"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" was the provocative title of an essay Nicholas Carr did for The Atlantic back in 2008. I didn't have to read the article to know that the answer is, of course, "Yes." Google is an incredibly useful tool for looking up information. But that doesn't mean you'll necessarily learn anything by using the tool, any more than using a calculator means you'll become a math whiz. In fact, its ease of use would more likely make you lazy over time, as years of using a calculator would imperceptibly make you make you forget how to do even simple sums.

Carr has expanded on this thesis in his new book, The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. In short: it's dumbing us down, in ways that are more frightening than I could have imagined. And it's not just the Internet: other high-tech devices that we now so love (such as e-book readers) are changing the way we think as well.

Carr isn't suggesting that we heave our computers or cell phones or Kindles out the window. These devices do have their uses (though I have to admit I long for the day when there is conclusive proof that cell phones - a device that's a convenience for you and an irritant to everyone around you - do promote a brain disorder of some kind). He delivers more of a warning shot across the bow, pointing out unexpected complications that may arise from using these devices, potential dangers that we've been previously unaware of.

The Internet, for example, has been heralded as making a wealth of information available to anyone in the world at any time (at least to those that can afford computers, high-speed access of some type, and the ability to continually upgrade to make everything operate smoothly). Most people simply regard it as a tool, without thinking what its use could actually be doing to us. Carr's book states that while we may now have access to all kinds of information, we aren't necessarily taking it all in. Most people spend less than 30 seconds looking at a page, the end result being an environment that "encourage[s] people to explore many topics extensively, but at a more superficial level," in the words of one professor. You're not necessarily learning anything.

This doesn't just extend to the "ordinary" person, but professional people who rely on reading in the course of their work as well. And most of those folks, Carr finds, don't just spend more time reading electronic documents, they spend less time reading anything in-depth. In one example, Carr points to Joe O'Shea, a Rhodes Scholar (and philosophy major) who freely admits he no longer reads books. What's the point, when you have Google to rely on?

One reason we skim when we read online is because we're not spending the time just reading: there's email, instant messaging, texts, and hyperlinks just waiting to distract us. We don't take information in as well when we constantly multi-task; instead, we're "learning to be skillful at a superficial level." And this, it turns out, has an impact on how the brain actually works.

Some have compared the human brain to a computer. In fact, they're very different: a machine isn't capable of nuance in the way the brain is. Nor do computers gain anything from memories or past experiences. But perhaps because we are more adaptable, we end up conforming to the limitations of the computer or other device, meaning we're not as in control of our tools as we think we are.

Take digital readers, for example. Publishers are already looking into ways of "enhancing" the reading experience with "links and behind-the-scenes extras and narration and videos and conversation." As Carr wisely notes, adding these elements not only changes what a book is, it changes how you read it. He quotes another author (and Kindle owner) who, while enjoying his device, fears that "one of the great joys of book reading - the total immersion in another world - will be compromised," making us more prone to reading books like we read magazines and newspapers: "a little bit here, a little bit there."

A more sinister change, especially for me as an author, is the suggestion that this new way of experiencing a book (you can't really call it reading) will change the way it's written. Making the text more SEO (search engine optimization) friendly, for example, with publishers testing chapter titles to see how they rank in a search. Add social networking to the mix, and reading becomes not a solitary pursuit, but a "team sport," perhaps with readers constantly posting as they read a book in the way people tweet when they attend concerts. "As social concerns override literary ones," Carr writes, "writers seem fated to eschew virtuosity and experimentation in favor of a bland but immediately accessible style. Writing will become a means for recording chatter."

And those are just some of the fascinating ideas discussed in this book, which I highly recommend to everyone. As Carr notes in quoting media scholar John Culkin: "We shape our tools. And thereafter they shape us."

-Gillian G. Gaar
gggaar@belltownmessenger.com

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