Review - The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

On a never ending flight from Lisbon back to San Francisco I finished reading the latest book from Nicholas Carr: "The Shallows - What the Internet is doing to our brains". The book is a very extended version of an article Carr wrote a few years ago enteitled "Is Google Making us stupid" that can be read online. If you like that article you will probably find the book interesting as well. In the book (and article) Carr tries to convince the reader that the internet is reducing our capacity to read deeply. He acknowledges that there is no turning back to a world without the internet and he does not offer any solutions, just the warning. He explains how the internet, as many other communication revolutions (printing press, radio, etc), changes how we perceive the world. In a very material way, it changes our brain as we interact with the web and learn to use it. He argues that the web promotes skimming the surface of every web page and that the constant distractions (email, social networks) are addictive. This addiction can even be explained by an ancient species need to constantly be on the look out for changes in our environment. So, by promoting this natural and addictive shallow intake of information, the internet is pushing aside the hard and deep type of reading that has been one of mankind's greatest achievements. After reading all of this I should be scared. I easily spend more than ten hours a day on these interwebs a...
Source: Public Rambling - Category: Bioinformaticians Tags: books review Source Type: blogs