Don't blame the bytes

The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember by Nicholas Carr

Steven Poole on two opposing views of the impact of the digital age

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Like the majority of contemporary books, then, The Shallows does not justify its length: its natural form was always that of a pithy provocation, so as an argument for the superiority of book-length prose it is rather self-defeating. Sometimes, however, it does seem as though the author's memory really has been degraded by his internet abuse. "It's possible to think deeply while surfing the net," Carr admits on page 116, thus momentarily torpedoing the determinism on which his jeremiad is predicated, before he gets back on message a mere three pages later, accusing the net of "preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively". Well, both cannot be true. Either you can think deeply when using the internet, or the internet prevents you from doing so. It is easy to see which version is correct; and which version, conversely, makes for a more polemically enticing sales pitch.

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(Het hele artikel op guardian.co.uk)