Day 3
Long time no post, right? Class was cancelled last week, which gave my class and I plenty of time to read the book The Shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains, by Nicholas Carr.
For a relatively short book, it was packed with information about technology and how it has affected our minds. Surprisingly not a completely dull read for a class textbook, although many points were reiterated a few too many times.
According to Carr, there have been many (mostly negative) affects to our brains due to technology. The earliest example given was the creation of the book. Suddenly humans could record information and read it at their leisure, rather than relying upon the testimony of other people (as information was passed orally, like playing telephone). Originally read aloud, books and scripts were meant to be spoken; yet the “invention” of silent reading changed things. Suddenly, books weren’t being read to any sort of audience. As my teacher puts it, “Who is being read to?” With the production of books coupled with silent reading, people began to split their consciousness.
Now fast forward about 500 years to our present, and we’re presented with a similar, yet still astounding, the ebook. Now books are written and released to the public through computer technology. The consequences of this? Carr argues that this has caused a fundamental struggle in close reading and short attention spans.
According to Carr, reading something on the internet is extremely different than reading it in print. The main difference, distractions. On ebooks, words throughout the text contain hyperlinks that lead to other pages about the highlighted word. These hyperlinks add so many distractions to the overall book that tests showed people have difficulty remembering what they’ve read.
This translates to to a shorter attention span through reading in print. Have you ever tried to go deep into a book, but every few minutes, your eyes skim off the page and you have to force them back on? While that can be from simple boredom or lack of interest, Carr argues that this is due to technology. We’re so used to distractions, the constant advertisements and hyperlinks of webpages, that we can hardly close read anything for a long stretch of time.
A very short summary of the book, class discussion mainly focused on the theme of the book, the medium as the message. By medium, the author means the form of communication. For example, sending a text message. Instead of the content of the message, like “happy birthday” or some other message, the medium by which the words were sent (the text itself), is the message. Rather than picking up the phone to dial a number to wish your friend happy birthday, many people resort to texts. Texting is mostly about speedy communication without overly complicated messages in an attempt to keep a connection to the social world without too much effort. We all do it.
A potentially easier example may be what my teacher discussed in class. He used a museum as a medium for historical knowledge. Whenever one views an old piece of parchment from an older era, touching it prohibited due to the fragility of the paper, so the pages are kept in a temperature controlled glass case. My teacher’s argument mainly consisted of why we can’t touch the paper. What about it is so special? People touched it all the time with greasy hands before it hid behind the glass. Of course, my classmates responded to this that the contents of the page were important, say like the Declaration of Independence. Rebuttal: there are many copies of it everywhere word for word. So, what really is special about that one piece of paper? To the museum, the paper is more valuable than those who pay the admission piece to see it, as told by the Do Not Touch signs surrounding it. The medium (the museum)’s message is that history is not for the multitude.
Leave a Reply