The Dumbing Down of the Machine Formerly Known as Our Brain - A review of Steven Carr’s The Shallows

The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains

Publisher: W.W. Norton and Company
Hardcover
276 Pages
Retail Price: $26.95

When looking for a book that could connect to the communicative arts, the choices are many. However, the more interesting studies of current communication come with the presentation of how communication between humans has changed due to the advent of technology. We all know that the way we take information in, entertain ourselves, and even educate ourselves have changed with the invention of the Internet. Vast swaths of information are now available at our fingertips with the click of a mouse. Our forefathers, would shudder at the speed and amount of free information that is now available to the masses, taking into account that not more than 100 years ago, it took days for messages to cross country via the US postal service, and the telephone was something of a new newfangled novelty item that wasn’t being rolled out on a wide scale just yet.

One would think that with the sheer dearth of information available that it would make the general more educated, and deeper thinkers since the information that can help them make decisions throughout their days are available on the computer, and even in their pockets. However author Nicholas Carr argues in his book, “The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains”, that the ever increasing speed at which we can find small tidbits of this information has led to our brains to become more and more impatient when it comes to taking in knowledge. His main argument comes in the juxtaposition of online articles, and the written book. In one, he tells the audience that “Immersing myself in a book, or lengthy article used to be easy... Now, my concentration starts to drift after two or three pages.” 


Carr’s argument was well known, as the first chapter of his book started off as a July 2008 article in the Atlantic magazine. Aptly titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” it peaked much attention at the time it was published. Afterwards, Carr begun talking with scientists and neurologists to find out what parts of the brain in fact were being worked when a person browsed articles and which were worked when deeply entrenched into a novel. Through following the studies of various neuroscientests, he finds that the brain is completely malleable, through a process known as neuroplasticity, even after maturation age, which was thought to be around 21 years of age. These changes however are done in accordance to how and what the brain is used or not used to do. And in this argument, Carr explains that the now “zip[ping] along the surface like a guy on a jet ski”, has changed the way that a person thinks, and takes in information.

That argument then corresponds with the idea of cognition, or how we as humans “think”.  The ways that we think are greatly influenced by the different types of people that we are surrounded by on a daily basis along with the ways that we take in different pieces of information. Carr explains through a historical context the ways in which technological developments have affected our processes of thinking. He explains first that the invention of maps played a huge role in changing the way that the general public understood different measurements of land through the use of what is referred to as “reduced, alternate space for that of reality” in the book. This was an amazing feat to achieve, as most at the time saw large spaces only in their minds, and by number of steps taken. However, with the advent of a map, that large space was now quanitifed and given a direction. It also told others how to get to where they wanted to go through using a smaller representation of that space. However, Carr argues, the map began to “numb” the experience of actually traveling across large spans of land. It also began to skew our idea of point A to point B. Further technological advances continued the “numbing” including that of moving maps, atlases, and GPS devices. 


Carr further develops this through the idea of the clock as another piece of technology that further changed our brains, and also the way that we perceived the world. The idea of having to split the day up into pieces and then schedule each of these “pieces” into manageable chunks never entered into the minds of most. Most saw the rising and setting of the sun as the “time pieces” that governed what they could do and when. That, and the reality that most had no access to lighting away from the sun, was the ultimate markings of the beginning and the end of the day. After Christian monks began to demand more precise measurements of time due to their demanding schedules of prayer, the idea of “time” began to enter the human lexicon. This then morphed into the uber-scheduled, industry-driven days and nights of humans. Work, and play now needed to be synchronized with a clock, rather than the rising and setting of the sun. This example of the map and the clock frames Carr’s argument that technological advances have changed humans thoughts of their existence, by changing the way that they perceived and recorded it.

In one of the blurbs on the rear of the book, Matthew B. Crawford, author of “Shop Class as Soulcraft” explains that “The core of eduction is this: developing the capacity to concentrate. The fruits of this capacity we call civilization” This is a great way to explain another of Carr’s theories that he poses in the book, that of the necessity to concentrate on a single task, no matter what it’s purpose, is what is most important for forming long-spanning, deep, memories that could then be shared with others, and create true wisdom. This however, with the technological tools that have been developed over the years, including that of the Internet and computers, have relegated humans to placing their memories there, in piecemeal fashion, the same way that they prefer to ingest it. This ironically is the same argument that the Greek philosopher Socrates made at the advent of books and other written materials. In his attack, he warned that they would create “forgetfulness”, creating humans that would blindly trust in “external written characters”. In this same way, Carr argues that the distractions of the web will threaten our own memories, and in turn, our ability to truly reflect on our experiences, and in turn engage in deep thought.

Much of Carr’s work is backed up by neurological science, but not nearly enough to substantiate his claims. Although his arguments are clear and well thought out, he doesn't present enough examples to truly make the argument that the human race, in it’s race to continue to move forward and upwards in terms of it’s pursuit of technological advances, is in essence staging it’s on demise. Probably words of old fogies who say that the computer is killing your brain. Another reviewer refers to the “helpful” traits of his computer, such as the spell check, that now goes as far as correcting grammar, and suggesting what words he should type as a simple view of some of the more complex analysis that Carr does in explaining this particular usurping of usual human processes into those that the computer handles. Maybe it’s not so far off to believe that the computer may be developing a real brain, eh?

Carr’s ability to make these claims with flair, makes the book a readable one, albeit scant in iron-clad science but, it could make a more interesting read in it’s 10th edition, when, as many science fiction writers would have it, we’ll wheel around on hovercrafts, and maybe at that time have an external hard drive store our memories for instant recall. Just as HAL, the fictional computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, began as a helpful tool, and became close to world domination, it may not be too far off. Carr makes an interesting reference to the famous computer at the beginning of the book, in which HAL, finally dominated by his human counterparts who begin to disable his circuits that were set to total domination of humans, begins to plead with the originator of his demise “Dave, stop. Stop., will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? … Dave, my mind is going... I can feel it. I can feel it.” Those same emotive qualities that are expressed by this machine are the same that Carr argues are being lost through the advancement of technology. To hear him make the connection “That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely upon computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

Artificial, indeed.