The Net is Not Our Only Love: Thoughts on Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows"

Are we losing our contemplative minds by being online?

That’s the central, disconcerting question that author Nicholas Carr asks and then answers with a measured yes in his new book The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing Our Brains (Norton, 2010). In The Shallows, Carr follows up on a concern he first voiced in his 2008 essay in The Atlantic titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

The book bolsters Carr’s original argument nicely, backing up anxieties about the human intellect with results of recent neurological studies as well as piles of alarming anecdotal evidence. And, considering it’s a book that so bemoans twenty-first-century attention spans, Carr’s volume manages to maintain reader interest surprisingly well throughout. It’s an enjoyable, engrossing read from an unassuming wordsmith who willingly offers himself as a sort of worst-of-gadget-sinners figure while launching into his troubling cultural diagnosis.

“I began worrying about my inability to pay attention to one thing for more than a couple minutes,” Carr testifies early on in the book. “Even when I was away from my computer, I yearned to check e-mail, click links, do some Googling. I wanted to be connected. Just as Microsoft Word had turned me into a flesh-and-blood word processor, the Internet, I sensed, was turning me into something like a high-speed data-processing machine, a human HAL.”

Who among the wired masses cannot relate to this confession? Who among us has not silently relished seeing a handful of unread messages appear in the inbox and felt compelled to catch up on Twitter and Facebook feeds at almost embarrassing rates of frequency during the day? And yet, as illuminating and informative and relatable as his material is, Carr’s interpretations often wax too apocalyptic to be very believable, overreaching in terms of what it all portends for humanity.

Carr strikes this less convincing note when he writes that while it's “possible” to think deeply while online, deep thinking is “not the type of thinking the technology encourages or rewards.” Instead, Carr goes on to say, the medium tends to transform us into “lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.” Really? Is this truly what we are being reduced to? The online habits of those I have known and lived and worked with bear little resemblance to such descriptions of mindless frenzy.

Perhaps at certain cynical moments images of something akin to lab rats cross our minds as we glance at strangers texting in an airport or watch Droid commercials glamorizing automated efficiency. (I must admit that it was with a kind of otherizing disgust that I passed an Apple store overflowing with a flock of iPhoners the other day, and yesterday when the soulless Kindle commercial aired yet again, the one with the two people seated on the sterile-looking beach, I wanted to shake the ad’s producers for so thoroughly collapsing the magic of the literary world into a bland image of escapism.) But when I consider people more carefully and the technologies and gadgets we employ more closely, I’m generally unable to subscribe to this doomsday vision of where humanity is headed, nor place such primary blame for societal trajectories on the prevalence of digital connectivity. Carr suggests that not only may the digital age of distraction rob our brains of the ability to think deeply but, even more troubling, the ability to empathize with others and have compassion. And while I share his concern over perceived threats to these important qualities, I do not view the latest technologies as the major enemy of them.

Carr and other critics of technology help keep us alert to our penchant for the latest tools and toys. Societal and individual reflection on such matters is valuable and necessary, and The Shallows is a worthwhile contribution to those efforts. What I appreciate most about the book is its pairing of literary and historical figures with the more technical aspects of his argument. Unexpectedly relevant excursions into minds ranging from Socrates to Kubrick and from Nietzsche to Erasmus make it impossible to brush Carr off lightly. He’s clearly done a great deal of deep reading and meditative thinking (however diminished he believes his capacity to do so).

In his original Atlantic piece, Carr concludes with references to the movie 2001, artificial intelligence and the suggestion that we are fast becoming “pancake people” with little depth—all working memory, few longterm cognitive powers on which to draw. It’s a frightening conclusion to consider, but also an unlikely and unnecessary one—at least if we continue to love more than just the Internet. And our day-to-day acitivities, commitments and lives suggest that indeed we do.

"What if reading were proved to be more beneficial than exercise?"

This question was one of many good ones asked by author Francine Prose during her address at the 3rd International Humanities Medal event at Wash U tonight. Here are a few more of her remarks that really got me thinking ...


"It's neither the responsibility, nor the purpose, of art to make us better people." That responsibility, Prose said, is "each one of ours," as human beings.


"[Art] can help us understand better what it is to be a human being," and there is "something humanizing about the intimacy" between artist and viewer/reader.


Art can protect us -- it is "the driftwood that humans cling to, as we always have, when we worry that we are drowning."


She referenced Emily Dickinson more than once, particularly in regard to what we mean when we say that something is beautiful or true. I got a copy of Prose's Reading Like a Writer: A guide for people who love books and for those who want to write them. Can't wait to read her.

Terrors

I have nothing like Dickinson's excuse for my absence--"a terror since September"--but nevertheless I've neglected my blog since the end of August. I've been thinking a lot about troubling things, particularly the consequences of community, the concept of hell, and war as waged by the country that has my allegiance. (Nothing too major, right?)

For a while now, at least since the "Staging War" literature course I took a year and a half ago in Wyoming, I've been well on my way to a pacifist stance. An understanding of violence as perhaps our greatest failure of imagination as human beings certainly makes any war pretty difficult to support. Perhaps many just-war-theory types feel the same way, except for some exceptions in certain circumstances. But I don't think I'll end up in the just war camp (even though I'm all for the good arguments against the invasion of Iraq etc based on such theory).

It's strange to write this down, even though I've obsessed and obsessed over it. There's the fear of being, and sounding, naive. "I just am not okay with ever killing someone. War is bad. The end." There's also the inherent element of hypocrisy--I continue to live as a citizen of the United States and in effect contribute to (even benefit from?) our never-ending occupations in the Middle East.

But there's something else, too, something bigger: the realization that if the majority of Americans came to agree with me, and we really did rethink the utility of violence, there would likely be some very terrible consequences. We would be left vulnerable, open to attack. Many of us would lose our lives. I get it. I get that it would totally suck and that my being okay with such an outcome might be a little extreme. When I consider the alternatives, though, I'm pretty convinced that a pacifist approach is the most reasonable and ethical among the available options.

I wonder if this makes me a coward. Weak. Willing to let the bad guys win. I don't know. But I do know that it's not because I'd be afraid to fire a weapon, or to die. It's because, as Chris Hedges writes, "a soldier who is able to see the humanity of the enemy makes a troubled and ineffective killer." It's because a world like ours, where violence and suffering have become so necessary, isn't a world I care to perpetuate. And it's probably because I can't get Susan Sontag out of my head (Regarding the Pain of Others).

On a more positive note, it's also because of flashes of true imagination that suggest war is not the only way. Flashes like this one, from the interview (with the author) at the back of God Bless: A Political/Poetic Discourse Mediated by H. L. Hix:

"Bush turns up the volume on his rhetoric depending on who he's talking to, or turns it down, and so does bin Laden. He's also made peace overtures: look, the instant that you stop occupying the lands that we consider sacred, we stop shooting you. In any kind of a dialogue--third graders having a fist fight, or two of the most powerful people on the planet leading others into battle with thousands and thousands of lives as stake--in any kind of dialogue you can either withhold trust from the other person until the other person fulfills your preconditions for attributing trust, or you can insist on trust as a condition of conversation, and grant the trust and cling to it insistently. I can hear someone saying now, we tried to trust him but they flew planes into our buildings, and the other side then makes analogous accusations about different events, so if there's going to be dialogue instead of shooting, somebody has to say, okay I believe that you are a human being who wishes to live and wishes for those you love to have happy and robust lives, and I am going to act as if that is the case no matter what you do. It seems to me that that's a healthier approach."

I for one am up for us trying that approach -- "I believe that you are a human being ... and I am going to act as if that is the case no matter what you do."

A tribute to Dash

I was going to describe exactly why he's the best cat ever, but ...

... need I really say more? I love you, Dash.

The threadbare case against Park51 "mega-mosque"

Only one respectable talking point remains for opponents of Cordoba's planned Muslim-American community center, and it depends on a single phrase -- it's insensitive. This last-ditch argument actually bolsters the case for the development of Park51, at least when we look closely at the meaning of sensitivity and its absence (insensitivity), as well as at the proposed center itself.

While we often associate sensitivity with the experience of being offended or having our feelings hurt, Oxford's first definition of the word sensitive is being "accutely affected by external stimuli or mental impressions; having sensibility [the capability to feel]." Further definitions of the word follow, of course, but this idea of having the capability to feel captures nicely what we mean when using sensitive with positive connotations. Conversely, the word insensitive comes with this description: "unfeeling; boorish; crass." This idea is the one being applied to the Muslim community in New York City, a community that lost some of its own members and loved ones in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Now consider Park51's stated vision and answer to the "why now" question: "In the spirit of tolerance and service, the Muslim community of New York envisions a world-class facility and an unprecedented community center as a gesture of our dedication to the city. At a time of economic hardship, Park51 will constitute an investment of over $100 million of infrastructure in lower Manhattan, creating over 150 full-time jobs and over 500 part-time jobs, and providing much-needed space, open to all, for community activities, health and wellness, arts and culture and personal and professional development."

Which words most befit these goals? Ambitious, certainly. Bold. Even courageous, considering the discrimination Muslim Americans continue to face in this country. But insensitive? Nah.

If words are not enough, consider the development plan itself. The complex is intended to include not only a space for prayer but also sports facilities, a library, art studios, a restaurant, a culinary school and "a September 11th memorial and quiet contemplation space, open to all." And the Wall Street Journal reports that the board overseeing the center will include members from other religions in order to, in the words of project partner Daisy Khan, "protect the interests of the center and to ensure the center has the highest standards of transparency." Minarets, by the way, aren't part of the plan.

Cordoba has gone about this whole thing quite sensitively indeed. Their efforts and plans and reactions have in fact demonstrated a solid capacity to feel and sense and consider and adapt, as well as a solid capacity to stand up to fear and deep distortion. I'm glad they're sticking to their (clearly nonviolent) guns, and I wish them the very best in their genuine efforts to foster understanding and peace. I believe folks like those behind Park51 are doing much more constructive things in this world than those who continue to use the horror of Sept. 11 in ways that keep us viewing the world and its dwellers in simplistic, war-mongering ways.

Operations wonderful

Watching the news tonight, I was reminded just how removed the language of modern warfare is from its realities. The host was rattling off several U.S. military operation names, including "Operation Enduring Freedom," "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and, the winner of the most-Twilight-esque badge, "Operation New Dawn." There's apparently as much of an art these days to naming a war as there is to branding anything else.

Operation nicknames haven't always been so aimed at shaping public perception. Prior to World War II, one helpful source explains, color-based operation names were common (e.g., "Operation Indigo"), and even after 1945 the list of military operations includes a number of color-, region- and content-based names. But in 1989, officials under President Bush termed the invasion of Panama "Operation Just Cause," and similarly agenda-driven nicknames have followed since.

Is this embedded form of persuasion to pro-war sentiment simply how things have to be in a marketing-savvy world? I hope not. It's one thing for Pepsi to suggest that drinking their cola makes you cool or unique in addition to quenching your thirst. It's quite another thing for the United States to suggest that occupying lands outside its realm and killing fellow human beings is all part of making freedom endure. War is at its heart a destructive enterprise. It is the deepest failure of human imagination, and when we engage in it (these days, apparently without end) we ought to acknowledge that reality, not whitewash it.

When the U.S. initiated nuclear testing, the powers that be named it "Operation Crossroads." Perhaps a slight misnomer considering the consequences?

Here are some alternative nicknames, though I fear they will not see military ink: 1) For the ongoing war Afghanistan, let's call it "Operation that Must Succeed Even If It Can't" or "Operation No Plan B." 2) Instead of "Operation New Dawn" for this latest announced phase in Iraq, let's go with "Operation Apology for American Exceptionalism." Eh. These could be better.

Some recent shots