by Nicholas Carr
Published: June 7, 2011
Publisher: WW Norton
ISBN - 10: 0393339750
ISBN - 13: 9780393339758
The Shallows sets forth an apocalyptic but simple idea: the Internet is changing the way we read and consume information, conditioning us to read in fragments, impatiently, distractedly, skimming rather than reading, always looking for a hyperlink, a graphic, a video, anything to relieve us of the pain of extended text. The Net is ending the age of Gutenberg and, most importantly, stripping us of the values that have been at the core of our civilization for over five hundred years: the ability to concentrate, to read deeply, to reason carefully, to follow extended lines of argument, even to think deeply and contemplatively.
Written in an easy, journalistic style, the book includes a good deal of interesting material. Of special interest is a history of the technology of writing and its effect on people, from Sumerian cuneiform on clay tablets, to Egyptian papyrus, scrolls, Greek and Roman parchment, wax tablets, and finally the bound codex or book. Even at the time of the early codices, however, civilization remained an oral culture, the truly literate culture appearing only after the conventions of writing began to appeal to the eye rather than the voice. When words became separated from each other by spaces, when punctuation marks came into use and a standardized syntax replaced the rhythms of oratory, decoding the script was no longer the reader's primary occupation, and a more thoughtful form of reading began to take hold. Reading became a silent, private, individual activity. With decoding made easier, longer, more carefully organized texts were made possible, and the literate frame of mind took hold. Civilization finally overcame the natural human tendency to constantly shift attention. The norm became prolonged, attentive, disciplined reading, and as people read more deeply, they reflected on what they read, became critical, drew inferences, formed associations, absorbed the book into their own thinking. The book accustomed people to linear, sequential thoughts bound together by logic. In the last stage of the process, with the invention of Gutenberg's printing press, the literate culture spread rapidly and widely. It became the dominant culture of Western civilization.
Another great strength of The Shallows lies in its careful description of the myriad ways in which the Internet does the opposite of what the old culture did. The scattering of our attention is not just the result of reading from a screen being more tiring than from a page, causing us to spend less time with the text, or of the way hyperlinks are forever tempting us to move away from the current page to another page. And it's more than the way our attention is so easily disrupted and lured away by animations, video clips and sounds. All those distractions, even if we can manage to concentrate on our reading, are in our field of view as we look at a page and inevitably seize part of our attention. A web page bristles with options that our minds cannot ignore. Studies show, too, that even the increased physicality of reading from a screen compared with a book diverts part of our attention away from the text as we move and click a mouse or point and touch with a finger. And, of course, there are the off-page interruptions, such as alerts from our email account, Twitter, Facebook or RSS feeds. The reason no one likes to read an entire book on a Web page is not just because the light from the screen tires the eyes. The Internet is, by its very nature, an "ecosystem of interruption technologies."
Although The Shallows is readable, it does not state its arguments with great clarity and succinctness. Too much repetition and digression muddies the waters, and the author reaches too far to find evidence and explanations. Regrettably, he spends a lot of time trying to prove that our mental habits have real, physical effects on our brains, apparently to suggest that the Net's influence on the individual has a kind of permanence. However, he stops short, quite rightly, of claiming that the Net alters our genes, leaving it obvious that an intellectual diet that is not purely Net-based can avoid the pernicious effects of the Net, and even reverse them.
But what of the central thesis of the book? Has Carr demonstrated that the Net is becoming the new paradigm, stamping all our perceptions and modes of thought with its own image? The Net may be everywhere, yet many of us do not feel, as Carr does, that we are losing our ability to read deeply, ponder over what we read, and think sequentially. The Net's ubiquity has not prevented mathematicians from continuing to churn out watertight, logical proofs, and scientists do not appear, as a whole, to have been reduced to scatterbrains. There are still scholars, and books are still being published and read. Carr believes that the book will transform into the e-book and be cluttered with an array of distracting Net-like search features, hyperlinks, social media options, etc., but that hardly seems certain. And, for all his liking of studies and surveys, Carr provides little data on the large-scale, brain-altering, attention-shattering effects he believes are sweeping across society, other than his personal testimony and the example of an occasional like-minded professor or Rhodes scholar who confesses to no longer reading books. Yet the future may very well prove Carr right, and that possibility is deeply disturbing.
Whatever reservations one may have about some of The Shallows, it does serve as an important warning for us as individuals and as a society not to embrace the brave, new digital future thoughtlessly and to keep a critical eye out for its side effects. The field of education is under great pressure to "stay contemporary" by using the Net more and more in classrooms. As a counterweight, The Shallows should be required reading for all educational decision-makers, from teachers to cabinet ministers.
No comments:
Post a Comment