The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains is a comprehensive discussion of the effects of modern technology on modern thought, packed with information all too often glossed over or ignored in our quest for more and more efficient computing, networking, and information retrieval. This is not a hollow lamentation from a hysterical Luddite yearning for the past, but a detailed, scientific journey through the landscape of the mind.
The Internet is an exciting and distracting place, an entrancement into which it is far too easy to fall and from which it is far too difficult to extricate oneself. Carr noticed that as he spent more time online, he was less able to focus on anything. Other academics noted that their dependence on the Internet resulted in a loss of their ability to read long pieces of text. The digital age promised to provide us access to the information that would make us smarter, but more and more users report that they feel scatterbrained, unable to concentrate. Why? Because our technology is shaping our minds, and not necessarily to our advantage.
To structure his argument, the author provides a good description of how the brain works, including the concept of neuroplasticity. We are born with certain connections in the brain, but as we learn, we create more and more connections. This is the nature of intelligence. We can continue learning, and therefore continue creating new neural pathways, throughout our entire lives, and the more we practice a behavior or study a subject, the more entrenched those neural pathways become. Our actions change our brains.
Further strengthening his reasoning, Carr uses historical information to demonstrate how analog technologies have changed how humans think, and, in doing so, made wholesale changes in how society behaves. The invention of maps, clocks, and typewriters has had a profound effect on individuals and civilizations. The proliferation of the printing press and of copious reading material introduced a dependence on deep, linear, and introspective thought that has allowed greater advances in philosophy and art, a way of thinking that once was the sole bailiwick of privileged intellectuals.
The Internet threatens all that.
Multiple studies have demonstrated that, far from enhancing our learning experience, the type of multi-media and on-demand content that is the hallmark of the Net actually decreases our ability to learn. Study after study shows that “people who read linear text comprehend more, remember more, and learn more than those who read text peppered with links.” Clicking, it was discovered, “got in the way of learning.”
And this is not likely to change. Clicking is the basis of the Internet, and for Google, which has become our virtual god and ruler, clicks are currency. While Google’s stated mission, to catalog and distribute all the information in the world, is a noble one, their business model is the sale of ad content. Google wants you to click, because clicking is their bread and butter, and they spend millions of dollars scientifically determining what makes people click.
Google’s profits are tied directly to the velocity of people’s information intake. The faster we surf across the surface of the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google gains to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Its advertising system, moreover, is explicitly designed to figure out which messages are most likely to grab our attention and then to place those messages in our field of view. Every click we make on the Web marks a break in our concentration, a bottom-up disruption of our attention—and it’s in Google’s economic interest to make sure we click as often as possible. The last thing the company wants is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. Google is, quite literally, in the business of distraction.
The result is that Web users are bombarded with information that they fail to process or remember. Content as a bridge to content, rather than the revelations or conclusions or questions inspired by content, becomes the end goal. Humans require some processing to move ideas from short-term to long-term memory, and this leapfrogging from idea to idea inhibits that transfer. It turns out this technology is “not only diverting resources from our higher reasoning faculties but obstructing the consolidation of long-term memories…. The Web is a technology of forgetfulness.”
And this effect follows us offline, due to our neuroplasticity. Using the Internet literally teaches the brain to be distracted, forgetful, and shallow.
Carr found that, in order to write this book, he had to get off the Internet. He stopped blogging, disconnected from his social networks, and checked his email infrequently. But, once he finished the book, he got back online. In no way is he suggesting that the Internet itself is bad. He admits that it improves our skills in certain tasks, such as spatial reasoning and certain types organization. Computers, it seems, teach us to excel at the tasks that computers themselves excel at.
These advances, it’s suggested, come at the cost of excellence in those tasks at which humans excel. He concludes, “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.”
We cannot undo technological advances, and few of us have the luxury of unplugging completely. However, keeping ourselves aware of the changes the Internet wreaks on our thought processes provides an opportunity to control the effect. The Internet is a valuable tool, and few of us would choose to go back to the slow search of the codex, but if we prefer not to bow before our computer overlords, we might remember that the Internet is still, and only, a tool, and treat it as such.
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