The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

My Review

Some one-star reviews on Goodreads say that the author’s brain itself was 'Google-cized.' I can't really disagree. That said, I’ve developed a relatively efficient way of reading American non-fiction: I skip the repetitive parts and don’t read it linearly — which ironically conflicts with one of my resolutions to read articles on the internet all the way through the end or just close them.

But even if the science and interpretation of the research results in this book are questionable, I still feel the impact the online-presence, especially usage of social media in my teenage years, had on my thinking. I'm now working to become again the girl who, at six, devoured books in two days, asked endless questions, and focused deeply on her math homework. Something changed, and I don’t want to keep being a product of companies profiting from my attention.

Book Findings

Fun facts about technologies

Human technologies can be divided into four categories, according to the way they enhance or supplement our natural capacities.

One set extends our physical abilities, such as strength, which encompasses the plow, the darning needle, and the fighter jet.

A second set extends what we can sense—see, hear, smell, and measure the existence of what we can't feel physically: the microscope, the amplifier, and the Geiger counter. Probably my contact lenses, which have become so natural in improving my eyesight that I forget to remove them in the evening, belong to this list too.

The third group helps us reshape the physical world: the birth control pill or genetically modified organisms like your favorite corn.

The fourth group supports our mental powers. Carr calls them "intellectual technologies." No doubt the computer is a technology. But I was surprised, like a child, to learn that the alphabet, writing itself, the clock, and the map are also technologies—made to shape how we perceive abstract or material concepts of reality and turn them into information.

Internet turns you into a pancake

The internet makes any knowledge accessible and, unlike books, negates the need to memorize information at all — especially with access to mobile internet.

To memorize (i.e., to understand and internalize different concepts) means to make them part of one’s personality, since our brain builds schemes through repetition and memorization, and those schemes affect how we think and perceive the world. Not memorizing and relying on the external recources only is to become a human pancake — flat and superficial.

The increasing use of GPT for writing — and especially for structuring and summarizing content that was meant to be read, not reduced to a placeholder — undermines our brains’ ability to understand complex information, extract meaning from it and internalize it. That’s precisely why I’m writing this note.

Resolution 1: Read and write down what you have read, write to find out what you are thinking¹.

Hypertext doesn't make your understanding multi-dimentional

Studies show that the internet and hypertext do not help improve understanding of material.

The best and most “natural” way of working with information is linear — that is, reading a book. So, the dreams of digital gardeners about universes of bi-directional links and multidimensional worlds may be shattered by the fact that the average person, even after reading their blog, will not remember much. Although, bi-directional links exist more for the author than for the reader.

The calculator, as a technology, relieves a person’s working memory. The internet and hyperlinks, on the contrary, burden it with the constant need to choose and jump from context to context.

Resolution 2: Finish the original text before jumping to the linked texts. Read and write linearly.

Don't worry if your IQ test results aren't optimistic

IQ, in the modern understanding, reflects only the conformity of a person’s abilities and thinking to current ideas and requirements for human cognition. Somehow, IQ tests determine that you are smart if you can move and spin figures in your imagination and find patterns.

Your great-great-grandparents would probably be considered very stupid because their way of life and thinking was completely different from today's. I personally find the IQ tests boring. But there is a possibility that I'm just stupid.

Resolution 3: If even with low IQ you manage to seem intelligent to the people, don't be hard on yourself. It's easy to be smart with high IQ, you know.