Nicholas Carr -- The shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains
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Long on inspiration and ideas; questionable on "truth".

I have mixed feelings about this book.  I'm a strong believer in
reading.  I think it changes lives.  I feel that the ability to read
deeply and to think critically about what you read is especially
crucial both in the practical sense if you want to be able to live
without making lots of stupid mistakes, and in the intellectual
sense if you want a rich and rewarding inner life.  But, on the
other side, I've learned so much from the Internet, and the Internet is so
important to the work I do, that I am unwilling to give it up.  (I'm
a programmer; and the technical information that I need in order to
write the code I do is most readily available on the Net.)

So, in reading this book, I'm looking less for proof that I must
give up the Internet and more for techniques and strategies that
will help me to get the best and the most from both modes or styles
of reading and thinking.

And, one technique that I use when I want to "go deep", or at least
to avoid "the shallows", is to take notes as I read, then to read
those notes, to write comments on those notes, and to write a book
review like this one.  Doing so helps someone like me with a
tendency to be shallow, to go just a little deeper in my thinking.
Taking notes forces me to concentrate on what I'm reading.  Writing
comments on those notes and writing a review forces me to *actively*
work through some of the content from the book.  And, an added
benefit, it helps me retain and remember just a little bit of what
I've read.  That's very much, I believe, in the spirit of what Carr
is trying to guide us toward.

But, perhaps some of the best guidance that you'll get from Carr's
book is the encouragement to increase your awareness while you read,
whether you are reading magazine articles on paper, books on paper,
Web pages, downloaded PDF files, and (soon) ePubs.  Try to be aware
of when you do need to focus, and give yourself time to do that
concentrated, more linear form of thinking.  And, conversely, try to
be aware of when you do need to read or even skim a variety of
related topics, when you are following a number of different
hypertext links.  And, when you do, make sure you have a rational
for doing so.

On the other hand, listening to Jake Shimabukuro play "While my
guitar softly weeps" on the Ukulele at youtube.com ... well, I'll
have to rationalize that as a break and as recreation.  He is a
master at that instrument, by the way.

Perhaps Carr's most ominous claim is that reading, skimming,
browsing the Web changes your brain physically, and not, according
to Carr, for the better.  How much you worry about this might
depend on who you are and whether you have kids.  A parent might
want to worry if a young (or not so young) child is spending most
of her life on the Web or with a mobile phone on the side of her
head and is no longer reading.  That might have a lasting effect on
a growing brain, and possibly not a good one.  However, at my age
(60+), any and all mental work and exercise is likely to the good,
as long as I get some variety.

So, what do you do, if, like me, you want to avoid a degenerating
attention span?  Here are some suggestion you will find in Carr's
book, in some cases by reading and inferring between the lines:

- Do at least some of your reading on paper, or if on the Internet,
  read something that does *not* have hyperlinks.  Doing that will
  reduce the lure of being distracted by every seemingly interesting
  related idea.

- Read something long.  Yes, you can read deep when you are reading
  short pieces, but the ability to focus for long periods of time is
  one that you do not want to lose.

- Take notes while you read.

- Write a critique of what you read.  Or, at the least, think
  through a critique.  Analyze and criticize the quality and the
  content.  Try to specify some of the consequences and
  implications.

- Read something that has *no* multimedia: no audio, no video, and
  very few if any photographs.  In addition to reducing
  distractions, the lack of images and video will encourage you to
  use your own imagination and to engage in rational thought
  processes.

What is the future of reading?  There are a aspects to a full answer
to this question.  Here are a few:

- Paper will be gone.  And, that's good.  We cut down way too many
  trees.

- But, we will still have book-like content.  There will still be
  novels and stories that you will read sequentially, without
  skimming and without skipping around.  You might read them on an
  ePub/eBook reader, but the experience will still be very
  book-like.

- Our reading material will all be search-able.  In fact, we likely
  will have cross indexing software that will enable us to quickly
  search the content of all the books and ePubs we've ever read.

- We will be able to keep huge libraries.  It will not be
  unreasonable to expect to keep a library of all the books you have
  ever read.  Tera-byte sized hard disks are getting cheaper (less
  than US$100 in the U.S.A. as I write this).  And, perhaps in the
  future we will store much of our content on the Internet or in the
  (virtual) cloud.

- And, reading in a focused, concentrated, and attentive way will be
  up to you, your choice, just as it *always* has been.

If we no longer or seldom write on paper, will it change the way and
style and content of our writing?  Yes, it's likely to do so.  It
already has done so for many of us.  In the following ways:

- Frequent edits and easier changes -- Cut, copy, and paste, as well
  as search and replace give us writing powers that paper cannot

- Easier collaboration -- We can pass our documents among us and can
  share our work and the work of others more easily with electronic
  documents.  Plus, our use of electronic documents will lead to the
  development of tools that enhance our powers of collaboration
  across geographic distances.  (The ability to post a book review
  like this one is one aspect of that extended ability to
  collaborate.)

Still, there is something enjoyable about making marks on paper ...

What we really need to ask is: why is writing, in addition to
reading, valuable?  I think part of the answer is that writing
forces us to have something to say, and encourages us to express it
in words.  Plus, writing encourages us to organize our thoughts, for
example to produce a coherent, logical argument and to support that
argument in something like a 5-paragraph essay.  And, writing,
possibly in the form of taking notes, helps us to be more attentive
to what we read, and to think through the ideas we encounter.  This
leaves aside the most obvious benefit of writing, which is that it
produces a record that we or others can review and rethink later,
and maybe even comment on.

But, these benefits depend very much on the kind and style of
writing that we do, and also, it's likely, on the amount of effort
we put into it.

Summarizing a bit: We need to be aware of and attentive to many of
the ideas and problems and disputes that Carr discusses.  Carr
discusses lots of research from the fields of psychology and
neurology to prove his points.  That research is questionable, it
seems to me, especially given the use to which Carr puts it.
Thinking these issues through, however, and then being aware of them
as we use computers and the Internet and as we read will trigger
suggestions about how you and I can become better readers and better
users of books, the Web, and other forms of reading material.  You
and I will need to define for ourselves what we mean by "better".

07/25/2010

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