The Shallows Summary

Nicholas Carr, author of the novel “The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains” explains in his works that media and technology is affecting the way our brain works and is used in our daily lives. Carr states, “The price we pay to assume technology’s power is alienation. The toll can be particularly high with our intellectual technologies. The tools of the mind amplify and in turn numb the most intimate, the most human, of our natural capacities - those for reason, perception, memory, emotion.”(Carr, 211) Carr continues to explain an interesting phenomena that occurred in society within the

Nicholas Carr, the author of The Shallows, wrote his book to convince further society that the internet is having an adverse effect on their brains and how they are receiving information. His major thesis for the novel was expressed when he exclaimed, "...the Internet controls what we think and the process in which we think because with its efficiency and speed, we are formulating all of our thoughts through the speed of the internet rather than through the speed of our mind." Throughout the novel, Carr discusses multiple reasons on how we have changed to depend on the internet. As well as how we have let go of older versions of technology and methods of learning because they seem insufficient compared to the internet. Carr was very biased

The Internet is something that some consider their lifesavers, while others believe that it takes their life away. The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr is a novel that explores the different areas of how new technologies affect humans in different ways, regarding multi-tasking and distractions, to how new technologies make us lose a little part of ourselves. Throughout the book Carr puts forward very strong arguments, but then loses creditability with his use of fallacies in argument.

Nicholas Carr’s Is Google Making Us Stupid? explains the impact the Internet is having on his (and others) patience with in depth reading habits, and possibly the way their brain is processing information. The old days of having to spend hours researching a subject are long gone because of the Internet. Having such a powerful tool available at any time can be a good and bad thing wrapped up in the same package. Over the last couple decades, home computer and smartphone ownership has been on a steady rise with most homes now having multiple devices. Therefore, having unlimited information available at all times has become a reality.

Nicholas Carr covers an unprecedented amount of material in his novel, “The Shallows.” He delves into subjects ranging from the history of the book to the business of Google to the psychological concept of neuroplasticity. All of these topics support his main argument: the idea that the internet is destroying our brains. He takes the deterministic approach that we are the tools we use, meaning they shape our brains. According to Carr, the internet negates our memories, deems print books useless, and distracts us from reality. His counterargument comes from the instrumentalist approach; this viewpoint maintains that people stay the same no matter the tools they use. His arguments are both sound and flimsy, current and outdated, and he rants

Vital Paths is the title of the second chapter in Nicolas G. Carr's book, The Shallows. This chapter continues Carr's argument, posed in chapter one, in highlighting the dangers of the internet, regarding our cognitive abilities. Specifically on format, this chapter argues for our brains neurological flexibility through an array of examples, ranging from historical observations to scientific experiments, and ends cautioning that with malleability negative neurological effects are plausible.

Communication with our society and the aptitude for reading has been transformed by the Internet as we, no matter who we are or what we use, adapt to the mechanism of technology and become a less intelligent, shallow community. Due to the many hours we spend on our electronic devices and the fast-paced reading we’ve adjusted to, our brains have become psychologically less perceptive of how the Internet is affecting our everyday lives. We need to make note of our daily habits and how much time we spend online, for the Internet will continue to affect generation after

In the Shallows Nicholas Carr shown his side of the argument that technology is overpowering our minds. How he proves this fact is that whenever we learn something new on the computer it takes less than 2 days for the brain to reshape itself to adapt to the new learning environment. The brian has a plasticity to being able to mold itself into a new challenge to adapt to a new circumstance. We become dependent of the internet addicted to see what is new with our friends. Finally it shows that we can’t be offline for a certain time period or we will get withdraws like a drug. This shows how the internet and technology has affected us in a terrible manner.

Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, questions the impact the technology has upon our lives. He argues that the internet prevents our ability to engage in deep reading and thus restricts our ability to think critically. He says this is due to the idea of neuroplasticity, which is where our brains change in order to adapt to the different stimuli it encounters. When books were first introduced, our brain had to rewire itself in order to achieve the ability to focus for long periods of time on text and to think deeply about it. This resulted in a literate deep thinker. However, the internet has forced our brain to rewire itself again. Carr says that “there is evidence that the cells of our brains literally develop and grow bigger with use, and atrophy or waste away with disuse” (22). Our brain has many structures that perform specific functions and the structures associated with deep thinking can decrease and eventually will serve no function if we don’t use it. We are much better thsn our ancestors. According to Carr, “the oral world of our distant ancestors may well have had emotional and intuitive depths we can no longer appreciate” (56). In other words, Carr believes that people in the past engaged in focused, immersed thinking. I believe that Nicholas Carr is right when he says that the internet is changing the way we think, however I don’t believe that we need to turn off the internet in order to reduce the chances of losing

In his Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Nicholas Carr contends that the overload of information is “chipping away his capacity for concentration and contemplation”(315). He admits with easy accessibility of information online, the process of research has became much simpler(Carr 315). Yet such benefit comes with a cost. Our brains are “rewired” as the cost of such convenience(Carr 316). As the result, “we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s...but it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking”(Carr 317). Carr argues the forming of such habits can prevent us from deep reading and thinking. In fact, he provides may evidences in the

As the internet offers us the benefits of quick and easy knowledge, it is affecting the brain’s capacity to read longer articles and books. Carr starts Is Google Making Us Stupid with the closing scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey when Dave taking apart the memory circuits that control HAL, the artificial brain of the ship. Carr feels the time he spends online is rewiring his brain. He is no longer able to concentrate long enough to read more than a few paragraphs. Even though the internet is useful, it seems to be changing the way our brain takes in information. He feels as though this brain wants to take information in the same way the internet disperses it: in

The internet is our conduit for accessing a wide variety of information. In his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr discusses how the use of the internet affects our thought process in being unable to focus on books or longer pieces of writing. The author feels that “someone, or something, has been tinkering with [his] brain” over the past few years (Carr 731). While he was easily able to delve into books and longer articles, Carr noticed a change in his research techniques after starting to use the internet. He found that his “concentration often [started] to drift after two or three pages” and it was a struggle to go back to the text (Carr 732). His assertion is that the neural circuits in his brain have changed as a

Nicholas Carr published The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains in 2011 as a result of his own personal experiences and observations of his own behavior. The book was published by W.W. Norton & Company with ISBN 978-0-393-33975-8. Carr began working on the book after he noticed that since the birth of the internet, he did not think in the same ways that he used to think; he was easily distracted and had trouble concentrating on tasks requiring a lot of thought (2011). This effect, he noticed, was not unique to him. Many of his colleagues reported that they too had lost a lot of interest in reading books, had trouble concentrating and were easily distracted (Carr, 2011). What if, Carr wondered, everyone doesn’t just prefer to do their reading on the internet for its inherent convenience and speed but rather, what if the internet was actually changing the way we all think?

“Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think.” These daunting words were echoed by Nicholas Carr, author of the non-fiction , “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” His work has received both acclimation and criticism for exploring the extent of the internet’s influence on cognition. While Carr argues that the internet is indeed responsible for rewiring our brain leading to negative implications, others believe that the internet can be tailored to generate long-term benefits, and some believe that it there isn’t enough experimental evidence to support either side.

The internet has been around for a few decades now and several people are accustomed to using it in their everyday lives. Recently however, an author named Nicholas Carr published a book arguing that the internet is not good for us, and our brains. He claims that the internet is making us into shallow individuals, hence the name of his book, The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. After reading this book, I must agree with Carr’s argument that the internet is altering our mindsets.