Book 6

Last weekend I finished The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr. As this was a Pulitzer finalist, I had fairly high expectations, and the book generally met them. Carr makes an excellent case that the internet is in fact changing our brains, making us think differently than we used to when knowledge was mainly obtained through books. Newer and more distracting technology is making us use a different set of skills, different from what Carr calls "deep thinking" that comes with reading books with greater focus.

I believe this is an important discussion. As the author says, we need to consider this change and how it affects us as this technology becomes even more pervasive. Are the distractions that seem to be inherent in the technology making us lose focus, and is this detrimental to our culture? It has certainly made me think. I can't count the number of conversations this book made me start with my friends and coworkers. And I don't mean the "Hey, this book is cool" conversations that Hunger Games started.

In thinking about it, I realized that I don't totally agree with the author about everything. The brain activity we use on the internet may be different than when reading books, but does different necessarily mean worse? While Carr makes it a point to say we are losing deep thinking skills, the book doesn't demonstrate that what we are gaining will put us in a worse situation. Sure things are changing, but we are still using our brains, the activity just appears to be focused in different areas.

Carr himself admits we can't see how things will play out in the long run yet. Just as people like Aristotle were concerned that giving up an oral tradition to focus on silent reading of books would make us lose wisdom, we should be concerned about how this distracting technology affects us. On the other hand, I think most would argue the switch from an oral tradition was beneficial for our race as a whole, and I find it plausible that newer technologies will ultimately prove similarly beneficial, whatever disruptive changes they bring. But on the whole, it is a conversation we should be engaging in more often.

Whatever disagreements I may have with the implied conclusions of the book, I can say I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone at all interested in subjects like reading, learning, or the internet in general. I even gave it 5 stars on Goodreads.

Funny side note: while reading The Shallows I frequently found myself distractedly flipping to the end notes and checking out a source online that was listed there. I have since started rereading an Agatha Christie mystery on my Nook called And Then There Were None. The first time I read the book, in print, I constantly flipped around to reference different parts of the story. This time, reading an ebook, I haven't flipped around as much. Not exactly the situation Carr refers too in talking about distracting technology, but I found it interesting that I focused better reading my Nook over a print book.