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The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
by Nicholas Carr

What led me to pick this book up was one of the blurbs on the back saying that this was “Neither a tub-thumpingly alarmist jeremiad nor a breathlessly Panglossian ode to the digital self…” (Tom Vanderbilt). Since the internet is pretty much a fait accompli, I don’t see much point in the anti-technology argument today, but it’s also a good idea to be objective about what all these devices are doing to us. Carr’s book does give a mostly balanced view of the subject, as he traces the history of books and reading as well as technology and points out how developments such as the clock and the map radically altered, not only our perspectives but the actual wiring of our brains.

The idea that the internet makes us more ADD is hardly original, and pretty much a truism. However, it’s just becoming known that the tasks that we spend lots of time attending to actually change the chemistry of our brains. One of Carr’s major problems with the information age is that it’s made it difficult for many people, even highly educated people (such as Carr himself) to sit down and read a book the old fashioned way.

Carr admits that there are advantages that come with these “new brains” of ours, such as an increased capacity to process certain types of information and visual images. His main criticism, however, which is contained in the book’s title, is that while our knowledge is becoming much broader, as well as instantly accessible, it’s also getting shallower. In other words, we don’t have the time or patience to stick with any one idea long enough to think deeply about it -we’re too anxious to move on to the next website, tweet, Facebook post, etc.

It’s hard to argue with Carr’s arguments, but in the end he doesn’t really suggest any solution. This isn’t really a criticism of him, as what solution could there be?
We can’t dis-invent the internet, and not many people would be willing to do this even if it were possible. For people who really despise it, the best hope is a complete collapse of civilization and a reverting back to earlier times -not a possibility that many people would consider inconceivable right now.

I think, however, that Carr, like many people, might overrate the real value of “traditional” intellectual book learning. From one point of view, reading itself is a highly artificial activity, one that promotes an extremely left-brained, Aristotelian view of the world. We could just as well see (as some do in fact) the internet being part of a kind of cyber-shamanism that’s an electronic version of a more tribal and spontaneous way of life. Of course, this is probably romanticizing the internet a bit, as the way it’s commonly used is hardly conducive to the type of spiritual renaissance some are hoping for. Yet the possibility is still there, and in some places we see signs that it might be gathering momentum.

The Shallows makes some good points about the internet. If you’re an avid reader, the best antidote to what Carr cautions about is to keep a balance between reading and net surfing. You may also want to listen to more books on tape, which I suspect are a more whole-brained way to take in either information or stories (something Carr never addresses).

One thing seems clear -the internet has the potential to distract us and waste many of our hours if we don’t take conscious control over how we use it. This, naturally, has to be kept in perspective with its many benefits. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains at least helps make us aware of what we may be losing when we’re online.