The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Deep reading refers to the combination of sustained attention and “the highly active and efficient deciphering of text and interpretation of meaning” (64). Silent deep reading enables readers to make connections and arrive at their own unique understanding of the text—what Carr refers to as deep thinking. Deep reading involves disengaging from outward stimuli to focus on internal stimuli, and this reflective state provides the brain with the resources for deep thinking. By contrast, the Internet as a medium demands focus on external stimuli—links, images, audio, messages—and the process of internal reflection and synaptic development is halted.

This term refers to the “set of assumptions about how the human mind works or should work” (45). Carr argues that “every intellectual technology […] embodies an intellectual ethic” (45), citing how the mechanical clock suggests time is made up of linear, measurable, equal units and how the map encourages abstract, spatial reasoning. The Shallows compares the literary ethic of internal, reflective processing through deep reading with the Internet ethic of quick-paced multitasking.

Carr sorts technology into four categories based on the human ability or experience the technology expands or amplifies. Intellectual technology, a term coined by Jack Goody and Daniel Bell, “include[s] all the tools we use to extend or support our mental powers—to find and classify information, to formulate and articulate ideas, to share know-how and knowledge. To take measurements and perform calculations, to expand the capacity of our memory” (44). The Internet, the book, the typewriter, the map, and the clock are all intellectual technologies that both expand mental powers and also create cognitive shifts in the brain.

Humans have a social instinct that “entails ‘a set of processes for inferring what those around us are thinking and feeling’” (213). This “mirroring” instinct enables people to coordinate in large groups, empathize with community members, and achieve long-term, complex goals. Jason Mitchell, a Harvard neuroscientist, posits that this instinct also causes humans to project thoughts and feelings onto inanimate objects, like computer programs. Carr argues that humanity’s willingness to be in community with inanimate objects “poses a threat to our integrity as human beings” (214).

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to change its cognitive processes and physical structure throughout a person’s lifetime in response to repeated stimuli. Physiologist Michael Merzenich’s experiments in the 1970s and 1980s revealed that contrary to previously held scientific belief, brains continue to form new synapses in adulthood. Eric Kandel’s experiments on short-term and long-term memory proved that the brain’s plasticity is what allows new memories to form and older memories to consolidate into knowledge. Psychiatrist Norman Doidge observes, “[T]he paradox of neuroplasticity […] is that, for all the mental flexibility it grants us, it can end up locking us into ‘rigid behaviors’” (34). Carr uses neuroplasticity to support his argument that not only does the brain change itself in response to Internet use, but those changes may also have long-term evolutionary effects.