The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains Book Reviews

AUTHOR
Nicholas Carr
SCORE
4
TOTAL RATINGS
243

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr Book Summary

Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction: “Nicholas Carr has written a Silent Spring for the literary mind.”—Michael Agger, Slate
“Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?

Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.

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 of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.

Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes—Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive—even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.

👋 Do you love The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains books? Please share your friends!

share facebook whatsapp twitter pinterest telegram email
Book Name The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
Genre Science & Nature
Published
Language English
E-Book Size 1.08 MB

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (Nicholas Carr) Book Reviews 2024

💸 Want to send money abroad for free?

We transfer money over €4 billion every month. We enable individual and business accounts to save 4 million Euros on bank transfer fees. Want to send free money abroad or transfer money abroad for free? Free international money transfer!

How many are going to be able to read this book. Good as it is, it's very depressing. I believe you, but what to do?

A Must Read for Educators. A clarion call to reverse course from the unquestioned use of assistive technologies in and out of the classroom to their carefully considered selective application. I have been increasingly troubled by trends in education like dropping handwriting; not requiring memorization; encouraging dependence on external information sources; and the tendency to teach to the test, providing a Cliff Notes version of topics without any deep exploration - all justified by claiming that computers and Google make such skills obsolete. I couldn't explain why these trends were troubling but knew there was something fundamentally wrong with them. After reading this book, I know what's wrong and why we need to carefully apply the tools we are being given. If you've been wondering about the impact of the integration of the Internet into our daily lives, this book is a must read that will help explain the changes that you may have noticed in how you think and work. If you haven't been wondering about these things, this book is a must read to sensitize you to the changes so that you can make informed decisions about balancing the benefits of the technologies you choose to adopt against their cognitive and social costs. There are costs involved with the acquisition and application of any technology. The Internet is no different - its costs just tend to be more subtle and better hidden than its gains. And while the gains may be bountiful, the costs may be devastating in ways that we are only now beginning to recognize. Carr calls out the dangers of confining ourselves to the intellectual and cognitive littorals required by dependence on connections to the Internet's information shores.

This book changed my life. I encourage anyone to read it. Is very informative and well researched.

Horrible e-book version - (i-books).. Pagination is a mess. Chapter titles a mess/missing. Too bad I can’t return this e-book. So ironic that a large portion of the content in this book is addressing the changing societal impact of a loss of focused attention on reading. The poor e-book version completely ruined my focus on the author’s discussion of this change.

💰 A universe of opportunities: Payoneer

Did you know that you can earn 25 USD from our site just by registering? Get $25 for free by joining Payoneer!

🧠 Join the movement! Experience the world's No.1 brain supplement

Imagine you at your best. All the time. Picture yourself at your sharpest and most productive. Your most alert and focused. Your most lucid, creative and confident. At work. At play. In every area of your life. Add Mind Lab Pro® v4.0 to your daily routine and uncap your true potential. Buy Now!

👉 Are you looking for an Adsense alternative advertising platform?

Adsterra is the most preferred ad network for those looking for an alternative to AdSense. Adsterra is the ideal choice for new sites with low daily traffic. In order to advertise on the site in Adsterra, like other ad networks, a certain traffic limit, domain age, etc. is required. There are no strict rules. Sign up!

Please wait! The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains book comments loading...

Nicholas Carr - The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains Discussions & Comments

Have you read this book yet? What do you think about The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr book? Ask the bookpedia.co community a question about The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains!

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains E-book (PDF, PUB, KINDLE) Download

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains ebook the-shallows-what-the-internet-is-doing-to-our-brains (1.08 MB) download new links will be update!

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains Similar Books

Book Name Score Reviews Price
Exodus 4/5 988 Free
When Breath Becomes Air 4.5/5 9,480 $11.99
The Devil in the White City 4.5/5 2,627 $13.99
Sapiens 4.5/5 3,171 $14.99
The War of the Worlds 4/5 1,109 $0.99

Enhance sleep, vision, cognition, flexibility, energy, long-range health and more. Performance Lab CORE Formulas support all aspects of human performance, across all walks of life. Boosts work performance and productivity with nootropics for focus, multitasking under stress, creative problem-solving and more.

Other Books from Nicholas Carr
Book Name Score Reviews Price
Superficiales 0/5 0 $7.99
Atrapados 0/5 0 $6.99
Kunskap och information 0/5 0 $26.99
Knowledge and information 0/5 0 $26.99

Summary of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

The The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains book written by Nicholas Carr was published on 06 June 2011, Monday in the Science & Nature category. A total of 243 readers of the book gave the book 4 points out of 5.

Free Science & Nature Books
Book Name Author Price
One Million Digits of Pi Greg Aschwanden Free
Organic Chemistry Stan Fowler Free
Principles of Mechanics Salma Alrasheed Free
Oceanography and Marine Biology S. J. Hawkins, A. L. Allcock, A. E. Bates, L. B. Firth, I. P. Smith, S. E. Swearer & P. A. Todd Free
Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. George Francis Atkinson Free

Coinbase is the world's most trusted place to buy and sell cryptocurrency. Open an account today, and if you buy or sell $100 or more of crypto, you'll receive $10 worth of free Bitcoin!

Paid Science & Nature Books
Book Name Author Price
The One Thing You Need to Know Marcus Chown $10.99
Until the End of Time Brian Greene $13.99
The Tiger John Vaillant $14.99
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster Bill Gates $14.99
The Perfect Horse Elizabeth Letts $14.99

Jasper is the generative AI platform for business that helps your team create content tailored for your brand 10X faster, wherever you work online.