The piece that follows is a reflection on Nicholas Carr's book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, which began as an Atlantic article entitled, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"
As I struggled to concentrate on this book about how we can no longer concentrate on books, it was hard to disagree. Here is a man who has watched firsthand his ability to read and think deeply decline since the advent of the computer. I, on the other hand, have grown up with the computer. Indeed, it was at the feet of “Reader Rabbit” that I learned to read, and as I moved on to more substantive reading, the computers came with me. SparkNotes, Wikipedia, and now Google Books have all been my companions along the way. I find it hard to fathom how my predecessors had the patience to use card catalogues or to read whole books in search of a single idea. Certainly, “the Net,” as Carr calls it, has changed the way we interact with the written word. It teaches us to scan; it tempts us to “Jet Ski” through material, barely breaking the surface. My attention span is short, and it is definitely difficult to sit down and read for an extended period of time.
Still, Carr’s analysis seems a little dire to my computer-tutored mind. Somehow, despite Reader Rabbit and the Internet, I have developed a love for books - not text message books, not news abstracts - just books. And though most books don’t deserve a full reading, I’ve found that the greatest books can be read again and again. I’m rather nostalgic by disposition, so it seems I’ve faired the advance of technology a bit better than Carr. I still read those books made of paper and ink. And I print out articles of any length, so I can give them the same attention. For anything requiring real thought, I use a ruler to track the words and a pencil or ink pen to underline significant passages. If I am to do any serious editing, I print out the document and mark it up with my pen. It may not be green; it may not be efficient. But when it comes to books, efficiency gets in the way of a slow and careful reading.
One of Carr’s greatest insights is the mathematical nature of the Net and its tendency to keep us from deep reading and deep thinking. But this suggests that Carr cares about more than paper and ink in large quantities. Books are more importantly the repositories of ideas. The best things that have been thought and said simply cannot be contained in a blog post because the complexities of the great questions do not admit of such brevity. Even Nietzsche, who wrote mainly in aphorisms, published collections of them together as a unified whole so as to say something coherent about reality. Socrates, who along with Jesus never wrote a book, somewhere said,
Just as others are pleased by a good horse or dog or bird, I myself am pleased to an even higher degree by good friends. . . And the treasures of the wise men of old which they left behind by writing them in books, I unfold and go through them together with my friends, and if we see something good, we pick it out and regard it as a great gain if we thus become useful to one another.
Books are how we encounter the best that has been thought and said. They provide us with the means of putting great minds in conversation with one another about the most important questions. Reading and thinking deeply has never been easy. The focus and attention required for reading great books does not come naturally. Indeed, liberal education was originally to teach students how to read books. In his concluding lines Carr suggests that the Net might be cutting us off from our humanity, and yet he offers no solution to this predicament. He consoles himself by buying the latest Blue Ray player. Liberal education is, I think, the road back to reading books and to reflection on eternal things. It is a vital counterbalance to the transitory world of technology.
