Our apps and tools are so easy to use that we are developing a ravenous appetite for more and more information, all consumed at breakneck speeds.

With the invention of the Internet, this obsession with efficiency spiraled out of control. The system as a whole was seen as more important than the individual. However, after the Industrial Revolution, a new definition of intelligence started to take hold, one that privileged efficiency and multi-tasking over deep thinking. Humans used to define intelligence as the extent to which a person had a “literary mind,” or a mind capable of sitting quietly and solving complex problems. The older definition is associated with the era of print literature. One of Carr’s primary comparisons in the book is between two types of intelligence. Carr worries that we are trading in valuable skills for a type of intelligence that is adapting users to their computers, instead of the other way around. We are more socially focused and efficient than ever before––but these benefits come at a price. Our computers, phones and digital tools allow us constant access to seemingly infinite information and give us a sense of connectivity. In the digital age, we are overwhelmed with stimuli. It may not be what the author intended, but you might learn more, and make some stimulating connections along the way – just like you do on the internet.Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows examines the effect Internet technology is having on the human mind. Or buy it, knife out all the pages, bin a few, shuffle the rest and begin to digest. And if you finish it, you'll have a satisfying sense of having, at an individual level, disproved its thesis. Read this book: you'll learn lots of interesting stuff, lots of thought-provoking theories about the brain, about Google.

One begins to wonder whether Carr is mourning the death of the author, the end of narratives and all that, and using neuroscience to vindicate his grieving. While he points out that he was an early adopter who spent all his savings on a Macintosh SE, he seems more comfortable with digital devices that help him with analogue tasks (such as word processing) than entirely new digital forms, such as Facebook. The internet has too many distracting flashing lights it's a bit noisy.

Unsurprisingly, Carr comes across as someone who is uncomfortable with change. And as the internet remoulds and rewires the brain in its image, the old book-reading circuits fall out of use and wither. The latest neuroscience says that our grey matter is malleable and plastic. We stop reading novels, and before we know it, 'the linear, literary mind' becomes 'yesterday's mind'.Ĭarr puts together an informative history of brain science to back up his argument.

Soon all our brains want to do is click and flick. The web encourages us to click and flick. But, he says, it has altered the way our minds work.

The Shallows by Nicholas Carr