Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic Monthly article, ‘Is Google making us stupid?’ created worldwide debate. His 2010 book, The Shallows: How the internet is changing the way we think, read and remember, takes his argument further. Human thought has been shaped through the centuries by ‘tools of the mind’ - from the alphabet, to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer.

Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic - a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. The printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought; the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is the ethic of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption - and now the Net is remaking people in its own image. People are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but losing the capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.

Nicholas Carr is the author of two earlier books, The Big Switch (2008) and Does IT Matter? (2004), and has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Financial Times, Die Zeit and many other periodicals. His essay ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ has recently been collected in three anthologies: The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009, The Best Spiritual Writing 2010, and The Best Technology Writing 2009. He writes the popular blog Rough Type.

Related Links:
Nicholas Carr
Festival of Ideas

A Festival of Ideas event in partnership with Watershed.

Posted on Tue 31 Aug 2010.

---