In this book’which had its beginnings as an article in the Atlantic, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"’Nicholas Carr asks how the Internet is affecting the way we think. Our use of the Internet and digital media certainly warrants serious attention. According to a statistic cited by Carr, most Americans spend at least eight and a half hours per day looking at a computer, television, or mobile phone screen (87). We need to consider what all of this screen time is doing to us because, as Marshall McLuhan observed decades ago, "The medium is the message." The Internet is not simply an empty form that only takes on meaning depending upon the content that it is used to convey. Embedded in the form itself are assumptions about who we are and what life is all about. In Carr's words, "As our window onto the world, and onto ourselves, a popular medium molds what we see and how we see it’and eventually, if we use it enough, it changes who we are, as individuals and as a society" (3). For this reason, we should not only be concerned about the kind of content we access through the Internet, but also about the ways in which this medium is changing the way we think and live.
Carr is certainly no Luddite. In fact, he came to write this book because of his growing suspicion that his own rather extensive use of the Internet and digital media was changing him in ways he did not like. He notes that while he used to be able to sit down for lengthy periods to slowly work his way through a book, he has recently found himself to be restless and easily distracted when he tries to do so. I suspect that this is an experience with which many of us can identify. We are living in a culture of distraction, and it has an effect on us. This should be a matter of special concern for Christians, because the life of discipleship is nurtured through practices that require concentration and contemplation’practices such as listening, reading, meditating, and praying. The person who lives in the perpetually distracted state, which is encouraged by today's digital media, will have difficulty growing into a mature follower of Jesus Christ.
Carr's carefully researched book shows that there are neurological explanations for our weakened ability to concentrate. Numerous studies in the field of neuroscience have demonstrated that the brain is able to "reprogram" itself and change the way it functions depending on the way in which it is used. Because of this, having a short attention span is something that is shaped by our habits and behaviors. The technical term to describe this phenomenon is "neuroplasticity." Our brains are always in a state of flux, responding to our experiences by forming synaptic connections that serve as the primary pathways for our patterns of thought and behavior. It is because of the brain's plasticity that the media we employ to engage the world have such a shaping influence upon how our brain is "wired."
Carr explains this by contrasting our older print-based culture with our current digitally mediated culture, a culture in which images are more dominant than words. People who live in a culture where the printed word is the dominant mode of communication need to cultivate an aptitude for sustained attention. Carr writes, "As our ancestors imbued their minds with the discipline to follow a line of argument or narrative through a succession of printed pages, they became more contemplative, reflective, and imaginative" (75). For this reason, one could contend that people living in word-based cultures are more likely to see life as an opportunity to pursue that which is true, good, and beautiful.
As for our current image-based culture, while it is true that people still read, the Internet and digital media foster a very different kind of reading. Carr cites numerous studies that have shown that people do not read material on a screen in the same way in which they read printed material. We devote less attention to what we read on a screen. We are less immersed in it. We scan. We browse. We multitask. Of course, there is a time and place for this less attentive kind of reading, but our technologies are making this the dominant, and in many cases exclusive, mode of reading for many people. We are losing our ability to think deeply and creatively. Our brains are running aground in "the shallows."
Our technological age is fascinated with methods and means, but it tends to neglect asking questions about ends. It is very easy for us to be captivated by a new tool without giving any consideration to where it will take us. We need to be asking questions about ends, questions such as: What kind of person do I want to be? What kind of relationships should I be cultivating? In what ways can I use a certain technology to help me move in these directions? In what ways might my use of a technology actually work against this? We neglect these questions to our peril. When we use technology without giving thought to where it will take us, our assumptions about life's priorities and meaning will be uncritically conformed to the assumptions inherent in the technologies we use.
At the end of his book, Carr drives this point home with an illustration from Stanley Kubrick's science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey: "In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That's the essence of Kubrick's dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence" (224).
