The internet is changing, and has already changed, the way we read, write, think about and make sense of our reality. Whether this is change for the good or bad is subject to much debate, as this book demonstrates, but none of this seems to affect the nature or the effects of that change.
But is a long attention span really critical to our well-being as individuals or as a society? Are there clear advantages to delving deeply into a subject as opposed to gathering and synthesizing quickly? I have often fretted about my teenage son's lack of cultural knowledge that I grew up with and thrived upon as a writer. Yet this digital native who hasn't read Melville or Thoreau or Tolstoy and hardly any Twain or Shakespeare or even Hemingway is thriving in a digital universe of multivarious information streams and short-form info blurbs. He doesn't read long novels, even sci-fi or mysteries or thrillers, and has little interest in the thoughtful tomes of philosophy and natural history and current affairs that I consume, and yet he has become a master, it seems, at synthesizing complex thoughts into bite-sized knowledge that can be applied to solve a particular problem. While my son may lack depth of knowledge - few teenagers don't - he has acquired an incredibly diverse vocabulary of information, which is another form of depth. And through the interconnections of seemingly unrelated areas of knowledge the potential for creative breakthroughs is seriously enhanced. Carr acknowledges that several of the bloggers he follows, while aware of the changes the Internet has made in their reading and thinking habits, are not overly concerned about this and actually see more benefits than losses in the exchange. Bruce Friedman, a pathologist at the University of Michigan Medical School tells him that he's "never been more creative" and attributes this to "my blog and the ability to review/scan 'tons' of information on the web." |
 "We want to be interrupted, because each interruption brings us a valuable piece of information... And so we ask the Internet to keep interrupting us, in ever more and different ways. We willingly accept the loss of concentration and focus, the division of our attention and the fragmentation of our thoughts, in return for the wealth of compelling or at least diverting information we receive. Tuning out is not an option many of us would consider. " |
"What kind of brain is the Web giving us? Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, and educators point to the same conclusion: When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain." |
