On June 23rd, I’ll be interviewing Nicholas Carr, author of the new book, The Shallows. In it, Carr develops the argument found in his much-discussed article in The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid“. In short, he wonders, is the way we consume information online–buzzing from blog post, to tweet, to newspaper article–changing the way we think? If our brains are shaped by the media tools we use, what does it mean that we spend more time in the information environment of the Web, and less in the sustained, linear culture of the book?
I know where Nicholas Carr is coming from. I find it more and more difficult to sit and follow the long-form, linear structure of a book, and it scares me. I also wonder, though, whether there’s an up side to it: whether we might be training our minds in a different, more relational, way of thinking, more akin to a mosaic than a book.
Do you have any questions for Nicholas Carr? Please add your questions in the comments below. I’d also love to include some of your comments in the June 27th episode. Have you noticed the way you consume media changing because of your use of the Web? Does it concern you? Share your thoughts below…and thanks!
Original Image of Nicholas Carr by SandyFleischmann
Haven't yet read the article, but going into it I think the primary question would be "What's new?" This sounds much like the arguments we've been hearing for decades about information overload – that the vast flow of information presented by modern life is overwhelming our ability to think and make judgements. Future Shock? Tofler? 1970?? Anybody???
Will look forward to both the article and your interview.
You can go with all the easy ones: "Is it a bad thing?“ “What do you think of Shirky's response?” and “Could you read what Socrates had to say about writing? Would IRM have detected anything then?” — but this is Carr, so you might have to elevate the debate a bit.
You can be just mean & techie enough and ask if things are better with Freedom by Fred Stutzman, the new Readability browser extension that hides links, the new almost-like paper Retinal screen, oro e-Inks, or whether the mere possibility to Google at any time doesn't help?
That would at least trigger a question around: how much of this is definitive, and what can actually be resolved? In spite of what was said then, writing didn't destroyed classes (YouTube & Khan Academy might); books (codexes) never destroyed the passing of entire flow of ideas as dissertations (his recent issues might be the beginning of the end of that).
I just wonder if he's read the argument by Andy Hunt (in his book Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware) about the building of the exo-cortex. In the book he argues building a resource of materials readily available around you (external to your brain), books and Google both included, can help develop your brain better and more efficiently. The idea is that some information doesn't need to be in the brain — maybe I don't need to spend time learning what day Toronto was incorporated as a city, because I could just Google it rather than waste the time memorizing.
Thanks
Thanks for all this. Thought-provoking comments and questions. I hope to have a good long yak with Carr, so we should be able to go deep with the conversation.
I read an incredibly interesting book a number of years ago called "The Alphabet and the Goddess". It's written by a neuro-scientist who posits that image-based cultures have different values than text-based (reading) cultures, because of the fact that images viewing has "right-brained" creative tendencies, and reading has "left-brained" linear, logical tendencies. Some of the book strays into conspiracy-theory territory but I've always remembered it because it's ideas about history were so unique.
Sorry, it's called The Alphabet vs the Goddess and it's by Leonard Shlain. http://www.alphabetvsgoddess.com/
Thanks, Christy. I'll take a peek!
A few weeks ago, I noticed a link in my RSS feed to an interactive graphic called the "Journey of Mankind: The Peopling of the World" at http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/ . It's a subject that I'd never been interested in before, but I found the info graphic to be so thought provoking that I googled the term "journey of man" . Based on that search, I found a film called Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, which was based on a book by Spencer Wells. I logged onto Netflix and streamed the movie to my PC. While parts of the movie were interesting, there were elements that I really didn't enjoy. So, I read the comments that other Netflix viewers had made and found that others had the same problems with the film. One of the viewers recommended the book Before the Dawn by E.O. Wilson. I just finished reading that book on Friday. Instead of ruining my ability to read lengthier articles and books, I find that the internet (a) exposes me to subjects that I've never considered before in (b) a format that maximizes the amount of information that I can collect in the minimum amount of time.
I'm a programmer and so naturally I tend think in patterns and repeating functions, as apposed to linearly. So for me a book is a nice diversion from all this computer thinking. It's a forced linear path that I can happily follow down that takes me from point A to point B. I feel like it's taking a comb through my mind and straightening all the curls. So I guess, speaking as somebody who has been speaking computer for the past 25 years, I find reading a valuable "reset" to my daily thoughts.
Interesting, Paul. I like the idea of one mode of thinking being a 'corrective' or as you say, reset, to the other.
I had read Carr's article recently but it struck me that the question was being asked in the all too familiar, linear thinking, scientific cause and effect way. We don't become stupid (or smart) in a vacuum. Perhaps a broader question would be 'Is technology making us stupid?" For myself, I find Google to be an incredibly powerful tool. For my students (I'm a high school teacher) I find that it is just one more thing that is breaking down there ability to think in a linear fashion, in a broadly connected fashion, or in any fashion that requires time, concentration, and sense of purpose.
… continued from above …Even my better students currently seem to struggle with thinking about something for more than a couple of minutes … then they are pulled away by their cell phones, changing the songs on their ipods, sneaking a peak at their Facebook account, and the like (I haven't even mentioned youtube, video games, and TV yet). As disturbing as this is to watch unfold, it is more disturbing when you add in the possibility of the establishment of millions of neural pathways during the adolescent stage of life … teenagers are building their brain function (or so I've read) while they are going through their life experiences. Does this mean if they never think deeply during their teenage years that they may never fully develop the capacity? What is flitting from distraction to distraction training them for? …doing to their ability to think? Google may only be one slice of a very large pie here.
Is it the internet or is it Life? I, too, find I am more easily distracted, but it began before Google with the birth of my children which coincided with the upward momentum of my career — which itself coincided with the era of multi-tasking. As I sat down to write this, the cat jumped up on the (newly replaced) screen in my door, the timer went off on the dryer, my (now 24 year old) called me from upstairs and the dogs raised the alarm over an unidentified danger. On the way down to the drier I checked a pot on the stove and let the cat out. And, oh, yes, the whole time I have been carrying around the novel I interrupted reading so I could jot down this comment for you.
A related point: I'm a professional writer, and I find that the way I write actually depends on the way I am writing. My skills with a pen are so poor these days that I am less flowery and more to-the-point if I write with a pen than with a keyboard. When typing, even using the same technology (MS Word) and for the same purpose (writing a news story, say), the way I write depends a little on the size of my screen… when I'm at a conference filing stories from my netbook, my sentences are shorter and the overall structure of the piece simpler and more to-the-point, I think because I can't see as much of my own work on the smaller screen than I would at home on my larger laptop. Am I actually thinking differently? I suspect so!