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.