“What was so remarkable about book reading was that the deep concentration was combined with the highly active and efficient deciphering of text and interpretation of meaning. The reading of a sequence of printed pages was valuable not just for the knowledge readers acquired from the author’s words but for the way those words set off intellectual vibrations within their own minds.’’
‘Intellectual vibrations’?
‘’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.’’ (62)
This was primarily a religious, essentially Biblical devotion. How experienced?
“Even the earliest silent readers recognized the striking change in their consciousness that took place as they immersed themselves in the pages of a book. The medieval bishop Isaac of Syria described how, whenever he read to himself,’’
Of course, these were almost overwhelmingly reading religious books, usually the Bible or Greek philosophers. Deep reading. . .
“as in a dream, I enter a state when my sense and thoughts are concentrated. Then, when with prolonging of this silence the turmoil of memories is stilled in my heart, ceaseless waves of joy are sent me by inner thoughts, beyond expectation suddenly arising to delight my heart.”
Wow! Who does this? How significant?
“Reading a book was a meditative act, but it didn’t involve a clearing of the mind. It involved a filling, or replenishing, of the mind. Readers disengaged their attention from the outward flow of passing stimuli in order to engage it more deeply with an inward flow of words, ideas, and emotions. That was—and is—the essence of the unique mental process of deep reading. It was the technology of the book that made this “strange anomaly” in our psychological history possible. The brain of the book reader was more than a literate brain. It was a literary brain.” (62)
Carr develops this theme throughout - the importance, even essential - process of ‘deep reading’. For example, even the physical form of the brain changes . . .
“One of the most important lessons we’ve learned from the study of neuroplasticity is that the mental capacities, the very neural circuits, we develop for one purpose can be put to other uses as well. As our ancestors imbued their minds with the discipline to follow a line of argument or narrative through a succession of printed pages, they became more contemplative, reflective, and imaginative. “New thought came more readily to a brain that had already learned how to rearrange itself to read,” says Maryanne Wolf; “the increasingly sophisticated intellectual skills promoted by reading and writing added to our intellectual repertoire.” The quiet of deep reading became, as Stevens understood, “part of the mind.” (74)
Carr emphasizes that this - contemplative, reflective, imaginative - brain is being replaced by the - distracted, shallow brain.
“Jordan Grafman explains that the constant shifting of our attention when we’re online may make our brains more nimble when it comes to multitasking, but improving our ability to multitask actually hampers our ability to think deeply and creatively. “Does optimizing for multitasking result in better functioning—that is, creativity, inventiveness, productiveness? The answer is, in more cases than not, no,” says Grafman. “The more you multitask, the less deliberative you become; the less able to think and reason out a problem.”
Well. . .won’t all this extra information help?
“You become, he argues, more likely to rely on conventional ideas and solutions rather than challenging them with original lines of thought.’’ (140)
No ability to challenge ideas? Where is Luther, Galileo, Faraday - when we need them?
THE WATCHDOG AND THE THIEF
One HAL AND ME
Two THE VITAL PATHS - a digression on what the brain thinks about when it thinks about itself
Three TOOLS OF THE MIND
Four THE DEEPENING PAGE - a digression on lee de forest and his amazing audion
Five A MEDIUM OF THE MOST GENERAL NATURE
Six THE VERY IMAGE OF A BOOK
Seven THE JUGGLER’S BRAIN - a digression on the buoyancy of IQ scores
Eight THE CHURCH OF GOOGLE
Nine SEARCH, MEMORY - a digression on the writing of this book
Ten A THING LIKE ME
“What the Net diminishes is Johnson’s primary kind of knowledge: the ability to know, in depth, a subject for ourselves, to construct within our own minds the rich and idiosyncratic set of connections that give rise to a singular intelligence.’’ (143)
Another theme is the difference between human mental processes and computers. . .
“The old botanical metaphors for memory, with their emphasis on continual, indeterminate organic growth, are, it turns out, remarkably apt. In fact, they seem to be more fitting than our new, fashionably high-tech metaphors, which equate biological memory with the precisely defined bits of digital data stored in databases and processed by computer chips. Governed by highly variable biological signals, chemical, electrical, and genetic, every aspect of human memory—the way it’s formed, maintained, connected, recalled—has almost infinite gradations. Computer memory exists as simple binary bits—ones and zeros—that are processed through fixed circuits, which can be either open or closed but nothing in between.’’ (188)
Reminds me of the wise man’s illustration of spiritual growth -
“So he went on to say: “In this way the Kingdom of God is just as when a man casts seeds on the ground. He sleeps at night and rises up by day, and the seeds sprout and grow tall—just how, he does not know. On its own the ground bears fruit gradually, first the stalk, then the head, finally the full grain in the head.’’ (Mark 4:26)
A biological metaphor, not a mechanical one!
Carr connects another idea that I had not considered.
“As McLuhan acknowledged, he was far from the first to observe technology’s numbing effect. It’s an ancient idea, one that was given perhaps its most eloquent and ominous expression by the Old Testament psalmist:
“Their idols are silver and gold, The work of men’s hands.
They have mouths, but they speak not;
Eyes have they, but they see not;
They have ears, but they hear not;
Noses have they, but they smell not;
They have hands, but they handle not;
Feet have they, but they walk not;
Neither speak they through their throat.
They that make them are like unto them;
So is every one that trusteth in them.’’
“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.’’
Of course, the psalmist was condemning idols, not technology. Nevertheless, perhaps Carr has a point, maybe we really are ‘worshipping the work of our own hands’.
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How the Internet Changes the Way We Think
Modern technology has improved our lives in so many ways. We can do more with less effort than before and thanks to the internet, we can communicate, share ideas, and find answers to questions with almost no effort. But this convenience does carry a price and the potential cognitive downsides of the world wide web are the subject of this book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.Using the internet makes it quick and easy to find fast answers to pressing questions and everyday inquiries. How many of us use the internet to quickly find out the weather forecast? Or a sports score? Or the year a specific song was released? The internet is great for finding quick answers such as these and I doubt anyone would argue that the web is not the best and most efficient means to an end in these instances. But where the web can be troublesome is when we use it for everyday reading and deep understanding, and that is what the Shallows is all about. It examines the long-term effects of internet usage and shows how it has, in many ways, reduced our ability to retain knowledge and actually encourages forgetfulness.This book combines science with social trends and norms to draw its conclusions. I like the way the book uses evidence- based studies to back its claims. Neuroplasticity, for example, has been shown to impact our brains over time and there is no doubt that continuous internet usage has re- wired our minds, often in not the best or most desirable ways. The numerous distractions and the tendency of web pages to spoon feed us in small snippets with information and stories that already fit our own specific profile of likes and interests are among the many things detrimental to healthy mental development. The internet encourages these things and as you read this book, you will almost certainly recognize many of these negative aspects of the web in our own life and how you have fallen victim to them repeatedly.I certainly see the value of the internet and I realize that it is here to stay. But there are some areas where I try to avoid the internet or limit its use. One is with reading. I still read the old-fashioned way, with an actual book. I don’t use ebooks or e-reading devices of any kind. I like turning the paper pages and I like that I can take my book almost anyplace I go. I avoid reading too many online news and other stories, too, and I try to vary what I read because I know that what google presents is already tailor- made to fit my own browsing history and therefore isn’t good for my own intellectual development. By taking these steps, I am hopefully helping to counter some of the negative effects of the internet that this book outlines.Is the internet good or bad? I think the best answer is both, and the Shallows is an effective and useful read for better understanding the downsides of using this modern technology too frequently. The book doesn’t advocate for eliminating the internet or other related technologies from our day to day routine because it wouldn’t be practical and besides, there are many positives to the internet that have enriched our lives. But there is no doubt that the internet does have its drawbacks and the Shallows is a good book for uncovering the reasons why. The book is now a little outdated, but much of what it says still rings true and we all need to heed its words of wisdom.
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Cauã
Livro em inglês, conteúdo extremamente relevante para os tempos atuais.
Reviewed in Brazil on January 12, 2021
