Nicholas Carr The Shallows Analysis

In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr asks what the Internet is doing to our brains? He investigates the impact that the technological world we live in has on us. We are seeing a technical and information revolution with the Internet but he says that it is primarily a revolution in our brains! He explains that we used to read quietly and linearly a book on which we were able to focus our undivided attention. This could last for hours, we could immerse in the singular world of an author. Now look what happens when you connect to the Internet. You jump from one page to another, click on links here and there, and meanwhile you are also bombarded with messages, sometimes alert informing you that you received an email or a recent news update. What is happening to our minds? How has this electronic environment changed our mental state, our social behavior? Soon we won’t be able to focus more than minutes on a text. Our brain, which is incredibly plastic, adapts quickly to new technology and their new temptations. He explores the advantages and disadvantages of these changes on our minds. Nicholas Carr asks a fundamental question: what new world have we created? In a

thrilling historical detour, he reminds us that man has constantly created new ways of thinking. First by inventing writing (Sumerian, Egyptian hieroglyphics and the passage from oral culture to written) and then by changing the reading tradition (silent reading after centuries of reading out loud). He explains that with the use of new technologies, our brain is changing and we increasingly need to be connected to others. We become to permanently seek interruptions proving that we exist in the eyes of the world. These interruptions disturb the plasticity of our brain. We then become worse at deep thinking and better at treating many information at once. We lose a skill to win a new one: “technology giveth and taketh away.” In addition, the Internet, by providing us with a wealth of information weakens our memory because we no longer need to remember information that is easily accessible. It’s the same phenomenon that happened with the appearance of the book and the transition from the oral tradition to the written one. The author also devotes chapters on Google that sees the world as a bunch of data and the processing of our emotions that becomes shallower. Greater access to knowledge is not the same as greater knowledge, an ever increasing plethora of facts and data is not the same as wisdom, breadth of knowledge is not the same as depth of knowledge, and finally multitasking is not the same as complexity.
What's going to happen now that university teachers, even in literature, are no longer able to make their students read classics because they are too long. Will the Internet make us stupid, as suggested by some scientific studies? How will future generations think? Are all valid questions the book raises.
I picked this book because I was attracted and intrigued by the title. I spend a lot of time on the Internet, does that make me stupid? I don’t think it makes us stupid but definitely different from previous generations. Every technological revolution is objected at first and the same questions and fears arise. Before the Internet, the invention of writing had already raised thinkers’ apprehensions. The myth of Theuth and Thamus is an example, Thamus raises similar concerns as Carr but about the invention of writing instead of the Internet. I was immediately interested in the introduction where the author talks about his motivation, what led him to think about the subject: he feels that his mind changed. Ever since the Internet was introduced in his life, he started to lose his concentration, his memory, and he is no longer able to read a book of several hundred pages. Talking about his feeling to people around him made him realize that he is not alone in that situation. I agree with him, finishing a book has become increasingly hard, there are too many distractions, I lose focus and become bored very rapidly but surfing the web or watching television can capture my attention for hours. Without indoctrinating us and without going into the quarrel between pro and anti Internet views, he explains, based on medical studies of the brain that nothing is insignificant to the way we build our thinking: new technologies, the Internet, and the tools we use. The book addresses the mechanisms of the brain, including brain plasticity: the brain is able to change through experience. “The computer screen bulldozes our doubts with its bounties and conveniences. It is so much our servant that it would seem churlish to notice that it is also our master” (4). So take this little test: take the time to quietly read a book without going surfing the web. If you can’t do it than Carr is right: the Internet has already changed your brain!
Both books are intended for a general audience.

They make us stop and think about technology. What exactly is technology, how it evolves, and how it affects our lives. They provide some insight into a world that we increasingly stop questioning, as attested by the lines formed in front of stores every time a new product is released, a world that has become a second nature. In my opinion, the advantages and the possibilities technology offers outweighs its downside. Every time a new technology is introduced in society it seems to stir up the same debate. First people are skeptical and soon they will forget, as they will adapt. In a near future, the next hot issue might be artificial intelligence and the introduction of robots in our daily lives. We are more than ever dependent on technology and it’s here to

stay.