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What to make of Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains? The book is not quite as Chicken Little as I expected it to be, he doesn’t think we should throw our computers out and he does admit there might be some good things about the internet. But maybe it is because the book has been out since 2010 and I have read variations of everything he talks about in different incarnations in books and articles, that the book as a whole seemed repetitive and dull to me and had nothing new or interesting to offer up. And while he includes some neuroscience, much of what he offers is cultural history – anecdata – an excellent word I came upon in my internet wanderings today.
Carr undertook to write the book after he noticed he was having a hard time concentrating and doing any kind of sustained reading like he used to do. Carr, it turns out, is a bit of a tech junkie, something I was surprised to learn. At one point he even goes off all his gadgets, bans himself from email and the internet and finds his concentration gradually returning to what it used to be. But then when his personal experiment is done he gets caught up in it all again, checking his RSS feeds, playing around with various social networking sites, constantly checking his email. He even went out and bought a Blu-ray player with a wi-fi connection so he can stream music and movies to his TV and stereo.
While he does take some personal responsibility he doesn’t take enough in my opinion. If he is so concerned about what the internet is doing to his brain and his ability to concentrate then the dude needs to find the off button on his computer. But he worries that if it is happening to him then it is happening to others too and oh, the horror! He’s not trying to stop the madness so I am not quite sure why it bothers him so much that other people aren’t trying to stop either.
Carr’s main argument in the book is that the brain is changed by the internet. Yes, it is. The brain, neuroscientists have discovered, is very plastic. It used to be thought that the brain finishes developing when we are in our early 20s and then it never changes again. But, turns out, the brain never stops changing. Everything you do changes your brain and your neuropathways. So of course spending time on the internet surfing changes your brain. But that in itself is not a bad thing, your brain is doing just what it does whether you read a book or learn a language or play a game of tennis or drive a car. If the internet didn’t change your brain that would be cause for concern.
Thing is, Carr sets up this binary opposition between multi-media, distracted, skimming, internet surfing and sustained deep reading, thinking and concentration. He pretends as though the two sides are mutually exclusive; you can have the internet or you can have deep reading but you can’t have both. But they are not mutually exclusive. Sure, if all you ever do is surf the internet and then you decide to sit down and read some James Joyce, you are going to have a hard time. Reading takes practice just like anything else and if you neglect it for other activities you get rusty at it. That doesn’t mean you can never be a good reader again, it only means that you need to spend some time working at it, building your skills back up.
I found The Shallows to be a disappointing book. It is not alarmist enough to make fun of nor is it reasoned enough for me to embrace. Instead it sits at the bar in Yawnville failing to pick a fight or win the pub quiz. Carr does make a few good points about ethics but it gets lost amidst all the other stuff. They may tie in with what Joanna Russ writes about technology in an essay I plan to offer up here for consideration in the next day or two. So Carr might get a second chance to make a bit of a better impression. Or he might be completely irrelevant to Russ and he’ll be stuck wandering around Yawnville never to be heard from again. Oh the suspense!
Such an interesting topic, our internet distractions etc. But as you point out, Carr does not really seem to be making a case that warrants a book. As you say, he’s not trying to stop the madness, but succumbs to it himself.
Right now I am reading a novel by Jonathan Franzen and happened upon an interview with him [where? ON THE INTERNET.... while I should have kept reading...!!] but anyhoo — it is so apropos, what Franzen says when asked about his own policy about internet distraction while he writes. He seems quite a bit more hardcore than Mr. Carr! Here is the excerpt:
AVC: A lot of writers—if they don’t use typewriters or write longhand—claim to only use computers without an Internet connection, because the distraction is too readily available, and no work gets done.
JF: Absolutely. I have one of those nine-pound Dell laptops you can get for $389 because nobody ended up buying that model, for obvious reasons. I took the wireless card out immediately, and I plugged up the Ethernet hole with superglue. The biggest struggle was getting Hearts and Solitaire off of it. I did work on a DOS machine until about five years ago. It ran WordPerfect 5.0, which is still the best software ever written for a writer, I think. But now, obviously, I work on a Windows machine, and Windows just will not let you de-install a Solitaire program. It puts it back whenever you try to remove it.
– Source: A.V. Club — http://www.avclub.com/articles/jonathan-franzen,44716/
Cipriano, thanks for the excerpt! I have heard Franzen takes extreme measures to limit distractions while writing. Somehow it strikes me as very funny that Solitaire can’t be deleted from his windows computer. Since I did my library degree entirely online I am familiar with trying to create a distraction-free computer workspace. For three years I didn’t allow myself a desktop background that wasn’t a solid color or otherwise minimalist, no icons on the desktop, and all games were kept buried deep within my app folder so it was too much bother to go looking for them. Anyway, I saw an article in the Guardian I think it was a month or two ago about various kinds of software different writers use to block access to the internet and other distractions on their computers. So the distraction Carr worries about is real, but those who want to are finding ways to create a space for concentrating.
I am a person of much distraction, and I know that this hampers my own writing a lot. I remember hearing Sara Gruen speak once of her writing regimen. As soon as her kids are off to school she separates herself from the rest of the house with this curtain, and intensely writes until they return from school. But when they do — BOOM — instantly, she is done for the day. And I remember thinking of how incredibly disciplined that seems to me.
Seriously, for me to write my own book [which I very much plan to accomplish] I may have to go to some mountaintop retreat — because I am always distracted, it seems.
Cip, I think we all struggle with distractions. but Sara Gruen has it right, to establish a routine, a discipline, is what one has to do, it is how I got through library school. It is not easy and some days are a big fail, but it isn’t impossible even for the highly distracted. I bet even on a mountain top you’d find distractions if you really tried, there is always something. Don’t wait for the mountain top to write you book, you live at the top of a tall building, surely you can find a creative way to bring the mountain top to you
It doesn’t sound too concering as far as reading goes but it does concern me when people who are not in the habit of stringing together complex thoughts enter the voting booth. Yes people can regain their powers of concentration, but it takes time and effort, two things that few have any patience for when we can have so much fun without them. I think it’s worth being concerned about it, but as you say, the solution is as simple as using the off button once in a while.
Hi Stefanie, this book is SO 2002! The writer had a hard job in turning what might be an interesting argument in a magazine article to book length. If there is a threat to bookish reading I wonder if the Internet is to blame. There was a rather scarifying report the other week which told us that book reading is declining in UK, supposedly up to 1 in 5 children would be ashamed to be seen with a book by their peers! Books, magazines, comics and websites- all in decline and it seemed that television watching, honest to god old-fashioned telly watching was rising. If that trend is real I wonder what it means?
Surely kids should be proud to be with a book written by one of their peers! Sorry!
Ian, oh you made me laugh! Carr made me clench my jaw quite frequently because he kept calling the internet the “Net.” No one calls it the net anymore. And he kept talking about “data banks” too and I kept wondering how someone so addicted to the internet as he claims could use such out of date terms. I had not heard about that new study. You know we had one here about 8 years ago that was really alarmist but when people started to dig into the survey questions it was discovered that entire genres were disallowed from being considered as reading and if those were factored in reading was on the rise. So hopefully your report has a similar flaw. It is curious though that we are back to television as being the great distraction. Who knew?
Perhaps Downton Abbey (which is quite good fun) and The Only Way Is Essex over here (you really don’t want to know) have a lot to answer for!
Ian, I am a Downton Abbey fan! It is a delicious period soap opera. My husband likes it too. Haven’t heard of The Only Way is Essex but maybe there is a reason for that?
TOWIE is sort of a cross between a reality show and soap opera and is on the lines of Jersey Shore and The Hills. Perhaps, like me you have never seen these shows but feel able to talk about them! Anyway, TOWIE is a big hit in UK but probably does not export well beyond our shores (or beyond Basildon!).
Ah, got it! I have never seen Jersey Shore or the The Hills but I know of them and know enough about them that I can grasp what TOWIE is like. I think I will stick to Downton Abbey and Doctor Who
Sylvia, LOL, as long as there has been voting there have been uninformed people casting their ballot. Frustrating? Oh yes. But they have a right to vote and I wouldn’t want that to be taken away. I think if we had a culture in which intelligence and thoughtfulness were valued over cleverness and soundbites people would be more willing to disregard distractions. Unfortunately we don’t have that, especially in the US. sigh.
That’s a good point. Being able to string together complex thoughts is not only work, it’s uncool too. Double whammy. Sigh indeed.
You haven’t convinced me to read the book Stefanie! Binary arguments regarding technology are a big turnoff for me … I just don’t think, like you, that things are so black and white. Every time new technologies come along out come the naysayers, but in pretty well every time we expand to include the new way. Things shift perhaps but I haven’t yet seen reading die or people lose their love of stories. We are just getting our stories in increasingly different ways … I suspect in fact that with the internet I’m reading more and much greater variety – some of it might be skimming but not all of it. I skim print magazines and newspapers too.
whisperinggums, consider this a public service, I read the book so you don’t have to
Binary arguments of any sort make me grumpy but for some reason technology seems to inspire such thinking. Maybe it is all those ones and zeroes of computer code seeping into our brains? Advances in technology always cause a shift, but you are right, people still love stories and that is not going to change. Like you, I suspect I read more and in greater variety than I ever did. And yeah, I skim articles but there are plenty that I don’t skim and that is just the same for me too in print.
Oh I do Stefanie … Consider it a service that is.
I think all the useful stuff has been said for a while, and now we need to sit it out a bit, to see what actually happens to people over the course of a lifetime devoted to the internet and its ways. The interesting perspective will come next from our children and their children. As I think I’ve mentioned before, my son is massively into gaming, but won’t touch a kindle or an ipad. He doesn’t find them necessary and prefers to pick up a book (he missed his bus stop the other day because he was so busy reading – yay! result!). He says that just because you can get everything on a screen doesn’t mean you want everything on a screen. I think our generation is a bit bewitched by the marvel of technology, whereas our kids have always lived with it, and so they are not so easily won over.
Litlove, yes, I think you are right, enough has been said about the great digital disruption and now we have to see how it plays itself out. We have no way of knowing what the future holds and wringing our hands and fretting about what might happen doesn’t do anyone any good. I suspect a lot of stuff is generational. Carr is a Baby Boomer so tech really is a marvel. We’re Gen X and can remember what things were like for a little while before computers but we were young enough at the time for it to really not be all that big a deal. Now Gen Y and younger is a whole other story. I doubt we give them enough credit. Your son clearly has a handle on it all with his comment about just because you can get it on a screen doesn’t mean you always want it on a screen. I suspect there are a while bunch of kids his age whole feel the same.
I agree with you that warnings about the dangers of the internet on our brains and social lives have gotten rather repetitive and tired. What I would love to see is a book or essay that develops good guidelines for how to use technology in a manner that is healthy and promotes rather than reduces social connections.
biblioglobal, that would be a good book. Maybe in a few years someone will have written it!
I feared from the premise of the book alone that he’d take an either/or approach :\ Technology doesn’t HAVE to be written about in such dichotomous terms, but more often than not that’s what seems to happen. I’m sad to see my suspicions confirmed.
Ana, you are right, technology doesn’t have to be written about from an either/or approach. I suspect that as people who were born after the big digital disruption get older there will be fewer and fewer of the kinds of books like Carr’s. It seems it is really mostly people who remember life before personal computers and the internet that worry about technology in the way that Carr does.
I think it’s possible to have my cake and eat it too in terms of inernet access and books and being able to switch and find the switch from one to the other isn’t jarring. Then again I am all for peace, quiet and solitude in which to spend time with my books, so maybe I’m not who he’s thinking of? I don’t have too much of a problem turning off my computer for other things, though I might not be able to go without it for too long…. And my niece has both a laptap and a Kindle fire and still prefers to read paper books. I’m sure the internet does chance how we see the world and how our brain functions, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be all doom and gloom does it?
Danielle, I agree! As I was reading Carr I thought I must be some kind of freak or something since I don’t have trouble like Carr seems to. But now I am thinking Carr has a bit of a tech addiction that he is having difficulty dealing with. To give Carr credit, he doesn’t make the internet an all doom and gloom proposition, though he does grieve over what he sees as a loss of a way of life and thinking that was brought into cultural dominance by the technology of the book.
Yawnsville. I’ll pass. I notice that when I spend too much time fiddling around on the internet (like, say, today, when I’m home sick) — I lose my taste for concentration. However, I can easily then get into bed and read my book for an hour or two, so maybe it’s just a matter of keeping both things in practice. I will say, however, that after 10-15 minutes of reading (with open-mouthed horror) an acquaintance’s Facebook page, riddled as it was with ‘I-can’t-even-believe-I’m-reading-this’ bad grammar, typos, ALL CAPS AND NO PUNCTUATION I AM NOT EVIN KIDING — I caught myself totally slacking on my own typing/grammar. Now that’s worth being alarmed about!
wherethereisjoy, sorry to hear you are sick! I hope you feel better soon. I stay away from Facebook for that reason. Sometimes though I can’t help but read some of the comments on news articles and then I immediately regret it for all those grammar/spelling errors – not that I never make any myself but you know what I mean!
“Anecdata”: great word! Thanks! I really enjoyed Norman Doidge’s work on neuroplasticity; I’m not sure I’d've gotten the concept so clearly, if I hadn’t felt so comfortable with his tone, reading about such a revolutionary idea (well, it was, to me, but I was late getting to it, obviously, as it’s been around for ages). This one sounds like it might have contributed to a few good discussions though, even if it was problematic/disappointing for you in many ways.
buried, I am so glad you liked “anecdata” and said something because I was so pleased with discovering the word and sharing it and no one until you mentioned it! yeah, even though The Shallows was problematic and disappointing in many ways, it is sometimes those kinds of books that inspire the best discussions, yes?
Ah, I liked this book! I didn’t really find it black and white – to me, he acknowledged the benefits of technology, but was pointing out that it’s not all good news. Maybe our different reactions are because I haven’t read much on this subject before. A lot of the research he referred to was new to me, so it wasn’t Yawnsville at all, but I can imagine if you’d come across it before, it would be pretty boring.
Andrew, oh yes, I agree that he does acknowledge the benefits of technology. Where I found he went wrong is that he seemed to me to be saying that we couldn’t have both deep reading/ linear thinking coexisting in the same person who spends several hours on the internet every day. Of course it is always possible I misread him because I wanted to. I admit I am biased when it comes to things like this! It is also my bad for not realizing that his might be new information to some people. I work in a library, I keep up with education and tech issues and I forget that not everyone else does! All that to say I am glad you found the book to be interesting and I hope it gave you food for thought.