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Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
A Micro-Review
In the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged, undistracted reading of a book, people made their own associations, drew their own inferences and analogies, fostered their own ideas. They thought deeply as they read deeply.
“Neuroplasticity” is the name. If you’re not reading from books, you’re losing the game.
I’m a sucker for doom messages like this. I normally then step back, tell myself everything is fine, and grab another drink.
But I keep coming back to Carr’s doom message. It helps that Carr doesn’t deliver the entire message with gloom. Heck, he even starts the book with Marshall McLuhan, who held great hope for the modern electrified world, saying media would restore the interpersonal connection that books took away.
Perhaps. Back in the 1980s, the gloomers lamented that we were increasingly alienated from one another. And then the cell phone came and we were all connected again.
So I think McLuhan had a point.
But the fact remains: Internet reading isn’t the same as book reading. Online reading…