The Shallows Wiki

7/8/13
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The Shallows
In his own words...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGY_RjqlSRU
What's the worst possible scenario, anyway?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0yQunhOaU0
Plasticity of the Brain - "The Vital Paths"

The make-up of neural pathways

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http://www.mindcreators.com/Images/NB_Neuron.gif
Dendrites spread out to receive signals from other neurons. Once they receive a signal, the entire neuron fires an electric pulse through the axon to the axon terminals. The terminals release neurotransmitters (i.e. serotonin) that signal other neurons to fire.

"Most biologists and neurologists continued to believe, as they had for hundreds of years, that the structure of the adult brain never changed," (20.)

Merzenich's Monkey Studies

http://www.ted.com/speakers/michael_merzenich.html
In the 1970's, Merzenich mapped the sensory cortex of a monkey's brain. After cutting and reconnecting nerve connections in monkeys hands, the brain interpreted stimuli incorrectly. After a few months the brain reorganized to correctly recognize stimuli. Thought can change neural pathways too, as the evidence of Pascual-Leone's research shows. Adult brain is very plastic/malleable, though it becomes less so with age. Depending on what we experience, certain neural pathways become strengthened and more numerous or less strong and may die out.

The brain is capable of being shaped and changed by use of the internet at any age.
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Memory and the Brain - "Search, Memory"

"Memory...was as much a crucible as a container. It was more than the sum of things remembered. It was something newly made, the essence of a unique self," (179.)
http://jordandimarzo.com/Pictures.htm
For centuries, memorization was a tool for entertainment and deep thinking.

Carr argues that memory is a part of our soul - what seperates us from other species. Creating memories is a chemical process in the brain that takes time. Carr makes the argument that human memory is better than computer memory. Humans can contemplate information long after a memory is made. Humans can collect lots of information and decipher what is worth storing to memory and what is not. Long term memory does not seem to have a capacity, unlike a computer memory. Attentiveness is the key to creating strong memories. Carr argues that the way we use the internet does not allow for true attentiveness. The internet is like a "personal storage bank" for our memories. No need to memorize a lot of information - it's at our fingertips through a computer. Our memories make us individuals. If we all bank into the same memory bank of the internet we lose a sense of self and a sense of culture in our society.

I. Chapter ThreeOn the Tools of the Mind

*Intellectual maturation-begin with primitive renderingsand advance to ever more accurate, and more abstract representations of geographic and topographic space. (39-40). *we go from infants purely sensory perception to an objective analysis of experience. (40). *Mechanical clock changed how we saw ourselves and the way we thought. (43). *Technologyfour types *1extends our physical dexterity or resilience, like a fighter jet. *2extends the range or sensitivity of our senses, like a microscope
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*3enable us to reshape nature to better serve our needs, like birth control pills *4intellectual technologiessupport our mental powersto find and classify information, perform calculations, expand the capacity of our memory. Like a typewriter, and the internet. (44-45). *Societys response to the fourth type of technology is what Carr focuses on. He believes there are two ways to respond, either by being instrumentalists or technological determinists. *Societies make choices deliberately choose to ignore certain technological advances for cultural preservation, i.e. the Amish shunning cars, Japanese banning for two centuries the use of firearms to preserve the Samurai culture.-->;;these are instrumentalists, people who downplay the power of technology. (47). *technological deterministstechnological progress, which historians and philosophers see as an autonomous force outside mans control, has been the primary factor influencing the course of human history. (47). **The difference between instrumentalists and determinists: The conflictwill never be resolved. Because, It involves, after all, two radically different views of the nature and destiny of humankind. (47). *Carr argues that the developments in the study of neuroplasticity tell us that the tools that man has used to support or extend his nervous systemall those technologies that through history have influenced how we find, store, and interpret informationhave shaped the physical structure and workings of the human mind. (48).
II. Chapter FourOn the History of the Development of the Written Word
*Sumeriansfirst to use a specialized medium for writing. (58). Used cuneiform on clay. *Egyptiansbegan manufacturing scrolls from the papyrus plants that grew throughout the Nile delta. (59). *Egyptians model gave inspiration to an anonymous Roman who created the first bound book around the time of Christ. (60). *Silent reading began gaining popularity, as described by Saint Augustine in AD 380. *Around this time, writing lacked space between words, making reading much different than it is today. (61). *Middle Ageswith the decrease in oral tradition, the number of literate peoplegrew steadily, and the availability of books expanded. (62). *By the 13th century, using punctuation gained momentum. *By the 14th century, written works were often being divided into paragraphs and chapters. (66). *15th centuryhello Gutenberg. **What is the relationship between this progression of literacy to The Shallows? *Developing such mental discipline [in reading] was not easy. The natural state of the human brainis one of distractedness. (63). Is technological advances making us revert back to the less sophisticated mode of thinking, which requires skills that took humankind thousands of years to hone? *Carr points out Our fast-paced, reflexive shifts in focus were once crucial to our survival. They reduced the odds that a predator would take us by surprise or that wed overlook a nearby source of food. (64). **Why is this important? *In the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged, undistracted reading of a book, people made their own associations, drew their own
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inferences and analogies, fostered their own ideas. They thought deeply and read deeply. (65). * A description that I think perfectly describes the situation: The bond between book reader and book writer has always been a symbiotic onethe words of the writer act as a catalyst in the mind of the reader, inspiring new insights, associations, and perceptions, sometimes even ephiphanies. (74). *A particularly astute summation that concludes chapter four: The world of the screen, as were already coming to understand, is a very different place from the world of the page. A new intellectual ethic is taking hold. The pathways in our brains are once again being rerouted. (77).
III. Chapter EightOn the History of Google

*According to CEO Eric Schmidt, Google is striving to systematize everything it does.(150). *Is Google the pioneer at the present moment of the trip into the Shallows? (pun intended). *According to Carrs research, every single thing they do is essentially fast-tracking our progression to the new, immediate way of thought. Heres the meat of the matter: Google recruits volunteers for eye-tracking and other psychological studies at its in-house usability lab. Because Web surfers evaluate the contents of pages so quickly that they make most of their decisions unconsciously, remarked two Google researchers in a 2009 blog post about the lab, monitoring their eye movements is the next best thing to actually being able to read their minds. (151). Creepy, no? Irene Au, the companys director of user experience, says Google relies on cognitive psychology research to further its goal of making people use their computers more efficiently. (151). Instrumentalists here would say, Do you mean its goal of making people use their brains less efficiently? *Carr gives an example of a technological determinist, author of the 1993 book Technopoly Neil Postman. Postman argues six things: * that the primary, if not only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency * that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment * that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity * that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking * that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value * that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts (151-152). * I say he seems like a pretty moderate guy **CEO Schmidt has this to say: The more pieces of information we can access and the faster we can distill their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers. (152). **Google is the product of Larry Page *His earliest conception of what Google would one day be: If you could create a database of all the links on the Web, you would have the raw material to feed into a software algorithm that could evaluate and rank the value of all the pages on the Web. (154). *He chose the name Google as a play on googol, the word for the number ten raised to the hundredth powerto highlight their goal of organizing a seemingly infinite amount of information on the Web. (154).
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**Carr acknowledges the legitimacy of the success of Google, as it essentially made the Web more functional than it ever would have been, basically by increasing usability infinitely. **Why is Google so important to the debate between instrumentalists and determinists? No matter how long the company is able to maintain its dominance over the flow of digital information, its intellectual ethic will remain the general ethic of the Internet as a medium. (157). **Googles digitization of books *Readily accepted at the Frankfurt Book Fair by academic and trade presses *But got a little dubious because Google made it clear that it had no intention of tracking down and securing the consent of the copyright holders in advance. Rather, it would proceed to scan all the books and include them in its database unless a copyright owner sent it a formal written request to exclude a particular book. (162). *Legal action entailed: After three years of negotiations, during which Google scanned some seven million additional books, six million of which were still under copyright, the parties reached a settlementGoogle agreed to pay $125 million to compensate the owners of the copyrights in the works that had already been scanned. (162-163). *Libraries objection to Googles digitization: Many libraries and schools feared that, without compensation, Google would be able to raise the subscription fees for its book database as high as it liked. The ALA, in a court filing, warned that the company might set the price of the subscription at a profit-maximizing point beyond the reach of many libraries. (163). *Other worries: Commercial control over the distribution of digital information would inevitably lead to restrictions on the flow of knowledge. (163). **What are the Risks of Digitization? * To make a book discoverable and searchable online is also to dismember it. The cohesion of its text, the linearity of its argument or narrative as it flows through scores of pages, is sacrificed. (165). * Google has launched a service that highlights brief excerpts from books that have been quoted frequently, and for some volumes it has begun displaying word clouds that allow a reader to, as the company says, explore a book in 10 seconds. (165). *What is the balance between Google-life and thoughtful life? * There needs to be time for efficient data collection and time for efficient contemplation, time to operate the machine and time to sit idly in the garden. (168). Courtney
A Medium of the Most General Nature

Begins this section with a discussion of Alan Turing and his first development of a computer type system and computer science.
"It's becoming our typewriter and our printing press, our map and our clock, our calculator and our telephone, our radio and our TV." (83).

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Carr goes on to describe that one of the main functions of the internet is the ability to exchange information with one another from across the world. The internet allows human beings to connect on several levels to one another from any area or region. Through the internet, we are able to speak to a great variety of people all at once. For example: Charlie McDonnell
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Carr continues by stating that we are not only communicating and chatting over the internet. With the development of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and EHarmony, we can argue, gossip and flirt all through the computer. We now have the ability to fall in love and meet our best friend over the internet, rather than face to face. Websites such as Twitter and facebook allow one to communicate not only with their peers, but also with famous celebrities and idols. Charlie McDonnell has a section on his social networking page titled "Challenge Charlie." Pixiwoo (makeup artists) do monthly giveaways of expensive products for those who post their own makeup tutorials and creative ideas.
Slightly more terrifying than the internet obsession our culture now has is the growing obsession with our tiny, hand-held computers; cell phones. We can virtually do everything that we do at home on our personal computers in the palm of our hand, thanks to phones such as the Droid, Blackberry and especially iPhone. In 2009, the average adult sent and received an average of 400 text messages a month. In that same year, the average teenager sent or received 2,272 texts a month. Carr states that we still use CDs, printed books, films on DVD, etc - but these are a dying breed. People now use their computers for every aspect of their lives.
"We like to be able to find and be transported instantly to relevant data - without having to sort through lots of extraneous stuff...The internet doesn't change our intellectual habits against our will. But change them it does." (92).
Within the past 5 years, hundreds of newspapers have gone bust, including many that have been in publication for over 100 years.
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(Christian Science Monitor). Many magazines and newspapers are now consolidating and becoming online only. The ones that remain have been noticeably shortening there articles and using keywords within their articles to appease the reader. Finally Carr discusses the impact that the internet has on the library institution. In his eyes, the library is "An oasis of bookish tranquility." As of 2009, 99% of public libraries had public access computers wired with free internet. Of those libraries, 75% of them also had free public wifi to satisfy their patrons. Libraries are slowly changing who they are in order to fit with the technological revolution we have been a part of for decades. At the New York Public Library, books have been moved into small piles at the end of rows in order to make sure there is plenty of room for large tables in the center of the building that can serve as desks for computer users.
The Very Image of a Book

This section of Carr's book concerns itself with the E-book revolution and the impact it will have on reading.
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(R to L: Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, Borders Kobo, Apple iPad and Sony Reader) E-books have a lot going for them right now in terms of technology Around 1/2 the price of a bound book Backlight optional in many cases E-Ink used in many readers. Option to add bookmarks Highlight text Full dictionary 32 gig SD drive can hold nearly 10,000 books. Supports textbooks and PDF's Along with the explosion of E-books comes the popularity of books on other electronic devices. "The three top=selling Japanese novels of 2007 were all originally written on mobile phones."; Phones and texting are slowly becoming their own form of literature. Twitter updates and its growing popularity is mostly based on text message updates. The constant ability to update on Twitter or over the internet has caused a huge jump in independently published books on the internet. Carr believes that being published on the internet and having general work on the internet only alters writers attitudes toward their own work. The author can no update their work whenever they want. The pressure to write a perfect book is now gone; people can constantly add or edit their own work anytime they wish. Carr believes that books will stay and remain popular, even with the emergence of E-books. The printed word has already outlasted the phonograph, which was largely believed to replace book, and it has continually developed alongside film, radio and television, even though those were all suspected to become more popular and make books obsolete. Alison
With the exception of alphabets and number systems, the Net may well be the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use.

The Shallows pg. 116

Nicholas Carr poses the question: What can science tell us about the actual effects that Internet use is having on the way our minds
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work? He starts off by saying that this question will be the subject of a great deal of research in the years ahead, but that we know a great deal about it already. Carr goes on to say, The news is even more disturbing than I had suspected. (115) Its possible to think deeply while surfing the Net, just as its possible to think shallowly while reading a book, but thats not the type of thinking the technology encourages and rewards (116). In going back to plasticity of the brain, Carr uses the example of the Internet to prove his theory. He says that its not only that we use the Internet obsessively, but that the Net delivers precisely the kind of sensory and cognitive stimuli repetitive, intensive, interactive, addictive that have been shown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions. (116) Torkel Klingberg, a Swedish neuroscientist said, we tend to seek out situations that demand concurrent performance or situations in which [we] are overwhelmed with information. (118) The Internet encourages this overload of mental stimulation and gives us those distractions that our brain has learned to subconsciously crave. The abundance of stimuli found on the Internet prevents our minds from thinking deeply, but rather turns our brains into simple signal-processing units, quickly shepherding information into consciousness and then back out again. (119)
Distracted from distraction by distraction.


In a research experiment that Carr talks about, the researchers compared the differences between reading Web pages and reading
books. The research showed that book readers have a lot of activity in the parts of their brain associated with language, memory and visual processing, but they dont display much activity in the other regions associated with making decisions and solving problems. On the other hand, experienced Internet users display extensive activity across all of the regions when searching and scanning Web pages. This is good news for older people, because surfing the Internet engages so many brain functions that it could keep their minds sharper as they age. (121- 2) It is the very fact that book reading understimulates the senses that makes the activity so intellectually rewarding. When it comes to the firing of our neurons, its a mistake to assume that more is better (123). it would be a serious mistake to look narrowly at the Nets benefits and
conclude that the technology is making us more intelligent.


Jordan Grafman, head of the cognitive neuroscience unit at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke explains, the constant shifting of our attention when were online may make our brains more nimble when it comes to multitasking, but improving our ability to multitask actually hampers our ability to think deeply and creatively. The more you multitask, the less deliberative you become; the less able to think and reason out a problem. You become more likely to rely on conventional ideas and solutions rather than challenging them with original lines of thought. (140) Carr once again goes back to the subject of plasticity and says, Given our brains plasticity, we know that our online habits continue to echo in the workings of our synapses when were not online. We can assume that the neural circuits devoted to scanning, skimming and multitasking are becoming stronger while those used for reading and thinking deeply, with sustained concentration, are weakening and eroding (141). In 2009, researchers from Stanford University found signs that this shift may well be underway. This research experiment tested heavy media multitaskers and relatively light multitaskers. The study showed that the heavy multitaskers were much more easily distracted, had less control over the contents of their working memory and were in general much less able to maintain their concentration on a particular task. Luke
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Neuroplasticity provides all of us with a mental flexibility, an intellectual litheness, that allows us to adapt to new situations, learn new skills, and in general expand our horizons. (p. 34) However, for every Skywalker, there is a Vader. Once we have formed pathways in our brains, fine tuning occurs. Old ones then sort of wither away. In working with new technological tools that present themselves: Sometimes our tools do what we tell them to. Other times, we adapt ourselves to our tools requirements. (p. 47) With the advent of books people began to read more, first audibly and then later to themselves. We began to think more deeply which began to change our brains. Silent reading was a unique mental process which was unnatural to us as a species requiring deep concentration with the highly active and efficient deciphering of text and interpretation of meaning. (p. 64) Now, as we again transition, this time from physical books to computer screens, The pathways in our brains are once again being rerouted. (p. 77) On the computer we have access to every program it has to offer and Carr says that each program tries to compete for a piece of our mind. He quotes science fiction writer Cory Doctorow as saying the computer offers an ecosystem of interruption technologies. (p. 91)
How are we (as librarians) affected?

Every day we can see Blah! Again, not to say this stuff is bad, but at the very least some inefficiencies can be addressed: Using suggestive type to spell in documents Being distracted from accomplishing simple tasks at work, school, etc. Avoiding responsibility and not acquiring necessary skills (in research) Rudeness and lack of respect in not paying attention because of texting, surfing, or just working on something else. (Student asks for help and then starts txting before response) Others? Magazines and Newspapers are being completely revamped and completely shut down in some respects. Obviously, online databases are the new normand they are not as readily accessible as say a newspaper was a while back. We can help find the resources online and weed out undesirables. (retired newspapers p. 93-5) Kindle - Offers links to internet access throughout the text. Less book slinging! Distraction - Christine Rosen (Ethics and Public Policy Center) says she jumped down the Internet rabbit hole following a link about a Dickens short story while reading a book. (p. 103) Linear vs. hypertext - Research continues to show that people who read linear text comprehend more, remember more, and learn more than those who read text peppered with links. (p. 127) However, reading this book and taking it for face value would be a mistake and other research/resources should be explored. Perfect example of why librarians are necessary and how we can be utilized going forward to find, analyze, and validate information then educate!
How We Help:
Explaining concepts from this book to patrons using e-readers could be useful, such as deep reading, shallow thinking, and built in distractions created to grasp viewer attention. Designing curriculum to encourage more deep thought and to avoid distraction especially in regards to research. Little reason to fear the disappearance of books pointing out that they have survived every other new technology up to this point; newspaper, phonograph, radio, television, etc. (p. 110) Much of what Carr explains is happening to our brains he tries to do from a neutral viewpoint. Good or bad, people dont necessarily realize what is or isnt going on in their brains. Issues like Copyright come into play. With such easy access to info, patrons are more likely to just use it without thinking. Along with copyright is critical thinking and academic integrity. The future of human memory is literally at stake. If people are learning from resources that are not necessarily dependable, they are not learning and most assuredly regurgitate this unreliable information throughout their lives. We are available to assist with finding quality information. Peer reviewed and scholarly journals available in electronic
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databases are highly desirable resources. Our roles should (and hopefully will) evolve into that of educators . Keepers of information are no longer necessary in the library, finders and relayers of that information are. We need to go to them! Patrons wont come to us if they dont think they need to. Some may, most will not. They are finding information on their own. By approaching patrons, we can get them on the right track and avoid future, undesired BLAH! Face to face Social media Advertising How to establish the importance of things like critical thinking? Peer reviews? Copyright? Future integrity of information? Essentially, Information literacy?
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7/8/13

In his own words...

What's the worst possible scenario, anyway?

Plasticity of the Brain - "The Vital Paths"

The make-up of neural pathways

Merzenich's Monkey Studies

Memory and the Brain - "Search, Memory"

I. Chapter ThreeOn the Tools of the Mind

III. Chapter EightOn the History of Google

A Medium of the Most General Nature

The Very Image of a Book

The Shallows pg. 116

Distracted from distraction by distraction.

The Shallows pg. 119

conclude that the technology is making us more intelligent.

The Shallows pg. 140

How are we (as librarians) affected?

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