The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
by Nicholas Carr
Norton, 2010. 276 pgs. Nonfiction

Is Internet use likely to make us smarter or stupider? Steven Johnson (Everything Bad is Good for You) says smarter, but Nicholas Carr's new research-based book tips the scale against the obsessively wired. While Johnson is correct in saying that gaming and Internet use fires up some quadrants of the brain that don't even register when the subject is reading, in most respects, Internet, Wii, texting, etc., rewire the brain to make concentration, logical thinking, and deep reading much more difficult if not impossible. Any kind of screen reading leads to lower comprehension than regular print reading, and the multitasking made so much easier by computer use actually lowers productivity and job performance. Even one's ability to remember is compromised, since the time the brain needs to transfer information from short-term to long-term memory is short-circuited by the rapid-fire nature of modern technology. Carr is no Luddite, and is pretty much of an Internet/gadget junkie himself, but it is instructive that he had to power down many of his "appliances" and move temporarily to Colorado in order to settle his brain down enough to write this book. The Shallows is an important, densely-textured, convincing volume. Too bad those who might benefit the most from it will be unlikely to pick it up.

LW