Download A Framework for Understanding Carr`s Argument in The Shallows

A Framework for Understanding the Structure of Carr’s Argument in The Shallows
Of course it would be hard to miss the gist of Nicholas Carr’s basic argument, his thesis, in
The Shallows. He acknowledges that the internet has real and important virtues, but asserts
that intensive exposure to the net seriously diminishes our capacity for deep, sustained attention to
any particular text, idea, or experience and thus, very likely, leads to “a slow erosion of our humanness
and our humanity” (220). Below you’ll find one way to understand the building blocks, and so the
structure, of Carr’s argument.
After a brief preamble, Carr begins building his case by providing a neuroscience underpinning for
one of the most basic and universal recognitions in all of learning theory: we tend to get better at
those specific activities, skills, and habits of mind that we practice a lot, and we tend to get
worse at those things we don’t practice. This notion, of course, is a foundational assumption in
our very classroom, and with his detailed discussion of brain function, neuroplasticity, and the ways
neural networks are built up and the ways they atrophy, Carr provides a scientific basis for this
obvious and oft experienced phenomenon.
Carr then spends his next couple chapters discussing some of the most fundamental of human
“intellectual technologies” (44)—spoken language, the written word, print text, electronic media
and the computer. He offers not just a brief history of their development, but a discussion of
various technologies’ “intellectual ethic” (45), that is, the set of assumptions embodied in each
technology about which cognitive abilities are most important—which cognitive abilities each
technology promotes, which ones it asks us to practice most while not giving us much practice
with others.
By the book’s midpoint, Carr zeros in more tightly on the net’s intellectual ethic, on the contrast
between the mental abilities internet use tends to enhance and those it tends to let atrophy, in the
process noting that those atrophying abilities are the ones that engagement with traditional print text
tends to build up. More specifically, he asserts that heavy-duty engagement with the internet
environment—with its fast-paced leaps, multiple modalities, and emphasis on multitasking—
tends to enhance brain “functions that help us speedily locate, categorize, and assess disparate
bits of information in a variety of forms, that let us maintain our mental bearings while being
bombarded by stimuli” (142); these include our “hand-eye coordination” and “reflex response”
capabilities (139), as well as our abilities to quickly process and respond to visual cues and
recognize “patterns in a welter of data” (139). On the other hand, Carr notes that even as the
net gives us tons of practice in multitasking and quickly recognizing and responding to visual
cues, it gives us little to no practice in activities that involve deep attention, sustained
concentration, and careful reflection and judgment, in fact, generally creating an environment
where users would find it very difficult to practice these abilities. With heavy net use, the
cognitive functions “that are losing the ‘survival of the busiest’ brain cell battle” (142) include
those associated with in-depth comprehension and understanding, careful reflection and
evaluation, and creative, independent thinking.
Next, Carr examines what he sees as the central motivations, both ideological and commercial,
behind the net’s intellectual ethic. As the chief ideological driver of the net’s ethic, he identifies a
belief that has been on the rise in Western culture at least since the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution and which he sees as embodied in the work of Fredrick Winslow Taylor: the notion
that what’s of paramount value in regard to human actions and interactions is systematic
efficiency—our capacity to get as much accomplished in as brief a period of time and with as
little effort or “waste motion” as possible. It is this attitude of quantity-over-quality, surface
speed-over-in-depth care, swiftly and smoothly running system-over-ambiguous and
idiosyncratic human experience that Carr sees behind Google’s efforts “to ‘systematize
everything’ ” (150). As the author notes, “what Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is
doing for the work of the mind” (150). And this ideology of efficiency-at-all-costs dovetails
nicely with the commercial motives of Google and its kind. Carr explains that “Google’s profits
are tied directly to the velocity of people’s information intake. The faster we surf across the
surface of the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities
Google gains to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements” (156). Because it’s
how internet companies like Google make their money, everything about the Web experience
they provide encourages “the speedy, superficial skimming of information and discourages
any deep, prolonged engagement with a single argument, idea, or narrative” (156).
Carr then examines the contrasts between computer memory and human memory. He recognizes the
net can be immensely useful for storing and retrieving information, but argues it’s no substitute for
“personal memory” (192), and further, that if we “outsource memory. . . culture withers” (196). He
delves back into neuroscience to support his view, noting the complex neural interactions
involved in transferring an experience from short term to long term memory, interactions
that can be short circuited by engagement with the Web because “the key to memory
consolidation is attentiveness” (193), and the Web, of course, works against attentiveness. Carr
isn’t making the spurious argument that “intelligence” somehow amounts to being able to remember
a bunch of random facts, but rather, argues that if we don’t have a rich store of personal and
cultural memory, we have no context within which to understand a broader reality beyond the
immediate moment. Without that broader context, in fact, we wouldn’t even know how to
understand or evaluate a piece of information we might look up on Google.
By the end of his argument, Carr works to show that if we too fully immerse ourselves in the world
of the Web, we train our minds to accept—and practice—a narrower definition of what it means to
be human, a definition that views human reality merely in terms of immediate functionality and
efficiency. If we practice solely the kinds of cognitive skills the net asks us to practice, we’ll get
better and better at those “efficiency” skills (the abilities to make quick, superficial
connections and detect immediate patterns in a mass of incoming data), but we’ll more and
more weaken our ability to do the kind of deep, careful, sustained thinking, feeling, and
imagining that print text asks us to practice and, even more, that is essential for moral
judgment or for “experiencing the subtlest, most distinctively human forms of empathy,
compassion, and other emotions” (221). And while Carr acknowledges that we tend to take on the
characteristics of any technology we engage with, he claims the net is a special threat because it’s
become such “a universal medium” (213). It subsumes all other media—visual, audio, print,
whatever—and transmutes them in its image; thus, we could easily spend most all our time
engaged somehow with the Web in a way that we wouldn’t with, say, movies or print text, so
we might get all our cognitive practice on this single intellectual technology. In the end, he
argues, if we can’t find ways to monitor and limit our engagement with the net, it will be “our own
intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence” (224).