amen!
--
Best regards,
Frank
Frank E. Taylor
CERN MIT
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On Thu, 2 Sep 2010, Ray F. Cowan wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> Jean Deken, the SLAC archivist, recommended the book "The Shallows" to
> me this morning. It's about how the common ways we use the internet may
> be causing us go think less and less deeply about issues--and how it may
> even be re-wiring our brains.
>
> Here's a blurb about it from (where else?) the web:
>
> Is Google making us stupid? When Nicholas Carr posed that question in a
> celebrated Atlantic essay, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the
> Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates
> of our time: As we enjoy the Net.s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to
> read and think deeply?
>
>
> Now Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the
> Internet.s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes
> how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by .tools of the mind. .
> from the alphabet, to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer .
> Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by
> such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical
> and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The
> technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute
> our neural pathways.
>
>
> Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a
> convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic
> . a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He
> explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and
> creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid,
> distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is
> the ethic of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized
> production and consumption . and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We
> are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is
> our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.
>
>
> Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism,
> The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes . Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling
> with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures,
> Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive
> . even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche.
> This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our
> minds.
>
>
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