The Shallows

What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

by Nicholas Carr

Reviews and notices:

“In his new book, The Shallows, Nicholas Carr has written a Silent Spring for the literary mind.” –Michael Agger, Slate

“Carr persuasively — and with great subtlety and beauty — makes the case that it is not only the content of our thoughts that are radically altered by phones and computers, but the structure of our brains — our ability to have certain kinds of thoughts and experiences. And the kinds of thoughts and experiences at stake are those that have defined our humanity. Carr is not a proselytizer, and he is no techno-troglodyte. He is a profoundly sharp thinker and writer — equal parts journalist, psychologist, popular science writer, and philosopher. I have not only given this book to numerous friends, I actually changed my life in response to it.” –Jonathan Safran Foer, The Millions

“Carr provides a deep, enlightening examination of how the Internet influences the brain and its neural pathways ... His fantastic investigation of the effect of the Internet on our neurological selves concludes with a very humanistic petition for balancing our human and computer interactions ... Highly recommended.” [starred review] —Library Journal

“Carr is a great writer . . . This is a must-read for any desk jockey concerned about the Web’s deleterious effects on the mind. Grade: A.” –Newsweek

“Editors’ choice.” —New York Times Book Review

“Absorbing [and] disturbing. We all joke about how the Internet is turning us, and especially our kids, into fast-twitch airheads incapable of profound cogitation. It's no joke, Mr. Carr insists, and he has me persuaded.” —John Horgan, Wall Street Journal

“Carr [is] a Paul Revere for our Net age.” —USA Today

“We are living through something of a backlash against the frenzy of attention dispersion, a backlash for which Carr’s book will become canonical.” –Todd Gitlin, The New Republic

“A thought-provoking exploration of the Internet’s physical and cultural consequences, rendering highly technical material intelligible to the general reader.” –2011 Pulitzer Prize Committee

“Carr’s book is essential. It lays out a sweeping portrait of the thing we’re moving too quickly to see ... [It] bursts with research — from neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists and sociologists — and careful analysis. And anxious as Carr might be about what the Internet is doing to our brains, his writing isn’t shrill or self-righteous. It’s intelligent, deeply researched, articulate and, much to my dismay, most likely prophetic.” –Kurt Armstrong, Paste

“Carr is an astute critic of the information technology revolution. Here he looks to neurological science to gauge the organic impact of computers, citing fascinating experiments that contrast the neural pathways built by reading books versus those forged by surfing the hypnotic Internet ... Carr’s fresh, lucid, and engaging assessment of our infatuation with the Web is provocative and revelatory.” —Booklist

“The subtitle of Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains leads one to expect a polemic in the tradition of those published in the 1950s about how rock ’n’ roll was corrupting the nation’s youth ... But this is no such book. It is a patient and rewarding popularisation of some of the research being done at the frontiers of brain science ... Mild-mannered, never polemical, with nothing of the Luddite about him, Carr makes his points with a lot of apt citations and wide-ranging erudition.” —Christopher Caldwell, Financial Times

“Only by combining data stored deep within our brains can we forge new ideas. No amount of magpie assemblage can compensate for this slow, synthetic creativity. Hyperlinks and overstimulation mean the brain must give most of its attention to short-term decisions. Little makes it through the fragile transfer into deeper processing. Clearly, argues Mr Carr, this is a radical upending of the ‘literate mind’ that has been the hallmark of civilisation for more than 1,000 years. From a society that valued the creation of a unique storehouse of ideas in each individual, man is moving to a socially constructed mind that values speed and group approval over originality and creativity.”
–The Economist

“Carr wants us to think deeply about the effects of this new technology on our cultures, our brains, our social lives and our ways of thinking about knowledge. With masterful ease and winning style, he lays out ideas that will encourage readers to do just that ... The Shallows is a book everyone should read.” –Anna Lena Phillips, American Scientist  

“Carr’s scope in this unceasingly interesting book is wider than just the  synapse and the transistor.” Sam Leith, The Sunday Times (London)

“Required reading for anyone who wants a cogent, comprehensive, and thoroughly researched statement of the techno-fears that, in however inchoate a way, many of us have harbored for going on a few decades now.” –Daniel Menaker, Barnes & Noble Review

“Nicholas Carr has written a deep book about shallow thinking.” –Daniel J. Flynn, The American Spectator

“If you care about your own ability to think and read deeply, please treat yourself to Carr's book.” –Carol Keeley, Ploughshares

“Explosive.” –Irish Independent

“[A] highly readable and timely book . . . To his great credit, Carr is as even-handed as possible. He consistently emphasises the fact that screen technologies are neither evil nor miraculous in their effects on the human mind: rather, for every talent lost or diminished, another will be gained or enhanced. What is certain, however, is that our minds will change . . . The Shallows is a worthy illustration that books do, indeed, enable deep reflection.” –Susan Greenfield, Literary Review  

“An elegant argument about the way we’re being disarrayed.” –Alexander Chee, The Morning News

“Read this book: you'll learn lots of interesting stuff, lots of thought-provoking theories about the brain, about Google. And if you finish it, you'll have a satisfying sense of having, at an individual level, disproved its thesis.” –Ian Tucker, The Observer

“Carr’s prescription is not to shove a sandal into the servers that are eroding our brains. Instead, he wants us to take a page from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s notebooks — the one in which Hawthorne wrote about the way a morning reverie in a spot in Concord known to locals as Sleepy Hollow was shattered when the ‘startling shriek’ of a locomotive brought ‘the noisy world into the midst of our slumbrous peace.’ The shrieking railroad has given way to the constant hum and buzz of the information highway, ubiquitous to the point of invisibility. If we want to preserve the health of our brains, we will carve out a ‘peaceful spot where contemplativeness can work its restorative magic.’ ... The medium may be the message, Carr suggests, but only so long as the medium stays hidden. Reveal its inner workings — and the groupthink or brain damage it can cause — and we will see the necessity of resisting. We will be empowered to turn Google to our purposes rather than being turned to Google’s.” –Gary Greenberg, The Nation

“Measured but alarming ... Carr brilliantly brings together numerous studies and experiments to support this astounding argument: ‘With the exception of alphabets and number systems, the Net may well be the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use.’ –Will Buchanan, Christian Science Monitor

“Using the web, as I guess most of us do, can be bad for you, says this erudite author; indeed it can actually affect the brain, leaving us more ignorant than we were before, which is the opposite of what it was supposed to achieve. An alarming book.” –Nicholas Bagnall, The Telegraph

“You really should read Nicholas Carr's The Shallows . . . Far from offering a series of rants on the dangers of new media, Carr spends chapters walking us through a variety of historical experiments and laymen's explanations on the workings of the brain . . . He makes the research stand on end, punctuating it with pithy conclusions and clever phrasing.” —Fritz Nelson, Information Week

“The subtitle is literal ... Carr provides evidence from batteries of neuroscientific research projects, which suggest that the more we use the Internet as an appendage of memory, the less we remember, and the more we use it as an aide to thinking, the less we think ... Cogent, urgent and well worth reading.” —Kirkus Reviews

“An entertaining, insightful, thought-provoking book. Highly recommended.”
—J. A. Bullian, Choice

“The Shallows certainly isn't the first examination of this subject, but it's more lucid, concise and pertinent than similar works ... An essential, accessible dispatch about how we think now.” —Laura Miller, Salon

“The picture of our intellectual future, rendered thoroughly, convincingly, and often beautifully in Carr’s text, is bleak enough to give any serious mind some serious pause ... The postliterate being whom Carr conjures up is a subtle sort of monster. He grows more menacing the longer you stare at him. This creature processes visual signals and forms memories differently than his more book-reliant ancestors. He is incapable of reflection or contemplation and doesn't care to remember much. He is limited in terms of his capacity for original thought, having spent his entire life tailoring his communications to meet the expectations of an ever-vigilant network of so-called peers. He communicates constantly but only in sparse bursts. He can think with great speed but can not know anything with certainty ... What is perhaps most frightening about the phantom of The Shallows, this ghost of our collective future self, is how much, and how quickly, we have come to resemble him already.” —Patrick Tucker, The Futurist

“If you retain any residual aspirations for literary repartee, prefer the smell of a book to a mouse and, most important, enjoy the quiet meanderings within your own mind that can be triggered by a good bit of prose, you are the person to whom Nicholas Carr has addressed his riveting new book, The Shallows.”
–Robert Burton, San Francisco Chronicle

“The author of ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ returns to his thesis at book-length — but can our web-truncated attention spans handle so much prose? With Carr at the wheel, the answer is a resounding ‘yes.’ . . . The Shallows is a guide for understanding — and even regaining control of — your brain on the internet.” –Seed

“If I thought that the digital realm could foster and sustain the kind of calm, linear, reflective thinking Carr describes, I would quiet my inner Cassandra. But it is undoubtedly, as Carr suggests, a system with enormous shaping power. And if he is right about the plasticity and wiring-and-firing of our neurophysical human endowments, then we must seriously consider the possibility that we are, as users, taking on with eyes wide shut the attributes of the medium. If this is so, then it must raise questions not unlike those Paul Gauguin used as the title for his monumental triptych: ‘Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?’” –Sven Birkerts, The American Interest

“In The Shallows [Carr] argues convincingly that intellectual climate change is already reshaping the world. Read it now, while you still can. Slowly.”
–LaVonne Neff, The Christian Century

“Carr presents a damning case against a life jacked into the Net, including the startling revelation that prolonged usage alters our brain physiology ... The achievement of The Shallows isn't that it persuades you to give up the Web. Instead, it encourages you to be mindful of your screen time and remember that the Internet is the tool, not you.” –Martin Schmutterer, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“However much we may cavil, perhaps in attempts to protect our own cherished views of the Internet, [The Shallows] remains irreducibly a work which must be read, and considered by all those interested in the impact of the Internet.”
–Jeffrey Barlow, Director of the Berglund Center for Internet Studies

"Carr’s book not only shows how science and technology really do affect the smallest details of your everyday life in ways you didn’t expect, but also offers clarity in the understanding of your biological self and how that relates to the way you live your life. If nothing else, it’s an essential manual to self-discovery — it offers the sort of revelations that really can help you improve your life. Entirely unexpected, it’s the kind of self help book that matters.” —John E. Mitchell, North Adams Transcript

“The Shallows isn’t McLuhan’s Understanding Media, but the curiosity rather than trepidation with which Carr reports on the effects of online culture pulls him well into line with his predecessor . . . Carr’s ability to crosscut between cognitive studies involving monkeys and eerily prescient prefigurations of the modern computer opens a line of inquiry into the relationship between human and technology. —Ellen Wernecke, The Onion A.V. Club

“Carr is an excellent writer. One of those non-fiction writers in the league with people like Malcolm Gladwell and Dan Ariely who can teach and entertain at the same time.” –Jim Randel, Huffington Post

“Turn off the computer, put away the smartphone. Get a copy of The Shallows, and read it. I promise you, it'll be worth it.” –Terry Lavender, Vancouver Observer

“An important read.” –Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

“An erudite narrative about the impact of the Internet on human brains and behaviour, focusing on the themes of concentration and depth in human thinking ... Raises important questions about how computer-based technologies are reshaping human intellectual processes.” –Kathleen Richardson, Engineering and Technology Magazine

“Excellent ... a marvelous synthesis of neurobiology, textual history, sociology, literary criticism, psychology, and more. Carr does exceptional work, smartly laying the groundwork - both scientific and historical - that helps the reader appreciate the unnerving implications of our rapid, at times manic, movement into the shallow mental world of the internet, and especially the implications of the claims made by those who breezily or shoulder-shruggingly apologize for it.” —Russell Arben Fox, In Medias Res

“Carr is an awesome writer; The Shallows was full of graceful prose.” –Jonah Lehrer, The Frontal Cortex

“Once I started reading it, I didn’t stop. I was wholeheartedly absorbed in the text from start to finish . . . Whatever you think of the thesis Carr sets forth in The Shallows, the book is just so beautifully crafted that it commands your attention . . . I recommend you read it. All of it. Slowly.” —Adam Thierer, Technology Liberation Front   

“Outstanding ... a shrewd, compelling overview of how an ever-changing, always growing technology has changed us ... In measured, calm prose, Carr (who, yes, uses the Internet) interprets a staggering amount of scientific evidence and social history to show how we shouldn’t allow the Internet and its accompanying practices to dictate our lives. Carr’s goal is to raise awareness, which he does with gentle eloquence, making it more inviting to digest the eye-opening studies.” —BookPage

“Carr has synthesized a wealth of cognitive research to illustrate how the Internet is changing the way we process information ... He makes a convincing case that we are altering our brains with every ping and click-though.”
–Caitlin Roper, Los Angeles Times

 

“Persuasive ... A prolific blogger, tech pundit, and author, {Carr] cites enough academic research in The Shallows to give anyone pause about society's full embrace of the Internet as an unadulterated force for progress . . . Carr lays out, in engaging, accessible prose, the science that may explain these results.” —Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek   

“Another reason for book lovers not to throw in the towel quite yet is The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr, a quietly eloquent retort to those who claim that digital culture is harmless — who claim, in fact, that we're getting smarter by the minute just because we can plug in a computer and allow ourselves to get lost in the funhouse of endless hyperlinks.” –Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

“Mr. Carr has done his homework and he shows how the various technologies we invent to change the world also change us. Rallying data from neuroscience, psychology, media and literacy studies and more, he lays out a wide-ranging and disturbing case for the deleterious effect of what he calls "intellectual technology" - computers, the Internet, social media and the like - on our ability to think, concentrate, remember, and contemplate. Ultimately, the author worries, this technology is compromising our very ability to be fully realized human beings.” –Robert Peluso, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Nicholas Carr’s book gives a witty, stirring history of the rise of book-led thinking.” —Spiked

“[Carr] puts his finger on the dark irony of the tech age: In the search for unlimited information and connectivity, we have also provided ourselves with an infinite scope for distraction.” –Leah McLaren, Globe and Mail

“If you want a contrarian take on technology, Nicholas Carr is your man.” –Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education

“[Carr’s] great talent is as a populariser and translator of complex research into prose that can be read by the rest of us. In this case he does a superb job decoding the work of academics in neuroscience to conclude that we’re right to worry about what the internet is doing to our ability to think clearly and sensibly, even if things might not be as bad as some would have it.” –Martin Veitch, CIO

“Nicholas Carr is ahead of his time again. The Big Switch nailed computing as a utility, long before ‘the cloud’ came to mean pretty much the same thing. His latest book, The Shallows, explored the changes in our lives and minds caused by moving too much of both online — again before others began noticing how much the Net was starting to look like a handbasket.” –Doc Searls, coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto

“It turns out the human brain is a shape shifter, the technical term being ‘neuroplasticity.’ The phenomenon is not easy to explain, but Carr is adept at explaining with as little jargon as possible ... It is not enough for Carr to explain the contemporary brain alterations linked to regular Internet use. He puts neuroplasticity into historical context.” –Steve Weinberg, USA Today

“Nicholas Carr’s third book takes a genuinely fascinating and insightful look at the impact the internet is having on the way we think ... The Shallows is an intensely thought-provoking and, at times, terrifying read that should be mandatory for all regular users of the internet.” –Anne Scott, Coventry Telegraph

“Carr has assembled a formidable body of scientific studies on the negative consequences of new media.” –Edward Tenner, Wilson Quarterly

“Socrates famously lamented that writing will make us stupid because it’ll eliminate the need to remember things — and intellectual prowess, he believed, hinged on one’s ability to draw into a conversation myriad references, citations, facts, and allusions. Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows is the contemporary equivalent of these Socratic fears.” –Maria Popova, Nieman Journalism Lab

“Persuasive and interesting.” –Emily St. John Mandel, The Millions

“Excellent ... Carr’s work should be required reading as we continue to outsource our brains to technology.” –Adrian Sobers, The Barbados Advocate

“My own experience as a heavy (and often heavily distracted) user of Web-based technology tells me Carr is on the right track. At the very least, his book is worth reading with your iPhone turned off and your Tweets on hold.” –Bill Snyder, Computerworld

“The Shallows explores humankind's obsession with technology in a heavy, delicious dose of new-wave Neil Postman/Marshall McLuhan that pulls the rolling chair from underneath your feet and forces you to look beyond the digital monitor that has transfixed the eyes of the advanced world.” –Séamus Smyth, Stony Plain Reporter

“The Shallows by Nicholas Carr has really had its hooks in me for the past couple of weeks ... It tells universal truths which everyone who uses a computer, and especially the internet, already knows but would probably just rather not think about.” –Andrew Collins, Never Knowingly Underwhelmed

Advance praise for The Shallows:

“Nicholas Carr has written an important and timely book. See if you can stay off the web long enough to read it!” —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe

“Neither a tub-thumpingly alarmist jeremiad nor a breathlessly Panglossian ode to the digital self, Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows is a deeply thoughtful, surprising exploration of our ‘frenzied’ psyches in the age of the Internet. Whether you do it in pixels or pages, read this book.” —Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic

“Nicholas Carr carefully examines the most important topic in contemporary culture — the mental and social transformation created by our new electronic environment. Without ever losing sight of the larger questions at stake, he calmly demolishes the clichés that have dominated discussions about the Internet. Witty, ambitious, and immensely readable, The Shallows actually manages to describe the weird, new, artificial world in which we now live.”    —Dana Gioia, poet and former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts

“The core of education is this: developing the capacity to concentrate. The fruits of this capacity we call civilization. But all that is finished, perhaps. Welcome to the shallows, where the un-educating of homo sapiens begins. Nicholas Carr does a wonderful job synthesizing the recent cognitive research. In doing so, he gently refutes the ideologists of progress, and shows what is really at stake in the daily habits of our wired lives: the re-constitution of our minds. What emerges for the reader, inexorably, is the suspicion that we have well and truly screwed ourselves.” —Matthew B. Crawford, author of Shop Class As Soulcraft

“Ultimately, The Shallows is a book about the preservation of the human capacity for contemplation and wisdom, in an epoch where both appear increasingly threatened. Nick Carr provides a thought-provoking and intellectually courageous account of how the medium of the Internet is changing the way we think now and how future generations will or will not think. Few works could be more important.” —Maryanne Wolf, director of the Tufts University Center for Reading and Language Research and author of Proust and the Squid

“Not long ago, Thomas Friedman declared our new electronic world, with its leveled competitive field, ‘flat.’ Now, Nicholas Carr, marshaling scientific evidence, looks at the inner world of our brains, finding the impact of new technology there much the same: flattened memories, imaginations, and thinking capacities. We need this book in a deep way.” —Eric Brende, author of Better Off