The Shallows

by Nicholas Carr

  63. Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1967), 29.

  64. David G. Stork, ed., HAL’s Legacy: 2001’s Computer as Dream and Reality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 165–66.

  65. John von Neumann, The Computer and the Brain, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 82. The italics are von Neumann’s.

  66. Ari N. Schulman, “Why Minds Are Not like Computers,” New Atlantis, Winter 2009.

  Nine SEARCH, MEMORY

  1. Quoted in Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (New York: Viking, 1996), 49.

  2. Umberto Eco, “From Internet to Gutenberg,” lecture presented at Columbia University’s Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, November 12, 1996, www.umbertoeco.com/en/from-internet-to-gutenberg-1996. html.

  3. Quoted in Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 102–4.

  4. Erika Rummel, “Erasmus, Desiderius,” in Philosophy of Education, ed. J. J. Chambliss (New York: Garland, 1996), 198.

  5. Quoted in Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books, 12.

  6. Ann Moss writes that “the commonplace-book was part of the initial intellectual experience of every schoolboy” in the Renaissance. Printed Commonplace-Books, viii.

  7. Francis Bacon, The Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 4, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath (London: Longman, 1858), 435.

  8. Naomi S. Baron, Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 197.

  9. Clive Thompson, “Your Outboard Brain Knows All,” Wired, October 2007.

  10. David Brooks, “The Outsourced Brain,” New York Times, October 26, 2007.

  11. Peter Suderman, “Your Brain Is an Index,” American Scene, May 10, 2009, www.theamericanscene.com/2009/05/11/your-brain-is-an-index.

  12. Alexandra Frean, “Google Generation Has No Need for Rote Learning,” Times (London), December 2, 2008; and Don Tapscott, Grown Up Digital (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009), 115.

  13. Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 187.

  14. William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (New York: Holt, 1906), 143.

  15. See Eric R. Kandel, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (New York: Norton, 2006), 208–10.

  16. Ibid., 210–11.

  17. Louis B. Flexner, Josefa B. Flexner, and Richard B. Roberts, “Memory in Mice Analyzed with Antibiotics,” Science, 155 (1967): 1377–83.

  18. Kandel, In Search of Memory, 221.

  19. Ibid., 214–15.

  20. Ibid., 221.

  21. Ibid., 276.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Ibid., 132.

  24. Until his name was disclosed upon his death in 2008, Molaison was referred to in the scientific literature as H.M.

  25. See Larry R. Squire and Pablo Alvarez, “Retrograde Amnesia and Memory Consolidation: A Neurobiological Perspective,” Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 5 (1995): 169–77.

  26. Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind (New York: Guilford, 2001), 37–38.

  27. In a 2009 study, French and American researchers found evidence that brief, intense oscillations that ripple through the hippocampus during sleep play an important role in storing memories in the cortex. When the researchers suppressed the oscillations in the brains of rats, the rats were unable to consolidate long-term spatial memories. Gabrielle Girardeau, Karim Benchenane, Sidney I. Wiener, et al., “Selective Suppression of Hippocampal Ripples Impairs Spatial Memory,” Nature Neuroscience, September 13, 2009, www.nature.com/neuro/ journal/vaop/ncurrent/ abs/nn.2384.html.

  28. University of Haifa, “Researchers Identified a Protein Essential in Long Term Memory Consolidation,” Physorg.com, September 9, 2008, www.physorg.com/news140173258.html.

  29. See Jonah Lehrer, Proust Was a Neuroscientist (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007), 84–85.

  30. Joseph LeDoux, Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are (New York: Penguin, 2002), 161.

  31. Nelson Cowan, Working Memory Capacity (New York: Psychology Press, 2005), 1.

  32. Torkel Klingberg, The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory, trans. Neil Betteridge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 36.

  33. Sheila E. Crowell, “The Neurobiology of Declarative Memory,” in John H. Schumann, Shelia E. Crowell, Nancy E. Jones, et al., The Neurobiology of Learning: Perspectives from Second Language Acquisition (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2004), 76.

  34. See, for example, Ray Hembree and Donald J. Dessart, “Effects of Handheld Calculators in Precollege Mathematics Education: A Meta-analysis,” Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 17, no. 2 (1986): 83–99.

  35. Kandel, In Search of Memory, 210.

  36. Quoted in Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2008), 242.

  37. Kandel, In Search of Memory, 312–15.

  38. David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2009), 54 and 123.

  39. Ari N. Schulman, correspondence with the author, June 7, 2009.

  40. Lea Winerman, “The Culture of Memory,” Monitor on Psychology, 36, no. 8 (September 2005): 56.

  41. Pascal Boyer and James V. Wertsch, eds., Memory in Mind and Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 7 and 288.

  42. Richard Foreman, “The Pancake People, or, ‘The Gods Are Pounding My Head,’” Edge, March 8, 2005, www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ foreman05/fore man05_index.html.

  a digression ON THE WRITING OF THIS BOOK

  1. Benjamin Kunkel, “Lingering,” n+1, May 31, 2009, www.nplusonemag.com/lingering. The italics are Kunkel’s.

  Ten A THING LIKE ME

  1. Joseph Weizenbaum, “ELIZA—A Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication between Man and Machine,” Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, 9, no. 1 (January 1966): 36–45.

  2. David Golumbia, The Cultural Logic of Computation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 42.

  3. Quoted in Golumbia, Cultural Logic, 37.

  4. Ibid., 42.

  5. Weizenbaum, “ELIZA.”

  6. Ibid.

  7. Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (New York: Freeman, 1976), 5.

  8. Ibid., 189.

  9. Ibid., 7.

  10. Quoted in Weizenbaum, Computer Power, 5.

  11. Kenneth Mark Colby, James B. Watt, and John P. Gilbert, “A Computer Method of Psychotherapy: Preliminary Communication,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 142, no. 2 (1966): 148–52.

  12. Weizenbaum, Computer Power, 8.

  13. Ibid., 17–38.

  14. Ibid., 227.

  15. John McCarthy, “An Unreasonable Book,” SIGART Newsletter, 58 (June 1976).

  16. Michael Balter, “Tool Use Is Just Another Trick of the Mind,” Science-NOW, January 28, 2008, http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/ cgi/content/full/ 2008/128/2.

  17. The Letters of T. S. Eliot, vol. 1, 1898–1922, ed. Valerie Eliot (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 144. As for Nietzsche, his affair with the Malling-Hansen Writing Ball turned out to be as brief as it was intense. Like many of the early adopters of new gadgets who would follow in his eager footsteps, he became frustrated with the typewriter’s flaws. The writing ball, it turned out, was buggy. When the Mediterranean air grew humid with the arrival of spring, the keys started to jam and the ink began to run on the page. The contraption, Nietzsche wrote in a letter, “is as delicate as a little dog and causes a lot of trouble.” Within months he had given up on the writing ball, trading the balky device for a secretary, the young poet Lou Salomé, who transcribed his words as he spoke them. Five years later, in one of his last books, On
the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche made an eloquent argument against the mechanization of human thought and personality. He praised the contemplative state of mind through which we quietly and willfully “digest” our experiences. “The temporary shutting of the doors and windows of consciousness, the relief from the clamant alarums,” he wrote, allows the brain “to make room again for the new, and above all for the more noble functions.” Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003), 34.

  18. Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (New York: Penguin, 2007), 311.

  19. John M. Culkin, “A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan,” Saturday Review, March 18, 1967.

  20. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, critical ed., ed. W. Terrence Gordon (Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2003), 63–70.

  21. Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1963), 15.

  22. Weizenbaum, Computer Power, 25.

  23. Roger Dobson, “Taxi Drivers’ Knowledge Helps Their Brains Grow,” Independent, December 17, 2006.

  24. Doidge, Brain That Changes Itself, 310–11.

  25. Jason P. Mitchell, “Watching Minds Interact,” in What’s Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science, ed. Max Brockman (New York: Vintage, 2009), 78–88.

  26. Bill Thompson, “Between a Rock and an Interface,” BBC News, October 7, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7656843.stm.

  27. Christof van Nimwegen, “The Paradox of the Guided User: Assistance Can Be Counter-effective,” SIKS Dissertation Series No. 2008-09, Utrecht University, March 31, 2008. See also Christof van Nimwegen and Herre van Oostendorp, “The Questionable Impact of an Assisting Interface on Performance in Transfer Situations,” International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 39, no. 3 (May 2009): 501–8.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid.

  30. “Features: Query Suggestions,” Google Web Search Help, undated, http://labs.google.com/suggestfaq.html.

  31. James A. Evans, “Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship,” Science, 321 (July 18, 2008): 395–99.

  32. Ibid.

  33. Thomas Lord, “Tom Lord on Ritual, Knowledge and the Web,” Rough Type blog, November 9, 2008, www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/11/tom_ lord_on_rit.php.

  34. Marc G. Berman, John Jonides, and Stephen Kaplan, “The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting with Nature,” Psychological Science, 19, no. 12 (December 2008): 1207–12.

  35. Carl Marziali, “Nobler Instincts Take Time,” USC Web site, April 14, 2009, http://college.usc.edu/news/stories/547/nobler-instincts-take-time.

  36. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Andrea McColl, Hanna Damasio, and Antonio Damasio, “Neural Correlates of Admiration and Compassion,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, no. 19 (May 12, 2009): 8021–26.

  37. Marziali, “Nobler Instincts.”

  38. L. Gordon Crovitz, “Information Overload? Relax,” Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2009.

  39. Sam Anderson, “In Defense of Distraction,” New York, May 25, 2009.

  40. Tyler Cowen, Create Your Own Economy (New York: Dutton, 2009), 10.

  41. Jamais Cascio, “Get Smarter,” Atlantic, July/August 2009.

  42. Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 56. The italics are Heidegger’s.

  43. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 35.

  Epilogue HUMAN ELEMENTS

  1. William Stewart, “Essays to Be Marked by ‘Robots,’” Times Education Supplement, September 25, 2009.

  Further Reading

  This book scratches many surfaces. To the reader who would like to explore the topics further, I recommend the following books, all of which I found illuminating and many of which I found inspiring.

  THE BRAIN AND ITS PLASTICITY

  Buller, David J. Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature. MIT Press, 2005.

  Cowan, Nelson. Working Memory Capacity. Psychology Press, 2005.

  Doidge, Norman. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. Penguin, 2007.

  Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. On the Origins of Cognitive Science: The Mechanization of the Mind. MIT Press, 2009.

  Flynn, James R. What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

  Golumbia, David. The Cultural Logic of Computation. Harvard University Press, 2009.

  James, William. The Principles of Psychology. Holt, 1890.

  Kandel, Eric R. In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind. Norton, 2006.

  Klingberg, Torkel. The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory. Oxford University Press, 2008.

  LeDoux, Joseph. Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are. Penguin, 2002.

  Martensen, Robert L. The Brain Takes Shape: An Early History. Oxford University Press, 2004.

  Schwartz, Jeffrey M., and Sharon Begley. The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. Harper Perennial, 2002.

  Sweller, John. Instructional Design in Technical Areas. Australian Council for Educational Research, 1999.

  Wexler, Bruce E. Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change. MIT Press, 2006.

  Young, J. Z. Doubt and Certainty in Science: A Biologist’s Reflections on the Brain. Oxford University Press, 1951.

  THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

  Chappell, Warren. A Short History of the Printed Word. Knopf, 1970.

  Diringer, David. The Hand-Produced Book. Philosophical Library, 1953.

  Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge University Press, 1980. An abridged edition, with a useful afterword, has been published as The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  Kilgour, Frederick G. The Evolution of the Book. Oxford University Press, 1998.

  Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. Viking, 1996.

  Nunberg, Geoffrey, ed. The Future of the Book. University of California Press, 1996.

  Saenger, Paul. Space between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford University Press, 1997.

  THE MIND OF THE READER

  Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. Faber and Faber, 1994.

  Dehaene, Stanislas. Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention. Viking, 2009.

  Goody, Jack. The Interface between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge University Press, 1987.

  Havelock, Eric. Preface to Plato. Harvard University Press, 1963.

  Moss, Ann. Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought. Oxford University Press, 1996.

  Olson, David R. The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading. Cambridge University Press, 1994.

  Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Routledge, 2002.

  Wolf, Maryanne. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Harper, 2007.

  MAPS, CLOCKS, AND SUCH

  Aitken, Hugh G. J. The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio, 1900–1932. Princeton University Press, 1985.

  Harley, J. B., and David Woodward, eds. The History of Cartography, vol. 1. University of Chicago Press, 1987.

  Headrick, Daniel R. When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700–1850. Oxford University Press, 2000.

  Landes, David S. Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World, rev. ed. Harvard University Press, 2000.

  Robinson, Arthur H. Early Thematic Mapping in the History of Cartography. University of Chicago Press, 1982.

  Thrower, Norman J. W. Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society. University of Chicago Press, 2008.

  Virga
, Vincent, and the Library of Congress. Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations. Little, Brown, 2007.

  TECHNOLOGY IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

  Heidegger, Martin. The Question concerning Technology and Other Essays. Harper & Row, 1977. Heidegger’s essay on technology was originally published in the collection Vorträge und Aufsätze in 1954.