As a result, his narrative is flabby in places – for example, with an overly detailed account of the rise of Google. For the writer and journalist Nicholas Carr, the increasing predilection for online living is changing the way we think in a truly deep way – or more accurately in a ‘shallow’ way: hence the title of this highly readable and timely book.Ĭarr sets the scene for his concerns by combining history, personal anecdote and science. Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic-a set. The problem is, unlike the vast holding tank of our long-term memory, working memory can hold only a few elements at once. The Internet, he complains, grants us access to huge amounts of data, but this unmediated, undigested stuff works against systematic learning and knowledge. In sad contrast, another recent survey showed that the average American over fourteen years of age was spending a mere 143 minutes a week reading printed works. Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction: Nicholas Carr has written a Silent Spring for the literary mind.Michael Agger, from Slate. The depth of our intelligence, Carr explains, hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory to long-term memory. Though the author ably negotiates the shoals of scientific work, his argument also takes on Sven Birkertslike cultural dimensions. Perhaps more thought-provoking still is that this activity, which constituted some third of all leisure time, was not being subtracted from, but was additional to, other screen pastimes such as watching television. Everything you need for every book you read. Last year, adults in North America were apparently spending an average of twelve hours a week online, double the time devoted only four years previously. The Shallows isnt McLuhans 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. by Nicholas Carr Upgrade to A + Intro Plot Summary Summary & Analysis Themes Quotes Characters Terms Symbols Theme Wheel Teachers and parents Struggling with distance learning Our Teacher Edition on The Shallows can help.

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