to find directions no longer have a sense of direction and that they don’t know where anything is because they don’t have to. Nowadays, we even “map” our ideas and our plans for our vacations. Are we ruining our thought processes and our ability to think? What about the onset of the calculator in the 1970’s? Did the calculator ruin our ability to perform mental math? Carr doesn’t think so. In a somewhat contradictory explanation he tells us the calculator has given us the ability to think more deeply about math because the mind is free from the memorization process.
Carr documents an historical account of spoken versus written word. Carr thoroughly explains our rich literary history as reading transitioned from shallow deciphered marks scratched on pebbles, to the concept of placing spaces between words, to mass production of printed works. The shift from being an oral culture to a literary culture was a revolution that changed everyone. Socrates argued that writing did have its practical side, but that the dependence on the alphabet would alter a person’s mind by substituting symbols for memories, which in turn, would make us shallower thinkers. This would prevent the achievement of the intellectual depth that leads to wisdom and true happiness. What we do know is, we cannot go back to the oral world and we cannot turn back the clock.
Libraries began to play central roles in university life as the nature of education changed from oral to silent book reading. We have moved from chained copies of precious text that filled library reading tables to mass produced book production and now digital e-books and audio books. Like the miniaturization of the clock, book reading became an activity of everyday life. The growing availability of books throughout the centuries has created an intelligence we would otherwise not know and we are literate. Social and cultural books that define truth and make sense of our very existence have shaped who we are and how we think. Nowadays, academic and school libraries are discontinuing printed editions of scholarly materials and moving to strictly electronic distribution of materials. In terms of Carr’s contention that the Internet is causing our minds to be distracted, how this affected how graduate students perform research? Do performance indicators show a significant decrease in scholarly aptitude? Are students in higher educational programs learning more about their research? The digitization of scholarly journals has made it easier, but are college students finding more scholarly information, or are they thinking less deeply because the information is so easy to access and so plentiful?
Carr believes that language cannot be considered a technology like maps, clocks, and computers, because the ability to speak is innate. However, reading and writing are unnatural acts made possible by the development of the alphabet. Therefore, the brains of the literate are different from the brains of the illiterate. It was interesting to note, people who speak and write symbolic languages, like Chinese, have a different circuitry found than those who know a phonetic alphabet.
Carr divides people into two conflicting groups: Determinists, those who see technology as an autonomous force outside man’s control, influencing the course of human history and Instrumentalists, the people who downplay the power of technology. Enthusiasts of new technologies embrace new content seeing new innovation as a way to improve our minds and make our lives easier while skeptics condemn the concept, viewing it as a way to make our culture less independent and less intelligent. Is technology an aid to human activity or a powerful force reshaping our lives? Whatever you believe, technological advances do change history. This brings to mind the theory of diffusion of innovation. Determinists are innovators and early adopters, I’d assume. But, are instrumentalists laggards? Carr argues that “What matters is that in the long run a medium’s content matters less that the medium itself in influencing how we think and act. As our window onto the world, and onto ourselves, a popular medium molds what we see and how we see it – and eventually, if we use it enough, it changes who we are, as individuals and as a society.”
Carr writes about the backlash of the Net, as he likes to call it, and says it’s by no means limited to disillusioned middle-aged people. People are looking for ways to unleash themselves from technology’s grip on their lives. High school students, college kids, and twenty-somethings have written to him in fear that their constant connectivity could be deterring them from expanding their horizons. He points out that the common practice of drawing contrasts from digital natives to digital immigrants is misleading. I couldn’t agree more. Adults spend as much time online as the average kid. Net culture isn’t youth culture; it’s mainstream culture.
Carr intended his writing to attract people who are curious the history of technology and how it has affected us as a culture; educators, business people, and those who are interested psychology and brain study. The book documents pretty significant periods of history in reference to new inventions and how people perceive them. The book actually grew out of an essay he wrote in 2008 for The Atlantic called “Google is Making Us Stupid”. An entire chapter of this book is dedicated to the concept of Google. Carr isn’t so sure that Google will always be The High Church, as he calls it. Google, he points out, is in the business of distraction. He attributes the founder Larry Page’s success to the data-driven business practice of collecting personal information in order to feed advertisements to us based on our individual interests. Carr’s contention is that Google’s economic survival depends on how many times we click and the last thing they want is to encourage leisurely reading or deep, concentrated thought. Carr believes that the invention of a more precise search engine or a better way to advertise could ruin be the demise of Google.
After trudging through the detailed, albeit fascinating chapters of ancient philosophers and people in history in this book, I challenge Carr’s theory that humans don’t have the capacity to read in-depth text. This is a deeply thought-out book on shallow thinking. Are we smarter than we used to be? Or, do we just (as Steve Jobs would say), “Think Different?”
References:
Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print.
Carr, Nicholas. "'The Shallows': This Is Your Brain Online." NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2014. <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127370598>.
Lehrer, Jonah. "Our Cluttered Minds." The New York Times. The New York Times, 05 June 2010. Web. 07 Apr. 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/books/review/Lehrer-t.html>.
Small, Gary, and Gigi Vorgan. IBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. New York: Collins Living, 2008. Print.