Book Summary:
The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to Our Brain
What is the contemporary Issue?
Nicholas Carr posed a great concern in his book titled: “The Shallows”. His issue was that the
internet is subtly and gradually making our brain shallow and depreciative in value. His fear,
anxiety, and assumption was that constant utility and dependency on internet in the 21 st
century might swift the human brain, especially the igeneration Nets, or Digital natives, from
being a deep and high thinking machine to a shallow, superficial one. He was beginning to foresee a change in our brain, such that might sacrifice our ability to read and think deeply with
simply scanning, skimming and copying information from internet. His question, worries, and
argument have precipitated a timely debate among modern enthusiasts and skeptics of
internet.
What else do we stand to lose with such a trend?
According to Nicholas Carr (2010), “What we are losing is our capacity for concentration,
contemplation, and reflection, which is traded for internet’s intellectual and cultural
consequences, such as, the Net remaking us in its own image”. Carr protests that the human
thought has been shaped through the centuries by tools of the minds from the alphabet to
maps, to clock, to the computer, and the printing press. The human brain, he guessed, is subtly
shifting and getting shallow, a concern that calls for review or better be back to the core basics
of reading, writing, reflecting, and creative deep thought of the mind that once characterized
our society.
Accordingly, his point of view was buttressed by the discoveries and theories of neuroscientists, among who are; Micheal Merzerich, Eric Kandel, and Plato. These compared the
intellectual ethic of the human brain with the ethic of the internet. For while the brain changes
in adaptation to its climate and experience, the internet advertises the rapid, distractive
sampling of little bits of information from diverse sources- the ethic of speed and efficiency, of
optimized production and consumption, as a type of subtly creating our brain in its own image
of shallow, superficial thinking, rather than the natural deep creative thought that would
mature the brain of our offspring’s future generationsNotwithstanding, the following internet
enthusiasts opined in opposition to Carr’s point of view:
“Doubts can be rendered feeble in the face of the certainty of the medium…the computer
screen bulldozes our doubts with its bounties and conveniences”. (Thomson, Clive, 2007.)
“The internet has made me smarter…I have never been more creative than I have been
recently, all of which I attribute to the blog and the ability to review/ scan ‘tons’ of information
on the web”. (Friedman, Bruce 2008.)
“The benefits derived from using the Net- quick access to loads of information, potent
searching and filtering tools, an easy way to share opinions with a small audience, etc., make
for the loss of our ability to sit still and turn the pages of a book or a magazine”.( Karp, Scott ,
2008.)
On the contrary, supporters of Nicholas Carr said, internet bemoans a new dark age of
mediocrity. For example,
What we’re trading away in return for the riches of the Net- and only a curmudgeon would
refuse to see the riches- is what Karp calls our old linear thought process…Calm, focused,
undistracted, the linear mind is being pushed aside by a new kind of mind that wants and needs
to take in and dole out information in short, disjointed, often overlapping bursts- the faster the
better. (Mcluhan, Marshall, 1964.)
From the above, we have noticed that Karp, Friedman, and Davis- all well –educated men seem
somewhat sanguine about the decay of their faculties for reading, writing and concentrating. .
These posited that the brain is plastic, and it is able to cope with new technologies in a dynamic
system, thus preserving itself un-altered. They all protested that the benefits they get from
using the Net outweighs and compensates for loss of their ability to sit still and turn the pages
of a book, or a magazine.
What then is the Big picture?
Conclusion:
The big picture is seen in the following conclusion:
Carr’s stand in the debate was born out of fear, anxiety, and assumption that our 21 st century
igeneration Nets seem to gradually and subtly shift over to an all influential, new internet
technology. Comparing his experience of the past with what he noticed as shallow thinking, life
of copying, scanning, skimming and retrieving bits of information owned by somebody else
from the internet, he was able to pre-empt possible consequences of a decline in the standard,
a shallow and superficial brain, and a weak, lazy future generation that would lack the ability to
read, write and think deeply and creatively. Although he scored some good points, his
argument met some critics, such as Plato, Karp, Davis, and Friedman, who presented voices of
reason why Carr should follow the ban wagon to embrace the igeneration Nets, rather than
standing isolated. Of course, such persuasion should make some sense to Nicholas Carr, author
of the Shallow- What internet is doing to our Brain, because, even his own supporters spoke in
mixed terms regarding the pros and cons of internet, thus concluding in the affirmative of the
internet being more beneficial. On a serious note, this debate is on-going because a definite
solution is yet to be arrived at. More so, it imprints mixed feelings on the minds of its audience
since reasons given by both parties are all factual. Howbeit, in a singular opinion, I would
recommend a blend of both sides as the antidote solution to this contemporary issue. Only a
balance of the old land-mark with an embrace of modern dynamism of igeneration Nets can
sustain and boost the expected capacity of our brain for future off-spring
References