Thoughts On ... Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Is the internet making you less human? Nicholas Carr's bestseller argues that this is so.  Reliance on the internet to remember things for us, like directions, may alter the chemistry and even shape of parts of the brain historically responsible for storing that information. By outsourcing memory, spelling, recitation, etc. to the internet, we risk losing the unique capabilities and capacity for memory that make humans very special. It is human to blame machines for the decline of culture, but Carr posits, this is just a lazy way of abdicating responsibility for the narrow, robotic world that we have created for ourselves. If people are fooled by Siri's and Her's that seem to pass the Turing test, it is because they subconsciously wished to be fooled. At least, this is my gloss on the book. Comments are welcome.

Anyone who has tried to has tried to search a fully digital archive without exact information can understand how limiting a future wholly reliant on internet search engines would be.  It's impossible to get the kind of information from a computer that you could get from a good librarian or archivist. Yet, like the author, I cannot imagine a world without the internet. I am writing to you digitally, after all. Carr does not advocate a completely internet-less existence. His approach is more moderate, including the frequency of updates to specific intervals during the day.

With perfect timing, my access to the internet was limited for the past few days by an unexpected outage, possibly related to the Polar Vortex. This was a great time to test what life without the internet would be like. Would I have a sunnier outlook on life? Would I remember things more easily? Would I get to relax more? The answers were yes, yes, and no. At first, it was a struggle. Without the internet, I was unable to stream movies, skype with a friend in California, or look up random things on wikipedia. I kept forgetting that service was down, and feeling disappointed every time I reached for my smartphone. In some ways, not having access to the internet was extremely stressful, because I had to figure out how to do things the old fashioned way. But I admit, I felt better rested, happier, and sharper after just a couple days of limited access. Perhaps it was just a placebo effect; I don't have the desire or the willpower to try an internet-less existence for longer than 48 hours. Like taking a stroll in the mountains, taking a break from the internet is refreshing and probably good for one's health after acclimation. Yet I could not imagine living in the mountains for long.