“The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to Our Brains”
At first glance of this book, “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” I started to get the overall impression that the author, Nicholas Carr, was totally opposed to idea of technology. As a lover of technology myself, I dreaded reading this book because I thought that it was going to be a negative interpretation of technology. And while this book doesn’t exactly shed the most positive light on that subject, I’ve started to understand the overall views of Mr. Carr and identify with them as well. The book, not necessarily a discouragement of technology, but rather an explanation of how our brain operates with the constant technological noise that we are surrounded in day in and day out, comes from the authors own personal experiences. He states in the beginning of the book how he started noticing that he was having concentration problems and constantly felt the urge to check his phone, email, or blogs to stay abreast on the most current information. He started to wonder why? Why wasn’t he able to pay attention for longer than 5 or ten minutes? Why wasn’t he able to develop deep focus? Eventually he determined that it was because of the patterns with in our mind and how they have adapted with the constant flow of technology around us every day. The book focuses on a contrast of two technologies, being that of a book and the internet. He states that a book uses your concentration and allows you to go deep into thought, while the internet is a total opposite with constant stimuli and distractions. Seeing as how these two technologies are totally different, there are obviously pros and cons to what each are doing to our brain. Starting with the pros, technology is a very good and productive thing. Nicholas stated that because of the constant use of internet in our daily lives, people tend to have an increase in visual activity, as well as hand/eye coordination. Our short term memories are constantly being exercised because of the high volume of data