The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember

Description

'Boldly reactionary...What looks like feast, Carr argues, may be closer to famine' - Sunday Times 'Chilling' - The Economist In this ground-breaking and compelling book, Nicholas Carr argues that not since Gutenberg invented printing has humanity been exposed to such a mind-altering technology. The Shallows draws on the latest research to show that the Net is literally re-wiring our brains inducing only superficial understanding. As a consequence there are profound changes in the way we live and communicate, remember and socialise - even in our very conception of ourselves. By moving from the depths of thought to the shallows of distraction, the web, it seems, is actually fostering ignorance. The Shallows is not a manifesto for luddites, nor does it seek to turn back the clock. Rather it is a revelatory reminder of how far the Internet has become enmeshed in our daily existence and is affecting the way we think. This landmark book compels us all to look anew at our dependence on this all-pervasive technology. This 10th-anniversary edition includes a new afterword that brings the story up to date, with a deep examination of the cognitive and behavioural effects of smartphones and social media.

Nicholas Carr is the author of The Shallows, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Glass Cage, and Utopia is Creepy. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, and Wired. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife.

A boldly reactionary book... Its thesis is simple and persuasive. The things that we do have a physical effect on our brains... What looks like feast, Carr argues, may be closer to famine... The internet is a distraction machine. -- Sam Leith * Sunday Times * Essential reading about our internet age. * New York Times Book Review * The most readable overview of the science and history of human cognition to date... Carr draws some chilling inferences. * The Economist * An elegantly written cry of anguish... Hair-raising. -- John Harris * Guardian * Carr straddles the book-dominated and web-dominated worlds and is at home in both... Mild-mannered, never polemical, with nothing of the Luddite about him, Carr makes his points with wide-ranging erudition. -- Christopher Caldwell * Financial Times * Unhurried... even-handed... Carr constantly emphasises the fact that screen technologies are neither evil nor miraculous in their effects on the human mind... What is certain, however, is that our minds will change... A worthy illustration that books do indeed enable deep reflection. -- Susan Greenfield * Literary Review * Absorbing disturbing * Wall Street Journal * I have not only given this book to numerous friends, I actually changed my life in response to it. -- Jonathan Safran Foer An important and timely book. See if you can stay off the Web long enough to read it! -- Elizabeth Kolbert This is a book to shake up the world. -- Ann Patchett