The ShallowsWhat the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
by Nicholas Carr
W. W. Norton & Co, 2010
The Internet is changing, and has already changed, the way we read, write, think about and make sense of our reality. Whether this is change for the good or bad is subject to much debate, as this book and he reactions to it demonstrates, but none of this seems to affect the nature or the effects of that change.
Citing recent neuropsychological studies, journalist Nicholas Carr makes the case for the detrimental effects of this change, arguing that we are becoming shallow readers and thinkers with remarkably short attention spans. But is a long attention span really critical to our well-being as individuals or as a society? Are there clear advantages to delving deeply into a subject as opposed to gathering and synthesizing quickly?
I have often fretted about my teenage son's lack of cultural knowledge that I grew up with and thrived upon as a writer. Yet this digital native who hasn't read Melville or Thoreau or Tolstoy and hardly any Twain or Shakespeare or even Hemingway is thriving in a digital universe of multivarious information streams and short-form info blurbs. He doesn't read long novels, even sci-fi or mysteries or thrillers, and has little interest in the thoughtful tomes of philosophy and natural history and current affairs that I consume, and yet he and is a master, it seems, at synthesizing complex thoughts into bite-sized knowledge that can be applied to solve a particular problem.
While my son may lack depth of knowledge - few teenagers don't - he has acquired an incredibly diverse vocabulary of information, which is another form of depth. And through the interconnections of seemingly unrelated areas of knowledge the potential for creative breakthroughs is seriously enhanced.
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