This book was pretty good. I went into it expecting some "how to avoid what the internet is doing to our brains", but it ended up being more "here's what it's doing and here's how inventions throughout history have been changing our brains too." Fascinating stuff at any rate. Lots of facts, figures, statistics, and some history in there too. ( )

The thesis is accurate: that technology has transformed our thinking and perhaps even made us “shallower”. But the actual book is 99% a collection of known stories referring to other journalistic non fiction that make for good examplss. The author makes little or no effort to understand what actual knowledge he is talking about rather he blends examples because they are vaguely in the right domain.

The author should have dedicated more than few percent of the book to the key experiments that suggest more shallow thinking patterns. And should have gone into this with diligence and looking at scale of problem.

Basically as it stands a fun empty book because there is little actual work done in it. ( )

A bit preachy, but then I’m a card carrying member of the choir. I am more resolved than ever to control screen time for my kids. ( )

How Computers and the internet affect our minds. We are moulded by our environment and need to be conscious of how we let ourselves be influenced by our surroundings.

I absolutely loved this book... he said so many things I have been thinking and wondering about as we have stepped into this technological age. Just read it! ( )

an extremely interesting book on neuroplasticity and the effect of the technologies on our brain, throughout the history of the human kind. Some passages are a bit repetitive and could be shorter and still get to the point, but it's still a great book. Probably the title is misleading, though, it's not just about the internet. ( )

This was not concise - the theories were padded with so much superfluous information that we didn’t need to know - it was like he was constantly hyperlinking himself down the rabbit hole, rather than staying on topic.
I was born in 85. I grew up with tech. But I am still a voracious reader who has no issues paying attention to whatever I’m doing even if that is reading for 12 hours straight, so I don’t quite agree that tech has smashed our attention spans and the way we think. Perhaps for some, but not all. I also use Ebola and have never clocked any of the kinks, I read them the same way I read paper books. ( )

“What the net seems to be doing is chipping away my ability for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not my mind now expects to take in information in the way the net distributes it, in a constantly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words, now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.”

The author expresses concern that the internet is reducing our ability to process and retain information. He cites many scientific studies to make his point that it is, in fact, rewiring our brains. He examines the many distractions offered by the internet, and how following hyperlinks can result in an unexpected adverse impact on memory.

“When we read a book, the information faucet provides a steady drip, which we can control by the pace of our reading. Through our single-minded concentration on the text, we can transfer all or most of the information into long-term memory and forge the rich associations essential to the creation of schemas. With the net we face many information faucets all going full blast.”

In addition to brain science, he relates a history of communications. It is quite informative about the history of language, alphabets, early printing presses, books, the typewriter, word processing. Each of these advances have impacted the way humans process information. He looks at trends in writing and publishing. I sincerely hope his statements about the future of the book (in any format) does not come to pass. This book was published in 2010, so I imagine what has happened since then would reinforce his message.

Prior to reading this book, I had already quit all social media except Goodreads. The author does not advocate such “extreme” measures, but my peace of mind has improved immensely. This is definitely a book that will prompt people to reevaluate their usage of the internet. ( )

This book does three big things. First, it highlights the fact that brain plasticity is now accepted science -- our brains can change, even into old age. Second, it shows how means of communication have affected thought: first the oral tradition emphasized memory, then the written (and printed) word favored slow reasoning, and now the internet favors fast reactive thinking. Finally, it reviews recent research to see what the impact of internet use on thinking (depth, speed, and many other dimensions) has actually been. The results are not encouraging. The author concludes that there is no way we can go back from the internet, so we will have to learn to live with it. Most of the book is compelling and interesting, despite a few longueurs. At the end, however, the conclusion may be no more than "Oh well, too bad". ( )

[from 2011] This book really resonated with me. So often I have found myself at a cognitive impasse and I don't doubt for a minute that it is tied to what the Internet has done to my thinking processes. ( )

This book was a delight to read. It was so much more then just the idea that the culture of the internet is doing to our brains. I love me some scientific and philosophical discussions of the brain and mind, and the author opens his book with a few chapters quoting other authors and scientists to contextualize and discuss the ideas of the brain as a continually changing thing. He also never fails to present the opposing opinions to what he is stating, so you always have something to consider when forming your own opinion.

I think the effect of the internet on our minds is quite obvious to anyone who grew up without it, and this book helped give an explanation for what's happening. This book really focused on how the medium, not the message, is physically altering our brains and shaping how we function in our daily lives. It was really fun to consider what ways our brains and culture are changing and what benefits there are to different ways of functioning. ( )

It has been a long time since I enjoyed a nonfiction book as much as this one. The careful and scientific analysis of the anatomical and mental effects of an internet-based world was rewarding. The shortcomings I noticed-the brevity of the section on emotional changes, the monolithic presentation of the Internet, and the generalizations of what interaction with the internet mean-all these were problems required by the length and publication date of the book. Carr presents so much scientific research for his theses that he ends up sounding repetitive, but this is necessary, considering his position as leader of a defined minority in terms of approach to embrace of digital advancement. He stops just short of a call to action, which is perfectly timed, and allows The Shallows to describe a cultural phenomenon while avoiding most condemnation of those who use it and without becoming prescriptive. ( )

Good book, but went into a lot of detail about specific things and repeated itself some. I’d rather have read a short blog post about it... which is ironically what the book is about 😂 (our short attention spans) ( )

A must read for anyone who can no longer concentrate, read no more than two page articles, or has lost the ability to write longhand coherently.

Before I read 'The Shallows' I thought I may be coming down with the same Alzheimer's 20 years earlier than my father. Now I believe it's because I spend so much time on the Net hoping 'something' will 'happen' that through disuse, I've slowly erased many of my cognitive talents. ( )

fun, light read- good stuff about history of silent reading- engrossing- enlightening- really makes you think about the mechanization of modern mind

Do you ever feel like you struggle to concentrate when doing things but remember that you used to be able to with little effort? Do you feel 'dumber' than you used it? The cause could be the internet, how you use it, and how it uses you. This book looks into how our use of the internet is changing our brains in both a physical and practical sense. This book really spoke to me and how I have felt about my own mental capacities over the last 3 or 4 years. There are loads of scientific studies explained in this book along with some advice on how you can start to change your relationship with the internet to help reverse this trend. ( )

Very well-researched and important text. I quibble, though: The book deals very skillfully with aspects of the digital and the neurological, but skips even the briefest mention of the human connection element in-between. ( )

Please find review on my blog. https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2021/01/book-review-shallows-what-internet-is.... ( )

This book has been on my wishlist since it came out, by manner of speaking. But I kept postponing the purchase. The influence of the Internet on our brains... If such a subtitle doesn't entice you to find out about today's society and the use of computers and other electronic gadgets that connect to the internet.

Nicholas Carr describes in a very accessible style how important the human brain is, how plastic/moldable/adaptable it is to process the things we learn, see, do, etc... How it works with the neurons, synapes, and so on. How memory works, very important throughout the book. And foremost, how the Internet, or how we use it, has impacted the brain's ability to no longer help us in certain situations. How we (easily) forget things we used to memorize for later use.

We use the Internet for almost everything: storage of pictures, text, videos, and so on. The memory part of our brain was given up, outsourced to the Internet. This makes it easy, of course, to look up stuff: maps, road directions, images, information about anything (products, history, locations, food, ... everything).

There's a nice explanation about how, for example, Google came to be, how it expanded its services and activities to facilitate life for people/us. How it wants to hold all knowledge, for you to look up in the blink of an eye. How the search function is now tailored: instead of a term, it gives suggestions, so you don't have to think anymore how to use th search function, let alone decide which website would best answer your question with regards to your search.

Everything on the Internet is programmed to make life easier. Easier as is: you don't have to work your brain anymore to memorize stuff. The Internet is your friend, has all the knowledge you want. All you have to do is type a word and click a button or link. Then the desired info will be presented to you, in bits and pieces, because that's easier to digest than a long text which you have to read yourself and process to extract/memorize what you deem important. And so on.

Carr, based on several studies and articles from specialists, writes that in this way we have given up our ability to think for ourselves, to use our brains to make calculations, to know about stuff (again: locations, history, products, ...), ... to stay focused for a long time on a certain task.

Staying focused long on one task has become tedious and very difficult these days, since the Internet offers much distractions: images, videos, hyperlinks, ads, notifications on social media (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.), etc.

--> One very nice quote from the book: "The influx of competing messages that we receive whenever we go online not only overloads our working memory; it makes it much harder for our frontal lobes to concentrate our attention on any one thing. The process of memory consolidation can't even get started. And, thanks once again to the plasticity of our neuronal pathways, the more we use the Web, the more we train our brain to be distracted - to process information very quickly and very efficiently but without sustained attention. That helps explain why many of us find it hard to concentrate even when we're away from our computers. Our brains become adept at forgetting, inept at remembering. Our growing independence on the Web's information stores may in fact be the product of a self-perpetuating, self-amplifying loop. As our use of the Web makes it harder for us to lock information into our biological memory, we're forced to rely more and more on the Net's capacious and easily searchable artificial memory, even it it makes us shallower thinkers."
Carr also describes, in the context of the tempting character of the Internet, how much time we spend on the computer, tablets, smartphones, ... to check for updates. True (and I too plead guilty, yes), and you only have to look at the number of people in the train or on the street checking their smartphones every x seconds or clinging to it as if their lives depended on it.

About being distracted vs concentrated: I do remember that I could read a book for hours in a row, but since several years this is hardly the case anymore. Maybe for an hour or so, then I want to read/see/do something else. Or even when I'm on the Internet, I feel like checking several sites (and e-mail) at once, failing to concentrate on one thing at a time. Reading online articles = skipping the large parts and just read the introduction, a bit of the middle, and the end. Whereas when I read something on paper, I do (or tend to) read the whole thing more attentively. That's also why I've decided to spend more time reading books (real ones, no e-books) again, to (re-)learn to focus, to use my own imagination, to use my brain again for what it was conceived, and not outsource it all to servers and corporations whose only or main interest is money. Of course, reading books is also one means to rein in my restless mind.

Carr is not calling for a crusade against the Internet. It is an interesting and helpful tool to expand your knowledge and make contact with other people. But he does warn you, more than once, that we are so easily tempted, caught by the distractions that we don't realize anymore how much the Internet has been a part of our lives, how many of us can't live without it anymore. That there is a world out there, but most importantly, that your brain could use time off on a regular basis, as this will only be beneficial to us all. And I confess, that I too appreciate the ease of use, the amount of info, the ways to contact people all across the world (here I greatly value the Internet, since back in the day I would not see myself pen-palling with someone. Maybe I would have, were the Internet not this huge, this dominant in my life), etc...

In this digital age, Nicholas Carr has written a very important book about our use of the Internet, about the impact on our thinking, our memory, and our doing. No wonder so many people call for more nature, more places to come to rest, to be disconnected now and then from the ratrace in today's society. I can therefore heavily recommend "The Shallows" to everyone! ( )

This thoroughly-researched book answers my question of why I can get distracted very easily. Like Carr wrote in the first chapter, I feel like a human HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey lamenting, "Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it." It's no surprise that our heavy use of the internet may have caused it. In this book, Carr examines the way technologies have affected humans throughout civilization, synthesizing neuroscience, philosophy, and media theory.

However, Carr is no Luddite. He still acknowledges the convenience of using the internet, especially looking in today's situation. But as McLuhan once said, the medium's content is "the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind." The content and the efficiency that the internet carries blind us from what it's doing to us. "The tight bonds we form with our tools go both ways. Even as our technologies become extensions of ourselves, we become extensions of our technologies."

The recent discoveries on neuroscience have proved that our brain is very malleable, and it has the ability to remapping and reorganizing itself. Neurons that are frequently used develop stronger connections and those that aren't. In the digital age, it's getting easier to access infinite information and constant connectivity, overwhelming our minds with stimuli. Our brain is being rewired to adapt to this situation so that we're better at multitasking, skimming, and scanning. But that new abilities come with a price. Carr argues that our technology may be diminishing the very skills and traits that make us human. One of them is our ability to think deeper.

Perhaps, there is only a little we can do to stop the alteration of our brain altogether. What we can do is lessen the adverse impact. Carr proposes that we must be mindful of how we're using technologies and how it affects us. It reminds me of repurposing social media as a platform for me to improve my writing and to learn deep-reading again, not for mindless and endless scrolling. I admit it's much harder now than many years ago. Nevertheless, it's a small step to bolster my brain's malleability reshapes itself as the way it was. ( )

Recommended.

This is a revealing read. As someone embedded in the tech industry, the book reads me as much as I read it. Not in the same way as the Bible, but nevertheless it is challenging at the worldview level. The Internet shapes our mind much like how television shaped it in the last 40 years.

Check it out. ( )

This book raises important questions about what all our time connected to computers is doing to our minds. He argues that it actually "changes" them, making them more used to flickering and less adept at deep contemplation. Frankly, this book terrified me and gave me a whole lot to think about. ( )

Lenyűgöző olvasmány! Sok elgondolkodtató adattal és összefüggéssel. Olyan kulturális vívmányok emberre gyakorolt hatását vizsgálja, mint az írásbeliség, a könyvnyomtatás vagy a számítógépek. Olyan kérdéseket tesz fel, amelyre nem is gondolná az ember, hogy van válasz, vagy hogy mérhető. A tudományos kutatások eredménye azonban döbbenetes – és már a saját bőrünkön (elménkkel) is érzékelhetjük. ( )

At the risk of politicizing a book that has nothing to do with politics, the Shallows really helps explain my frustration with the past election. The premise of the book is that our internet browsing habits are stripping us of the deep contemplative thinking skills that were a hallmark of civilization since the creation of writing. In the last election, there were amazingly important issues to discuss about the environment, drone warfare, and budget deficits, but the actual debate was dominated by trivial gotcha memes like "binders full of women" and "you didn't build that."

As an author, this is one of the most depressing books I've ever read, tracking very closely with my fear that book readers will become increasingly rare. But, if you value your own brain and want to devolop strategies to preserve it from the ever growing assault of distraction and trivia that our culture throws at it, this book is a must read. ( )

A very interesting and well-researched screed with one major flaw

This thorough book is readable and not a little frightening. In our embrace of the instantaneous benefits of the Internet, are we losing the ability to reason, to reflect, and to feel empathy? The writer ably and thoroughly demonstrates the evidence that we are. The only weakness--and it's a big one-- is the fallacy of assuming that reading a bound text in the past was always a thorough and meditative practice. Perhaps it was for a few, at least for those who wrote about it. But relying on assumptions about the idyllic past based on those writings is not a safe bet. ( )