Nonfiction

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

If you’ve ever gotten up from the computer and wondered where the last two hours went  –

Or if you’ve ever felt the uncomfortable awareness that you’re checking your email more than necessary –

Or if, like Nicholas Carr, you ever realized that your thought life has changed since you started spending time on the Net –

then The Shallows is a must-read.

The book’s central thesis is that the Internet, like certain other technologies that have swept through human history, does in fact change brain function. Carr investigates the science of how this happens, provides some cultural history tracing the steps that led to the current technology explosion, and offers a thoughtful and detailed discussion of the various aspects of the Net’s development and increasing influence.

Given the title, it’s no surprise that the change extensive time online can make in the brain is not particularly positive. True, there are gains in some areas, but they come at a cost.  Unlike the mental habits that form in a print culture, where reading conforms the mind to a linear path and makes possible deep reflection and inner quiet, those encouraged by the Net keep us in “the shallows.” Online reading with its visual distractions, its hyperlinks interrupting the text and preventing a continuous line of thought, and its forced multi-tasking as you make numerous navigational decisions while trying to engage the text, leads to different strengths — and the loss of the ability to sustain the kind of extended focus and concentration a physical text cultivates.

We might have thought that only children’s brains really develop or change, as earlier generations of scientists believed. But in reality the adult brain continues to adapt throughout life, strengthening those areas most heavily used — and letting others atrophy.

I have thought of myself as a mild neo-Luddite when it comes to information technology and social media. (Mild, obviously, as I’m writing this on a blog.) But did you ever think of writing as a technology? Socrates was scornful of it because he felt it would weaken the mind, letting the pen remember things that once had to be stored in the brain. How about map-making, or the clock? Most of us would guess the printing press, but how about silent reading as a technology? Reading was once seen as a social act, enough so that Augustine speculated that there must be some physical reason when a friend took to reading silently — perhaps he grew too hoarse from doing it in the “normal” way. It made me realize that however willing I may be to think critically about the electronic technology that surrounds us, I am already the product of any number of technologies that have altered the course of human life.

There is a wealth of information about the development of the Web, too. I would guess that for most of us who are not deeply into computers, the Internet just crept into our lives. I found it interesting to go back and retrace the steps in the computer’s advent, and to remember the different experiences I had  — from the Pascal programming class I took in high school to the mainframe computer at graduate school to the word processor on which I wrote my dissertation.

I underwent a number of responses as I read The Shallows: nostalgia (see preceding paragraph); reflectiveness (as I think of my own life in comparison to what’s described); boredom (when brain experiments are laid out in detail); anger (in the section on Google); panic (in the discussion of electronic books); horror (in the discussion on the aspirations of AI enthusiasts). But it’s worth noting that none of these responses are called forth by Carr’s tone, which is informative, at times self-deprecating and even humble, and thoughtful. It never turns into preaching or exaggeration. I hope my husband will read this book too, and I’m sure I’ll consult it myself as a reference many times in the future.

The internet is not going away, and the pace of its encroachment will only increase. The intelligent thing to do is to consider what our values are, what we are not willing to compromise, and to put some boundaries in place. It starts with informing ourselves, and The Shallows is a very good place to start.

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