The question of whether new media technologies numb the mind is a very old one, dating back to classical antiquity. Nicholas Carr, in his new book Shoals, a nuanced and thoughtful study of the harmful effects of excessive Internet use, uses the fascinating example of Plato and Socrates.
History of new media technologies
In Plato’s well-known dialogue Phaedrus, the philosopher has Socrates discussing the merits of writing with Phaedrus. Socrates tells a story about an encounter between the Egyptian god Theuth, who among other things invented the alphabet, and Thamus, a king of Egypt. Theuth, a technology expert, argues that writing will be a blessing to society as it will enable the storage of information and thus provide “a recipe for memory and wisdom.” Thamus disagrees and suggests that writing will have a deleterious effect on memory, as people lazily trust what is stored in these early databases. Thamus goes on to say that writing will not create true wisdom, as people will not cultivate their minds. Rather, it will create a kind of false wisdom. The dialogue makes it clear that Socrates agrees with Thamus.
Plato was not on Socrates’ side on this matter. On The Republic he argues against poetry, which in ancient times represented oral tradition. The poetry was declared in public, rather than in writing. Plato felt the advantages of writing superior to a purely oral culture. The writing would encourage the reader to be logical, self-reliant, and rigorous.
Even in the 4th century BC. In Greece there was a concern that the new technology of writing based on the alphabet had the power to change the way the mind worked. Many centuries later, modern machines would have a remarkable effect on thought and literature. In 1882, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche discovered that his eyesight failed and he could not concentrate when he tried to write with pencil and paper. To solve this problem, he ordered a Danish-made Malling-Hansen Writing Ball typewriter, which would allow him to close his eyes and play the keys. The philosopher found that the energetic strike of the contraption during composition had a perceptible effect on his writing, making his prose tighter and more telegraphic. He concluded by saying that “our writing team participates in shaping our thoughts.”
Shoals It has an alarming subtitle: What the Internet is doing to our brains. It’s tempting to think in this flashy advertising comment that Nicholas Carr is willing to scold Internet users and predict the decline and fall of Western civilization. Fortunately, this is not the case, and Shoals It surprises with its long historical vision and its balanced analysis of how the media affect the quality of our thinking and reading. For every advance in information technology, there has been a clamor of voices warning of its dangers. When the Gutenberg press revolutionized the accessibility of information, Robert Burton, author of Anatomy of melancholy (1628), lamented the plethora of books and the mental confusion they caused. “One of the great diseases of the time is the multitude of books that overload the world in such a way that it is not able to digest the abundance of idle matter that is incubated every day and brought into the world.” Sounds familiar?
How the Internet Affects the Way We Read and Think
The basic conclusion of Shoals is that what a new technology gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. The more ease and convenience the Internet makes us, the more it takes away from us the ability to exercise our brain more rigorously. Promotes light and scattered reading. And despite all the information we gather so hastily, much of it is quickly forgotten. If remembered, it is so fractured that it cannot be integrated into a primordial schema or logic that benefits our understanding of the world or of ourselves.
Shoals provides many examples of how cognition is diminished by the powerful ability of the Internet to store, collect, and classify information for us. In one study, two separate groups of people were assigned an identical online task. One group used programs that provided helpful prompts, making the task more “user-friendly.” The second group did not receive these same prompts, but had to solve the task more on their own. Eight months later, the two groups met again to solve the same puzzle. Those who had completed the most intellectually demanding program were able to complete the task twice as fast as the group with the “easy-to-use” program. Dutch researcher Christof van Nimwegen found that the group using the most difficult program was able to plan ahead and strategize, while the other group relied more on trial and error to solve their puzzle.
Another study mapped the amount of information that is retained when reading hyperlinked text. Many educators have hailed hyperlinks as a new way to improve learning. To test this theory, Canadian scholars gave seventy people an Elizabeth Bowen short story to read, “The Devil’s Lover.” One group read the story from cover to cover, with no links. The second group read the hyperlinked story, as you would find in any article online. Hypertext readers in subsequent interviews about what they had read reported that they found the story confusing and “very nervous.” The other group had no such difficulties.
To add more alarm to this combination, a researcher tracked the eye movements of Web users, setting up a small camera that charted eye movements as they read pages of text. The eye reads F-shaped web pages. We simply read the first few lines of text, then the eye quickly drops to the bottom of the page. (Discouraging news for those who write articles online!)
What are the lessons to be learned Shoals? The Internet is without a doubt an incredible and powerful tool that has improved our lives in incredible ways. Who wants to go back to queuing when all of your banking can be done from the comfort of your home? What writer or researcher would want to go back to haunting the stacks and dusty hallways of libraries, when so much more can be accessed with the click of a mouse?
However, an excessive dependence or obsession with the Internet as the whole and the end of wisdom, intelligence and information is a mistake. Just as pre-literate societies produced great oral poetry and were able to cultivate deep intellectual and philosophical awareness, we moderns can also find other avenues for intellectual stimulation. Reading books without the continuous interruptions of the Internet is one way. Sitting in a quiet natural setting and “reading nature” is another way (again, studies have found that we think much more clearly in these peaceful settings).
A reading culture that is now inexorably moving onto the Internet from the printed page is an ‘F’ shaped reading culture: shallow, fragmented, shallow, and forgetful. What this means for our intellectual and cultural future is anyone’s guess.
The Shoals: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brainsby Nicholas Carr. Published in 2010 by WW Norton and Company. ISBN: 978-0-393-07222-8
