The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains

[BeccaPrice]

Has anyone read this? I'm only about 1/4 into it, but a lot of it seems like it's an extended "you kids get off my lawn" rant. It's based off the author's 2008 article in the Atlantic.

There seems to be some post hoc prompter hoc thinking going on here, too - He says the clock and improvements in map making allowed scientific thinking - maybe an increase in scientific thinking allowed people to improve the clock and map making? There's lots of assertions with no real research to back it up.

If anyone else has read this, or reads the linked to Atlantic article, I'd be interested in discussing this with you.

[Penforhire]

Thanks for the link! The first thing that pops to mind after reading it is something like, 'our cognition must have started downhill when we stopped writing on stone tablets.'

Mr. Carr seems to be beating the same drum that Alan Bloom beat way back in 1987 when he wrote "The Closing of the American Mind," only then it was the rejection of classic books and the evils of pop music.

Bob Dylan has a few words for both of these guys -- the times they are a-changin'

[BeccaPrice]

I can't decide whether I'm having trouble concentrating on this book because I've been cross-wired to not concentrate on long-form text, or if I'm having trouble concentrating on it because it's incoherently written.

Since I've had no problem concentrating on the last few non-fiction books I've read, I suspect it's the latter case.

[Skydog]

I must be incoherent as I have read this book and found it very interesting and not as I had expected (all clinical). I have recommended it to several people.

[BeccaPrice]

oh, it's very interesting, and worth reading, I think. But his argument jumps all over the place, with tangents going off in all directions and not always being brought back to the central argument. that's all I meant by incoherent.

I'm not sure that improvements in map making caused the scientific way of thinking, or if the scientific way of thinking caused improvements in map making.

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

oh, it's very interesting, and worth reading, I think. But his argument jumps all over the place, with tangents going off in all directions and not always being brought back to the central argument. that's all I meant by incoherent.

I'm not sure that improvements in map making caused the scientific way of thinking, or if the scientific way of thinking caused improvements in map making.

My comment was my attempt at self-depricating humor. I do understand what you mean and agree somewhat. (It has been over a year since reading it) As the book was recommended by a professional group, contracted by my employer, I may not have discovered it on my own. I found it quite good even if a bit fragmented.

[BeccaPrice]

It's fractured, thereby giving proof to the author's assertion that being extensively on the internet has harmed his ability to make a coherent argument, I suppose - assuming that I can impute such subtlety to him.

[SteveEisenberg]

Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do.

I think he's right in the sense that a desktop computer somehow discourages reading of long texts. I know I don't like to read a book on one. I wouldn't have liked reading his article on one, so I used Send to Kindle to push it to my eInk device.

During the year prior to the publication of this article (July 2008), two technological developments arose that, in tandem, offered a cure for the illness Carr diagnoses: the six inch eReader, and instapaper.com.

Also, although I have no recollection of this article, I am a long-time subscriber to the Atlantic Monthly. So what happenned? A lot of the time, what happenned was that I lost the magazine before finishing it! Now that I have the subscription via Kindle, that can't happen.

Lastly, there was an event in September 2011 that greatly reduced my long text reading for several years. Instead, because of 9/11, I did more newspaper reading. So while I don't dismiss what Carr says, there are other factors that could be more important.

[forsooth]

walking through cold nasty rain can be done
do not look for pleasure
keep moving feet

[Ninjalawyer]

There's an article on Carr's book over at Techdirt here. Techdirt did not think much of Carr's book, finding that Carr made a number of logical leaps that aren't actually supported by studies. He also seemed to neglect to mention studies that suggest that the internet is good for the brain.

An interesting snippet from the Techdirt post (which comes from The New York Times review of the book):

It is here that he starts to run into problems. There is little doubt that the Internet is changing our brain. Everything changes our brain. What Carr neglects to mention, however, is that the preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that the Internet and related technologies are actually good for the mind. For instance, a comprehensive 2009 review of studies published on the cognitive effects of video games found that gaming led to significant improvements in performance on various cognitive tasks, from visual perception to sustained attention. This surprising result led the scientists to propose that even simple computer games like Tetris can lead to "marked increases in the speed of information processing." One particularly influential study, published in Nature in 2003, demonstrated that after just 10 days of playing Medal of Honor, a violent first-person shooter game, subjects showed dramatic increases in Â*visual attention and memory.

Carr's argument also breaks down when it comes to idle Web surfing. A 2009 study by neuroscientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that performing Google searches led to increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, at least when compared with reading a "book-like text." Interestingly, this brain area underlies the precise talents, like selective attention and deliberate analysis, that Carr says have vanished in the age of the Internet. Google, in other words, isn't making us stupid -- it's exercising the very mental muscles that make us smarter.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

It's fractured, thereby giving proof to the author's assertion that being extensively on the internet has harmed his ability to make a coherent argument, I suppose - assuming that I can impute such subtlety to him.

Like "your beauty and goodness has driven me mad, and so I must rapine you?"

[frahse]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I think he's right in the sense that a desktop computer somehow discourages reading of long texts. I know I don't like to read a book on one. I wouldn't have liked reading his article on one, so I used Send to Kindle to push it to my eInk device.

During the year prior to the publication of this article (July 2008), two technological developments arose that, in tandem, offered a cure for the illness Carr diagnoses: the six inch eReader, and instapaper.com.

Also, although I have no recollection of this article, I am a long-time subscriber to the Atlantic Monthly. So what happenned? A lot of the time, what happenned was that I lost the magazine before finishing it! Now that I have the subscription via Kindle, that can't happen.

Lastly, there was an event in September 2011 that greatly reduced my long text reading for several years. Instead, because of 9/11, I did more newspaper reading. So while I don't dismiss what Carr says, there are other factors that could be more important.

I find his thoughts interesting though I reject a lot of his assumptions and conclusions.

e.g. I have no problem reading a book or a paper on a big 26" desktop monitor or on a Kindle. Reading is reading.

Heck man, it is reading, not being at the theater or a play or an opera!

[HomeInMyShoes]

I think the issue is that too much of any one type of thinking is a poor option for analyzing problems. At some points I need to long focus on a task and at some points I need to quickly jump from idea to idea. Are we as a species losing the long focus? Perhaps. Does that mean an end to scientific endeavor? Probably not. It might change the kinds of things that result from our endeavors, but that would be it. Judging if that is good or bad is going to need a few decades to see if the 2000s were a wasteland of creativity.

I work in IT. I'm a solution architect and an information architecture geek. I don't own a cellphone or a tablet (yet.) I disconnect whenever possible and spend time sitting on my front step with the sidewalk chalk and my three-year old. I think it's all part of balancing out the kinds of thinking we do.

[Namekuseijin]

we're living the Information Age. sounds great, huh?

unfortunately, it's mostly useless information. and consumed in droves by mindless shallow drones just because it's out there and it's brand-new. as in new and fresh and warm like a piece of BS

so, yeah, I'm sorry if I kinda agree with the guy

clocks and maps were fruits or seeds for scientif achievements back then? Both. yeah, because I say so. I'll also tell this: with a universal remote control you expect everything to work on a click flawlessly and if you're bored, you can just click again and zap between channels. We're living Idiocracy and clueless crackheads with a remote on hand have no need nor desire to know how stuff works. It's all outsourced and one can live at leisure alone, at least until economy colapses from lack of skilled and specialized workers with a clue, with a passion for knowledge and boring study and research.

Future is pretty bleak for western society at large. meanwhile, elsewhere people are populating the world like rabbits, working hard for little money and hopefully making better use technology, such as self-improvement. no, don't look at Brazil, we're just as lazy bastards as any other american consumer market...

[BeccaPrice]

I finally finished The Shallows - for such a slim book, it took almost 2 weeks to read it. And then, to disprove his point for him, I read -devoured, really - The Man With No Language and had no problem concentrating on it or following it.

My main reaction to The Shallows is that, if he finds the internet so distracting, he's doing it wrong. As Humpty Dumpty said about words, it's all in who is to be the master. If your emailer interrupts you every time you get get a new message, you should be able to turn that feature off (and isn't AOL the only one that does that? Mine is pull technology; I have to actively go to the web page and request updates.).

So I had a lot of "get off my lawn" sense about the book, and a certain amount of pity for the author. His research is sound, but I'm not sure his conclusions are justified.