The Shallows

by Nicholas Carr

  2. Clive Thompson, “Your Outboard Brain Knows All,” Wired, October 2007.

  3. Scott Karp, “The Evolution from Linear Thought to Networked Thought,” Publishing 2.0 blog, February 9, 2008, http://publishing2.com/2008/02/09/the-evolution-from-linear-thought-to-networked-thought.

  4. Bruce Friedman, “How Google Is Changing Our Information-Seeking Behavior,” Lab Soft News blog, February 6, 2008, http://labsoftnews.type pad.com/lab_soft_news/2008/02/how-google-is-c.html.

  5. Philip Davis, “Is Google Making Us Stupid? Nope!” The Scholarly Kitchen blog, June 16, 2008, http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2008/06/16/is-google-making-us-stupid-nope.

  6. Scott Karp, “Connecting the Dots of the Web Revolution,” Publishing 2.0 blog, June 17, 2008, http://publishing2.com/2008/06/17/connecting-the-dots-of-the-web-revolution.

  7. Davis, “Is Google Making Us Stupid? Nope!”

  8. Don Tapscott, “How Digital Technology Has Changed the Brain,” BusinessWeek Online, November 10, 2008, www.businessweek.com/ technology/content/nov2008/ tc2008117_034517.htm.

  9. Don Tapscott, “How to Teach and Manage ‘Generation Net,’” BusinessWeek Online, November 30, 2008, www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov 2008/tc20081130_713563.htm.

  10. Quoted in Naomi S. Baron, Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 204.

  11. John Battelle, “Google: Making Nick Carr Stupid, but It’s Made This Guy Smarter,” John Battelle’s Searchblog, June 10, 2008, http://battellemedia. com/archives/004494.php.

  12. John G. Kemeny, Man and the Computer (New York: Scribner, 1972), 21.

  13. Gary Wolfe, “The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun,” Wired, October 1994.

  Two THE VITAL PATHS

  1. Sverre Avnskog, “Who Was Rasmus Malling-Hansen?,” Malling-Hansen Society, 2006, www.malling-hansen.org/fileadmin/biography/biography.pdf.

  2. The story of Nietzsche and his typewriter draws from Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 200–203; J. C. Nyíri, “Thinking with a Word Processor,” in Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences, ed. R. Casati (Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1994), 63–74; Christian J. Emden, Nietzsche on Language, Consciousness, and the Body (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 27–29; and Curtis Cate, Friedrich Nietzsche (Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 2005), 315–18.

  3. Joseph LeDoux, Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are (New York: Penguin, 2002), 38–39.

  4. In addition to the 100 billion neurons in our brains, there are about a trillion glial cells, or glia. It was once assumed that glia were inert, essentially providing padding to the neurons. (Glia means “glue” in Greek.) Over the last two decades, however, neuroscientists have found clues that glia may play important roles in the brain’s functioning. A particularly abundant kind of glial cell, called an astrocyte, appears to release carbon atoms and produce neurotransmitters in response to signals from other cells. Further discoveries about glia may deepen our understanding of the brain’s workings. For a good overview, see Carl Zimmer, “The Dark Matter of the Human Brain,” Discover, September 2009.

  5. J. Z. Young, Doubt and Certainty in Science: A Biologist’s Reflections on the Brain (London: Oxford University Press, 1951), 36.

  6. William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1 (New York: Holt, 1890), 104–6. Translation of Dumont’s essay is from James E. Black and William T. Greenough, “Induction of Pattern in Neural Structure by Experience: Implications for Cognitive Development,” in Advances in Developmental Psychology, vol. 4, ed. Michael E. Lamb, Ann L. Brown, and Barbara Rogoff (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1986), 1.

  7. See Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (New York: Penguin, 2007), 223.

  8. Quoted in Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003), 130.

  9. Quoted in Doidge, Brain That Changes Itself, 201.

  10. The Nobel laureate David Hubel made this remark to the neurosurgeon Joseph Boden, report Schwartz and Begley in Mind and the Brain, 25.

  11. Doidge, Brain That Changes Itself, xviii.

  12. A video of the debate between Mailer and McLuhan can be seen at Google Videos: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5470443898801103219.

  13. Schwartz and Begley, Mind and the Brain, 175.

  14. R. L. Paul, H. Goodman, and M. Merzenich, “Alterations in Mechanoreceptor Input to Brodmann’s Areas 1 and 3 of the Postcentral Hand Area of Macaca mulatta after Nerve Section and Regeneration,” Brain Research, 39, no. 1 (April 1972): 1–19.

  15. Quoted in Schwartz and Begley, Mind and the Brain, 177.

  16. James Olds, interview with the author, February 1, 2008.

  17. Graham Lawton, “Is It Worth Going to the Mind Gym?,” New Scientist, January 12, 2008.

  18. The workings of synapses are extraordinarily complicated, influenced by a wide array of chemicals including transmitters like glutamate (which encourages the transfer of electrical signals between neurons) and GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid, which inhibits the transfer of the signals) and various modulators, like serotonin, dopamine, testosterone, and estrogen, that alter the efficacy of the transmitters. In rare cases, the membranes of neurons fuse, allowing electrical signals to pass without the mediation of synapses. See LeDoux, Synaptic Self, particularly 49–64.

  19. Eric R. Kandel, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (New York: Norton, 2006), 198–207. See also Bruce E. Wexler, Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 27–29.

  20. Kandel, In Search of Memory, 202–3.

  21. LeDoux, Synaptic Self, 3.

  22. The use of the visual cortex in reading Braille was documented in an experiment undertaken by Alvaro Pascual-Leone in 1993. See Doidge, Brain That Changes Itself, 200.

  23. McGovern Institute for Brain Research, “What Drives Brain Changes in Macular Degeneration?,” press release, March 4, 2009.

  24. Sandra Blakesley, “Missing Limbs, Still Atingle, Are Clues to Changes in the Brain,” New York Times, November 10, 1992.

  25. In some of the most promising experimental treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, currently being tested with considerable success in mice, drugs are used to promote plastic synaptic changes that strengthen memory formation. See J.-S. Guan, S. J. Haggarty, E. Giacometti, et al., “HDAC2 Negatively Regulates Memory Formation and Synaptic Plasticity,” Nature, 459 (May 7, 2009): 55–60.

  26. Mark Hallett, “Neuroplasticity and Rehabilitation,” Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 42, no. 4 (July–August 2005): xvii–xxii.

  27. A. Pascual-Leone, A. Amedi, F. Fregni, and L. B. Merabet, “The Plastic Human Brain Cortex,” Annual Review of Neuroscience, 28 (2005): 377–401.

  28. David J. Buller, Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 136–42.

  29. M. A. Umiltà, L. Escola, I. Instkirveli, et al., “When Pliers Become Fingers in the Monkey Motor System,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105, no. 6 (February 12, 2008): 2209–13. See also Angelo Maravita and Atsushi Iriki, “Tools for the Body (Schema),” Trends in Cognitive Science, 8, no. 2 (February 2004): 79–86.

  30. E. A. Maguire, D. G. Gadian, I. S. Johnsrude, et al., “Navigation-Related Structural Change in the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97, no. 8 (April 11, 2000): 4398–403. See also E. A. Maguire, H. J. Spiers, C. D. Good, et al., “Navigation Expertise and the Human Hippocampus: A Structural Brain Imaging Analysis,” Hip- pocampus, 13, no. 2 (2003): 250–59; and Alex Hutchinson, “Global Impositioning Systems,” Walrus, November 2009.

  31. A. Pascual-Leone, D. Nguyet, L. G. Cohen, et al., “Modulation of Muscle Responses Evoked by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation during th
e Acquisition of New Fine Motor Skills,” Journal of Neurophysiology, 74, no. 3 (1995): 1037–45. See also Doidge, Brain That Changes Itself, 200–202.

  32. Michael Greenberg, “Just Remember This,” New York Review of Books, December 4, 2008.

  33. Doidge, Brain That Changes Itself, 317.

  34. Ibid., 108.

  35. Pascual-Leone et al., “Plastic Human Brain Cortex.” See also Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves (New York: Ballantine, 2007), 244.

  36. Doidge, Brain That Changes Itself, 59.

  37. Schwartz and Begley, Mind and the Brain, 201.

  a digression ON WHAT THE BRAIN THINKS ABOUT WHEN IT THINKS ABOUT ITSELF

  1. Quotations from Aristotle’s The Parts of Animals are from William Ogle’s much-reproduced translation.

  2. Robert L. Martensen, The Brain Takes Shape: An Early History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 50.

  3. René Descartes, The World and Other Writings, ed. Stephen Gaukroger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 106–40.

  4. Martensen, Brain Takes Shape, 66.

  Three TOOLS OF THE MIND

  1. Vincent Virga and the Library of Congress, Cartographia (New York: Little, Brown, 2007), 5.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Arthur H. Robinson, Early Thematic Mapping in the History of Cartography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 1.

  4. Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 44.

  5. David S. Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 76.

  6. Lynn White Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 124.

  7. Landes, Revolution in Time, 92–93.

  8. Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1963), 15. The distinguished computer scientist Danny Hillis notes that “the computer, with its mechanistic playing out of predetermined rules, is the direct descendant of the clock.” W. Daniel Hillis, “The Clock,” in The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years, ed. John Brockman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 141.

  9. Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (New York: Cosimo, 2008), 119.

  10. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Ode, Inscribed to W. H. Channing,” in Collected Poems and Translations (New York: Library of America, 1994), 63.

  11. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, critical ed., ed. W. Terrence Gordon (Corte Madera, CA: Gingko, 2003), 68. For a more recent expression of this view, see Kevin Kelly, “Humans Are the Sex Organs of Technology,” The Technium blog, February 16, 2007, www.kk.org/thetechnium/ archives/2007/02/ humans_are_the.php.

  12. James W. Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (New York: Routledge, 2008), 107.

  13. Langdon Winner, “Technologies as Forms of Life,” in Readings in the Philosophy of Technology, ed. David M. Kaplan (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 105.

  14. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Intellect,” in Emerson: Essays and Lectures (New York: Library of America, 1983), 417.

  15. See Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (New York: Harper, 2007), 217.

  16. H. G. Wells, World Brain (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1938), vii.

  17. René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 3, The Correspondence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 304.

  18. Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy (New York: Routledge, 2002), 82.

  19. F. Ostrosky-Solís, Miguel Arellano García, and Martha Pérez, “Can Learning to Read and Write Change the Brain Organization? An Electrophysio-logical Study,” International Journal of Psychology, 39, no. 1 (2004): 27–35.

  20. Wolf, Proust and the Squid, 36.

  21. E. Paulesu, J.-F. Démonet, F. Fazio, et al., “Dyslexia: Cultural Diversity and Biological Unity,” Science, 291 (March 16, 2001): 2165–67. See also Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2008), 168–69.

  22. Wolf, Proust and the Squid, 29.

  23. Ibid., 34.

  24. Ibid., 60–65.

  25. Quotations from Phaedrus are taken from the popular translations by Reginald Hackforth and Benjamin Jowett.

  26. Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 41.

  27. Ong, Orality and Literacy, 80.

  28. See Ong, Orality and Literacy, 33.

  29. Ibid., 34.

  30. Eric A. Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 74.

  31. McLuhan, Understanding Media, 112–13.

  32. Ibid., 120.

  33. Ong, Orality and Literacy, 14–15.

  34. Ibid., 82.

  Four THE DEEPENING PAGE

  1. Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (London: Penguin, 1961), 114.

  2. Paul Saenger, Space between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 14.

  3. Ibid., 7.

  4. Ibid., 11.

  5. Ibid., 15.

  6. Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (New York: Harper, 2007), 142–46.

  7. Saenger, Space between Words, 13.

  8. Charles E. Connor, Howard E. Egeth, and Steven Yantis, “Visual Attention: Bottom-Up versus Top-Down,” Cognitive Biology, 14 (October 5, 2004): 850–52.

  9. Maya Pines, “Sensing Change in the Environment,” in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling in the World: A Report from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, February 1995, www.hhmi.org/senses/a120.html.

  10. The brain’s maintenance of top-down control over attention seems to require the synchronized firing of neurons in the prefrontal cortex. “It takes a lot of your prefrontal brain power to force yourself not to process a strong [distracting] input,” says MIT neuroscientist Robert Desimone. See John Tierney, “Ear Plugs to Lasers: The Science of Concentration,” New York Times, May 5, 2009.

  11. Vaughan Bell, “The Myth of the Concentration Oasis,” Mind Hacks blog, February 11, 2009, www.mindhacks.com/blog/ 2009/02/the_myth_ of_the_conc.html.

  12. Quoted in Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (New York: Viking, 1996), 49. Early Christians practiced a religious form of Bible reading called lectio divina, or holy reading. Deeply meditative reading was seen as a way to approach the divine.

  13. See Saenger, Space between Words, 249–50.

  14. Ibid., 258. Walter J. Ong notes that editorial intensity increased further as the publishing business grew more sophisticated: “Print involves many persons besides the author in the production of a work—publishers, literary agents, publishers’ readers, copy editors and others. Before as well as after scrutiny by such persons, writing for print often calls for painstaking revisions by the author of an order of magnitude virtually unknown in a manuscript culture.” Ong, Orality and Literacy (New York: Routledge, 2002), 122.

  15. Saenger, Space between Words, 259–60.

  16. See Christopher de Hamel, “Putting a Price on It,” introduction to Michael Olmert, The Smithsonian Book of Books (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1992), 10.

  17. James Carroll, “Silent Reading in Public Life,” Boston Globe, February 12, 2007.

  18. Gutenberg was not the first to invent movable type. Around 1050, a Chinese craftsman named Pi Sheng began molding Chinese logographs out of small bits of clay. The clay type was used to print pages through hand-rubbing, the same method used to make prints from woodblocks. Because the Chinese didn’t invent a printing press (perhaps because the large number of logographic symbols made the machine impractical), they were unable to mass-produce the prints, and Pi Sheng’s movable type remained of limited use. See Olmert, Smithsonian Book of Books, 65.

  19. Se
e Frederick G. Kilgour, The Evolution of the Book (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 84–93.

  20. Francis Bacon, The New Organon, ed. Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 100.

  21. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, one-volume paperback ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 46.

  22. Michael Clapham, “Printing,” in A History of Technology, vol. 3, From the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution, c. 1500–c. 1750, ed. Charles Singer et al. (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 37.