This morning I skimmed through
David Mays' book notes on Nicholas Carr's relatively new book:
The Shallows.
First I skimmed...and then I went back and read.
It took a third time before I
slowed down and
really read the review.
Mays' book notes are worth reading in their entirety and he's convinced me that Carr's book is worth reading as well....
I'll just share a few quotes from the review...
And I'll try to be brief.
And I'll try to stay within my 20 seconds.
And if you read the review....you'll see why.
Excerpts from David Mays' review:
Carr is the author of The Big Switch. He has written for various periodicals. He says, "When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning." (116) The Net is rapidly and profoundly altering our brain.
Technologies are not merely aids to human activity, but also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning." (47, quoting Langdon Winner) "Sometimes our tools do what we tell them to. Other times, we adapt ourselves to our tools' requirements." (47) All technologies through history that have influenced how we use information and engage our senses have shaped the physical structure and workings of the human mind. Through what we do and how we do it--moment by moment, day by day, consciously or unconsciously--we alter the chemical flows in our synapses and change our brains." (49)
Young readers are abandoning traditional novels because the sentences are too difficult and the stories aren't familiar to them. (105) Authors will face growing pressures to tailor their words to search engines. "The practice of deep reading that became popular in the wake of Gutenberg's invention, in which 'the quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind,' will continue to fade...." (108)
Most Web pages are viewed for less than 20 seconds. The switch from reading to power-browsing is happening very quickly and it represents a deeper change in our thinking. The digital environment encourages people to explore broadly but at a superficial level. Patience with reading long documents is decreasing. There is a compelling urge to skip ahead. Skimming is becoming the dominant mode of reading. Of course there are compensations, positive aspects of this. Every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others.
One researcher says that the more you multitask, the less deliberative you become; the less able to think and reason out a problem. Learning to multitask is learning to be skillful at a superficial level. "Multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy. Everything distracts them." (142, quoting Clifford Nass)
We can go further in a car, but we lose the walker's intimate connection to the land. "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." (211) "We shouldn't allow the glories of technology to blind our inner watchdog to the possibility that we've numbed an essential part of our self." (212) We may be experiencing a slow erosion of our humanness and out humanity. "It's not only deep thinking that requires a calm, attentive mind. It's also empathy and compassion." (220)
From me:
Hurried.
Distracted.
Superficial.
Shallow.
This isn't what I want when I read...online, in books, or especially when I read God's Word.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly...
~Colossians 3:16
It takes time...
Sinking in.
Focus.
Pause.
Mulling over.
To let something richly dwell within me.
And I can't help but wonder...whether this hurried distractedness transfers to other areas as well.
Work.
Church.
Education.
Relationships.
Clearly, the Internet is part of our lives now.
And the irony is that I'm voicing these thoughts in a blog post that will likely be too long for most to finish reading...
For me to finish reading.
But--I do think The Shallows is worth considering--
Because I don't want to write, or read, or relate, or live in a place of superficiality.
Any thoughts?
