The Art of Manliness - #632： How the Internet Makes Our Minds Shallow

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast have you found

00:00:11.500 it harder and harder to sit with a good book for long periods of time without getting that

00:00:15.380 itch to check your phone well you're not alone my guest day makes the case that the internet

00:00:19.140 has changed our brains in ways that make deep focus thinking harder and harder his name is

00:00:24.020 nicholas carr and he documented what was then a newly emerging phenomenon 10 years ago in his book

00:00:28.700 the shallows what the internet is doing to our brains the shallows has now been re-released the

00:00:33.100 new afterward and nick and i begin our conversation with how he thinks the effect of digital technology

00:00:37.160 on our minds has or hasn't changed over the last decade we then discuss the idea of the medium

00:00:41.480 being the message when it comes to the internet and how this particular medium changes our brains

00:00:45.300 and the ways we think and approach knowledge in the world nick then explains how we read text on

00:00:49.840 screens differently than text and books why hyperlinks mess with our ability for comprehension

00:00:53.940 why it's still important to develop our own memory bank of knowledge even in a time when we can access

00:00:58.620 facts from an outsourced digital brain and how social media amplifies our craving for the fast

00:01:03.200 and easy to digest over the slow and contemplative and we enter a conversation with how nick himself

00:01:07.640 has tried to strike a balance in keeping the advantage of the internet while mitigating its downsides

00:01:11.760 after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash shallows

00:01:15.740 all right nicholas carr welcome back to the show thank you brett it's my uh my pleasure to return

00:01:29.100 so we had you on the show a few years ago to talk about your collection of essays utopia is is creepy

00:01:34.220 got you back on the show because 10 years ago you wrote a book called the shallows how the internet is

00:01:39.880 changing our our brains and it's been 10 years you got a new edition out with an additional like a

00:01:45.040 an afterward kind of an update on how things have changed or not changed in those 10 years

00:01:50.340 what do you think what have been the big changes that have taken place on the internet that have

00:01:54.660 affected how we think in the 10 years since you originally released the shallows i think that what's

00:02:00.880 changed is the technology of computing you know back 10 years ago when we talked about going online

00:02:06.260 that was still mainly we were still mainly talking about laptops and desktop computers

00:02:11.100 and the smartphone smartphone was there it i think the iphone was was introduced in 2007

00:02:18.220 but it hadn't really taken over by 2010 so i was i was writing the book in the era of the laptop and

00:02:25.760 desktop and and now not only have smartphones kind of taken over from the cell phone i would argue

00:02:32.500 they've taken over from the personal computer as the dominant form of computing device that that

00:02:39.420 people use so i think on the one hand what's the big changes is the smartphone took over and the other

00:02:45.420 big change is that social media which was also around in 2010 you know facebook was there and twitter

00:02:51.440 was there but but it hadn't become so dominant in the way it is now so that's the second big change is

00:02:57.880 what we do with our phones more often than not is something involving social media and as we talk

00:03:04.460 about the the shallow what i think is interesting about the book i think there's still the main thesis

00:03:07.700 that you have that you put out there i think still holds up it's just that i think it's even been

00:03:12.440 refined even more because as you note in the after there's been more research that's come out to sort

00:03:17.020 of confirm what you you were writing about 10 years ago i think i think in many ways the what the

00:03:23.200 basic themes and the basic messages and research of the book if anything is is is even more relevant

00:03:31.940 today as as we've switched to smartphones and social media because if you think about you know

00:03:37.200 what i talked about in the book is how there's a trade-off involved when we go online when we use

00:03:42.900 the internet on the one hand we get the benefit of having huge amounts of information delivered very

00:03:48.820 very quickly from all sorts of different sources all sorts of overlapping forms audio video text and

00:03:55.580 so forth but what we what we lose is the ability to pay attention because the internet is a distraction

00:04:03.480 machine and so we're constantly shifting our focus constantly getting interrupted with alerts and

00:04:08.640 notifications so we have more information but i don't think we're thinking as deeply as we used to

00:04:15.920 because we're so distracted and if you think about smartphones and social media if if the internet

00:04:22.200 in general is distraction machine smartphones and social media amp up the distractions way more than

00:04:29.200 was true even 10 years ago so i think at the level of the basic analysis of the book unfortunately

00:04:35.920 things have gotten worse rather than better well at the beginning of the shallows you talk about

00:04:42.560 like the thing that sort of kick-started this whole thing 10 years ago this research project of yours

00:04:47.060 was that you had noticed that you had had a hard time like doing deep concentrated reading of like

00:04:54.220 long-form articles or even books and you started talking about this with other people and they're

00:04:58.800 saying yeah i've got the same thing i can't read like i used to and how did you decide or you

00:05:04.100 suspect that the internet had something to do with it you know back in 2007 right well i mean i've always

00:05:10.300 since i was a since i was a boy i've been a big reader love books and around 2006 2007 after having

00:05:18.600 spent quite a bit of time surfing the web as we used to call it i noticed that i was having trouble

00:05:24.540 sitting down and reading not just books but even long articles and what i what i began to realize is that

00:05:32.600 my brain seemed to want to seem to crave the stimulation it gets when i'm online when i'm looking into a

00:05:40.000 computer screen so i can click on email you know go to a website get a text message or whatever

00:05:45.480 and it was having trouble i was having trouble shutting off that desire for this constant

00:05:51.400 information stimulation and concentrate on the text for page after page after page and what i began to

00:05:59.740 realize is that it really did seem like the time i was spending online was in a sense training me to

00:06:08.520 think in a different way and that was making it harder and harder to screen out distractions and

00:06:16.260 filter out this desire for information stimulation and concentrate on the page and that was really

00:06:23.980 the spur because i you know one of the things i asked myself is is this possible i mean can a tool

00:06:30.640 that we use for a particular purpose actually change the way we think in some some deep way that

00:06:37.900 that continues even when we're not using the tool and so that's what started me down the research

00:06:44.920 that ultimately became the shallows and in a sense it was an exercise in in self-diagnosis

00:06:52.040 at least in the beginning and so this idea that you know i think most critiques so this is this is a

00:06:57.320 critique of the internet unlike a lot of critiques of the internet or even television or whatever whenever

00:07:03.440 you see that people critique the media they're typically critiquing the content right like the

00:07:07.420 internet there's porn there's violence there's trolls fake news whatever but like your critique

00:07:13.140 is more meta than that you're actually critiquing or sort of looking at how the the medium of the

00:07:19.360 internet can shape the way we think and basically who we are that's right and you know to give credit

00:07:24.960 where credit is due i'm kind of building on the work of earlier media theorists in particular marshall

00:07:31.180 mcclellan from the 1960s who coined the phrase the medium is the message and what he what he argued and

00:07:37.220 what i argue is that it's only natural when we get a new communication medium or device to focus on the

00:07:45.060 content you know if if it's an old-fashioned telephone we're focused on the conversation we're having

00:07:50.180 with somebody if it's a newspaper we're focused on the news stories but but really the deeper change

00:07:56.840 comes from the technology itself as we adapt to the new medium or the new device we do in a way

00:08:05.140 train ourselves to perceive things differently to think differently to have different levels of

00:08:11.720 attentiveness and i think we we we tend to ignore that side of things because we're so wrapped up in the

00:08:19.400 content whether we think it's good or bad or indifferent and as a result what happens is

00:08:24.260 we adapt ourselves to the technology very very quickly and only later do we begin to say hold on

00:08:32.420 maybe i've done something to myself and to into my mind that isn't beneficial and maybe i've i've paid

00:08:40.660 a cost that i wasn't aware of but now all of a sudden i can't escape this this deficit that i've taken on

00:08:48.340 you know there's that quote i forgot who who said it you know it's like we shape our tools and

00:08:52.400 thereafter our tools shape us right that was uh i can't remember the guy who said it but he was he

00:08:58.380 was picking up on a mcclellan thought there right and so like mcclellan he wrote he came with the idea

00:09:04.180 you know the medium is the message this is like in the 50s 60s like what was he seeing was he seeing

00:09:09.620 like television changing the way people think or interact with the world yeah so he was he was looking

00:09:16.720 mainly at what he called electric media and back then that meant radio and tv essentially although

00:09:22.200 he looked ahead to computers and stuff but what he was what his big argument was that for 500 years

00:09:30.040 ever since gutenberg invented the printing press around 1450 or so text in particular particularly

00:09:37.140 text in books or in magazines and so forth had been the dominant cultural medium the dominant way we

00:09:43.440 we exchanged information transmitted information in text if you think about text it's kind of an

00:09:50.520 anti-social technology because you can't read a book with somebody else you have to kind of you know

00:09:57.880 you have to kind of set up a barrier a real barrier or or at least a kind of mental barrier in order to

00:10:04.320 concentrate on text and he thought that that this really shaped not only the way we read but also the

00:10:12.040 way we communicate the way we think about ourselves he argued that it brought in much more individualism

00:10:18.340 and also this sense that we're in charge of our own knowledge we're in charge of our own

00:10:24.280 of building our own knowledge in our brains through this kind of isolated deep reading and he he believed

00:10:30.620 that electric media was overthrowing the dominance of text and bringing in a very very different way of

00:10:38.700 thinking and communicating that on the one hand was much more social and had all sorts of benefits and

00:10:44.320 i think we see this today but also kind of withdrew us from both the practice of deep reading and deep

00:10:53.760 thinking and the sense that that that practice that very contemplative attentive practice was even all

00:11:01.280 that important and i think you know so he wrote this back in 64 1964 so a long time ago but i think

00:11:08.060 that part of his message resonates even more today when when the internet and the various online tools

00:11:16.680 and social media and stuff has really taken over from the book and the printed page as the basic

00:11:23.480 means of cultural transmission and we'll get into more detail about that's where that transition from

00:11:29.120 i guess we call it the literate brain to the i guess an internet brain but i mean i think one of

00:11:34.960 the things i like about this book is you start off to explain like how is this even possible how is it

00:11:39.100 that the brain can change or a tool can change the brain because for a lot of human history there's

00:11:45.040 this idea that once you reach a certain point in your your development after adolescence your brain

00:11:50.480 is basically like concrete and you're pretty much set for the rest of your life and then so the

00:11:56.280 arguments like well how could it be that if you use the internet in your 50s and 60s your brain

00:12:00.000 changes because your brain's already set in sort of this concrete but then you bring in this idea of

00:12:05.380 neuroplasticity to explain how interacting with something like the internet can can reshape how

00:12:11.840 your brain functions yeah so i mean when i was growing up and it really until just a few decades ago there

00:12:18.160 was this conception of the brain as being very malleable in your youth where you you laid down

00:12:24.980 your your circuits for thinking and then at the age of 20 it was believed that that ended in in the

00:12:31.840 circuits you had built up at that point were the ones that remained throughout the rest of your life

00:12:36.280 and they didn't change the only thing that happened this was kind of the dark view of the brain is that

00:12:40.800 your your neuron slowly died off so you you had fewer and fewer but it turns out you know brain scientists

00:12:46.840 since then beginning in this i think 70s and then building up much more recently have discovered that

00:12:54.240 in fact our brains are changing at a physical level an anatomical level throughout our entire lives so

00:13:01.440 so that malleability or as they call it plasticity doesn't stop at 20 but but continues on and what what

00:13:09.580 happens is we adapt to our environment when we think just just in a in a analogous way to the way we

00:13:20.600 adapt to our environment physically with our body so if you exercise a certain muscle it gets stronger

00:13:25.640 if you don't exercise it it atrophies something similar the mechanisms different of course something

00:13:30.900 similar goes on with our brain the more we practice certain ways of thinking or exercise those circuits in

00:13:37.960 in our minds they literally become stronger they literally recruit more neurons more uh synaptic

00:13:45.500 connections but on the other hand if we don't practice certain ways of thinking we begin to lose those

00:13:52.480 our ability to do that and i think that you know i talked about mcclellan coming up with this idea that

00:13:58.500 that that media changes the way we think what he didn't understand and this come out comes more

00:14:05.820 recently is that there's a real deep scientific biological reason for that and that is our brains

00:14:12.620 are adapting to the medium the medium kind of creates a new environment we think in ways that the medium

00:14:19.860 encourages and as a result we strengthen certain ways of thinking but we weaken other ways of thinking

00:14:26.060 so to explore this idea of how intellectual technologies so these are things like abstract things like maps

00:14:32.880 or intellectual technologies clocks books schools etc you kind of take readers in the shallow sort of

00:14:39.920 on intellectual history to show how these things these technologies have probably shaped the human

00:14:46.040 mind so let's talk about like what was it what was the human mind like before you know like an oral 1.00

00:14:52.040 culture before there was even reading and writing do we have any idea of what how they might have

00:14:56.040 how what that that pre-literate brain was like well one thing we know is that our sense of sight

00:15:02.240 in terms of in terms of reading the environment the actual natural environment around us was probably

00:15:08.420 much much sharper which is why if you look at societies that haven't kind of come to be dominated by text

00:15:16.100 you see you see feats of navigation and kind of reading the natural world that that are amazing to us

00:15:22.520 because we can't contemplate them in the re one of the reasons for that is that when we when we learn

00:15:28.960 how to read we have to recruit a huge portion of our visual cortex the part of the brain that that

00:15:36.660 processes sight in order to become efficient readers if you think if you watch a kid learning to read

00:15:43.120 he or she goes really really slowly they have to sound out every letter and then put the letters

00:15:47.820 together to make a word what happens is a lot of our neurons as we train ourselves to read get

00:15:53.420 dedicated to recognizing not only letters but but syllables and in words and then reading becomes

00:16:00.300 automatic and so i think there's a great example of of neuroplasticity and the kind of deep influence

00:16:06.220 it can have so in effect when we teach ourselves to read we're we're changing the way our visual cortex

00:16:13.200 works in a in a really quite a fundamental way and we gain all the benefits that come with with the

00:16:19.280 ability to read but we lose this kind of ability to read the natural world because we've simply we've

00:16:27.040 simply rededicated those mental resources to something else so i mean that's one example i think it's fair

00:16:33.780 to say that you know in oral cultures the way we think about society the way we think about each other is

00:16:40.220 is very very different to pick up on that earlier theme of of reading encouraging individualism i think

00:16:47.120 i think individual i i think people were much less focused on on themselves in isolation in oral

00:16:55.520 cultures and much more thought much more about you know society as as a group of people the boundaries

00:17:04.640 between them were not so sharp as as they became so so my thinking and i think other you know other people

00:17:12.940 have come up with this as well and you know you can look at current societies that are you know that

00:17:18.420 that don't have modern technologies and stuff and see some evidence of this but but i think it's fair to say

00:17:24.140 that people thought and perceived things in very very different ways before the alphabet came along and

00:17:32.280 reading and writing came along we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors

00:17:36.080 and now back to the show well and speaking this idea that the the medium is the message or the tool

00:17:43.800 can shape your brain like even socrates a couple thousand years ago he was kind of down on he didn't

00:17:49.280 like writing because he said i think writing is going to help us or it's going to cause us to forget

00:17:53.760 things not have a sharp memory you don't remember anything so he's kind of making him a clue and

00:17:57.640 critique of of the media of media technology you know a couple thousand years ago exactly and i mean

00:18:04.820 one thing that that story brings up is that reading and writing i mean never mind the printing press

00:18:09.600 reading and writing are are quite new phenomena in human history you know they are just a little over

00:18:16.440 2 000 years old when the alphabet was invented during the time when when socrates was alive and what you

00:18:23.320 know before then the way people learned was by talking with each other by going to a wise person

00:18:29.860 or an expert like socrates himself and having a long conversation and he worried that a couple of

00:18:37.340 things would happen thanks to reading one is that we wouldn't be able to challenge the speaker

00:18:43.800 quote unquote anymore because the speaker would be we'd confront the speaker through text therefore

00:18:49.660 there was nobody to ask questions questions of anymore so the kind of dialogue that he thought

00:18:56.040 was very very important to having a rich understanding of everything would no longer be available and also

00:19:02.500 he he worried that because we'd be able to look everything up in books then we wouldn't we would

00:19:08.880 no longer need to hold all our knowledge in our own memory and he feared that that would weaken memory

00:19:16.340 which he very much associated with the richness of thinking and i think it's pretty clear that he

00:19:22.180 was right about that that that there's there i think there's little question that after the alphabet

00:19:28.900 came along and reading writing came along people's memories their store of information their heads

00:19:34.600 kind of went down pretty dramatically because you could outsource it to an external memory in a book

00:19:39.800 or a scroll or whatever right neuroscientists often refer to that as transactional memory because

00:19:45.200 rather than holding it in your own mind you're you're in some way or another transacting with a

00:19:50.400 book or with somebody else to get the information you need but you know his student plato he was a

00:19:55.840 writer i mean he wrote lots of treatises like his dialogues they were written down and i think plato

00:20:00.460 would say well yeah you might you might there's a there's a trade-off yeah you you your memory might

00:20:05.720 be weakened but it says when you write the thing down like it becomes objective right so you can like

00:20:11.180 point to and say this is what you said because if you rely on your memory there's all sorts of

00:20:15.720 things that can happen there where you misremember or something i don't know it can change inside you

00:20:20.820 as you processed it but with writing you can say well no this is what this is what you said we're

00:20:25.320 going to focus on this yeah so i mean the big irony is of course everything pretty much everything we

00:20:30.300 know about everything we know about socrates comes from plato's writings and if if writing hadn't come

00:20:35.180 along and plato hadn't written all down all these dialogues we wouldn't we'd have no knowledge of

00:20:41.080 socrates or or in would have no opportunity to be taught by him even if the way we're being taught

00:20:47.300 is imperfect in in socrates size and so yeah i think socrates i think he was right in much of his

00:20:54.880 diagnosis about what would happen to memory but i think he underestimated the power of the written word

00:21:03.800 to to expand the facts and opinions and arguments and stories that people would have access to as we

00:21:13.680 build up this huge store of literature that's suddenly available and and so the written word

00:21:20.600 kind of breaks down the barriers to the transmission of knowledge speeds it up speeds it up over space and

00:21:28.220 over time you no longer have to be a resident of athens and have immediate access to socrates to

00:21:34.880 tap into socrates's knowledge and in a way this kind of tension between socrates and plato is a tension

00:21:42.660 that that is ultimately resolved in favor of plato the writer and yet i do think that in many ways

00:21:51.220 you know our intellectual lives our store of knowledge all were greatly expanded by the arrival

00:21:59.320 of the written word and the persistence of text that doesn't mean that that socrates was wrong it just

00:22:05.300 means he didn't really foresee all the implications of the new technology and then so as the alphabet was

00:22:12.400 developed books were developed and as you mentioned this this shaped the way we thought because writing

00:22:17.360 and reading could become a private affair you could have thoughts and experiment which gave way to

00:22:22.580 new ideas and also writing or reading and writing encourages what you call linear thinking where

00:22:28.460 you're not everything's not sort of like disorganized it's like you have to make an argument so it flows

00:22:33.300 in the paper and that had big implications for us as a society i think so and i think it did

00:22:39.440 i think it greatly encouraged all sorts of experiments with expressiveness experiments with

00:22:47.220 arguments experiments with narrative everything we benefit from today that was built up through

00:22:52.880 you know decades and centuries of writing but it also i think it also one thing we we we take for

00:23:01.420 granted or don't fully appreciate about the act of deep reading and here i'm talking about really

00:23:06.820 you know getting lost in a book or an article as the saying goes is that's often portrayed today as kind

00:23:13.860 of a passive activity oh you don't get to you know you don't get to click a like button or you don't

00:23:19.140 get to comment on on it because it's all it's all just fixed prose but i think that gets it totally

00:23:24.380 wrong i think one of the great things that comes from deep reading of something in print where you're

00:23:31.040 focusing your whole mind on it is that it in a sense opens a clearing inside your mind where your own

00:23:37.660 ideas in your own not store of knowledge in your own memory collides with whatever the author's

00:23:43.820 writing whether it's a fictional story or whether it's an argument of non-fiction and as we read in

00:23:50.240 that way we're constantly kind of testing our own ideas we're constantly bringing our own experience

00:23:56.780 into the story or the narrative in it there's this dialogue i think this is one thing that socrates

00:24:03.740 is missed i think there's this dialogue between author and reader that goes on that very very much

00:24:10.140 enriches i believe our own not only our own store of knowledge but really our own our own ability to

00:24:19.080 think deeply and to analyze other people's ideas and to put new information into a broader context i think

00:24:28.280 all of that was helped by the arrival the written word and particularly the printed word which made it

00:24:33.540 by over time reducing the cost of books one important advantage of the printing press is it was an

00:24:40.280 economic advantage it it opened these works to a much broader portion of the population and encouraged

00:24:46.720 ultimately widespread literacy all right let's talk about how the internet is possibly changing the way

00:24:52.120 we think or not possibly we have there's scientific evidence that's showing that it's changing the way

00:24:55.860 we think let's talk about the just the fact of reading on a screen so when the internet first came on the

00:24:59.760 scene the the first thing that people put up there because it was the the easiest didn't take up that

00:25:03.900 much memory or ram or bandwidth was just text and so the idea was like well if it's just text on a

00:25:09.920 screen it's just basically like reading a printed book there's not going to be much of a difference but

00:25:14.720 you highlight all this research that says whenever text is on a screen we read it differently than we are

00:25:20.160 in a physical paper book yeah you know there's one kind of assumption that is very common which is

00:25:27.520 that text is text you know who cares if i'm reading it on in a book or on a desktop screen or even on my

00:25:35.420 on my phone it's all the same it's still the same words and so it the same meaning in in therefore we

00:25:42.320 shouldn't worry about it i think the the research is pretty clear that that's not true that actually

00:25:48.500 the medium through which we read influences the way we read and in the reason for that i think is

00:25:57.000 pretty clear you know if you think about a printed book for instance there's nothing else going on in

00:26:03.500 the book other than the text and therefore that the book itself in a kind of almost literal way

00:26:09.100 serves as a screen against distractions because there are always distractions in our lives there are

00:26:15.720 always other things going on our minds are wander all the time it's very very hard for human beings

00:26:22.360 to screen out distractions and really concentrate and focus our mind and i think the printed book

00:26:28.660 by kind of isolating text very very much helped train us to pay attention to not give in to distractions

00:26:37.460 and not let our mind waver all the time as as it sort of wants to do compare that to a computer screen

00:26:43.960 any kind of computer screen whether it's your phone or your laptop or whatever

00:26:47.140 sure there's the text you're reading but then there's all sorts of other things going on or

00:26:54.920 available to you there there are alerts there's notifications there's text messages other messages

00:27:01.560 there's uh social media notifications there's all the websites you might click on and even the text

00:27:08.780 itself is different because there are links in the text so the links and this is some of the most

00:27:14.400 interesting i think research that i explore in the book links themselves are little distractions we

00:27:21.480 we're not even aware of it but when you come across a highlighted piece of text that you can click on

00:27:26.940 when you're reading online somewhere in your mind you're evaluating it you're saying why is this

00:27:33.040 highlighted why is this a link what's going to happen if i click on it will i get something useful

00:27:37.640 or useless should i click on it or not all of that which we're not conscious of disrupts our attention

00:27:44.840 as we read and there's some some very good studies that show that people who read the exact same text

00:27:51.100 if it has links in it they comprehend less and they retain less so all of these all of these

00:27:57.820 differences in the medium itself mean that while we certainly can read online we spend still spend a lot

00:28:05.640 of time reading online the quality of that reading in the depth of that reading is not the same as we

00:28:13.860 get when we're reading printed material where there aren't all of those distractions going on

00:28:20.520 simultaneously yeah they've done eye tracking whenever you know comparing reading in a book and

00:28:25.740 reading on a screen and when you read on a screen you just skim like you're kind of just you're like a

00:28:31.620 hunter like looking for just sort of big pieces of information and once you get it you move on and

00:28:37.740 with a book you're more likely just to read the whole thing through right so yeah there's a the eye

00:28:42.940 tracking studies show that we read on a on a screen we read in an f pattern which means we kind of

00:28:47.980 our our eyes go across the first couple of lines of text all the way and then it we drift down the left

00:28:54.840 margin then go about halfway across and then just drift down the left margin and continue to drift

00:29:00.180 down the left margin and then click and go out and i want to say that there's nothing wrong with

00:29:05.880 skimming and scanning even in printed text i mean i mean think of how we used to read still some of us

00:29:11.460 do printed newspapers it's not like we're reading every article in depth with total attentiveness

00:29:17.040 there's all sorts of skimming and scanning going on the difference though is that skimming and scanning

00:29:23.260 becomes the dominant form of reading on a computer screen because there's so much going on and so

00:29:28.920 many distractions so we rarely give ourselves the even the opportunity to get lost in a text to really

00:29:36.600 engage in deep reading there are many ways to read and they're all very very important the problem with

00:29:42.880 the computer screen is it steals from us both the practice of in the encouragement to engage in really

00:29:51.660 attentive contemplative deep reading i want to go back to this idea of hyperlinks because this was a

00:29:57.320 one of the big selling points of the internet is that you could take all this information and hyperlink

00:30:01.700 it together and give people more context about a particular topic without you know having to focus

00:30:08.220 on a particular piece so so if you're reading war and peace for example the idea is you can link to

00:30:12.740 different things within war and peace like to a wikipedia article to explain something about

00:30:16.660 russian history and the idea is like okay this will actually help people know more about this

00:30:22.420 but the studies say actually hyperlinking all this information together often results in people

00:30:27.740 knowing and understanding less of about a topic yeah and it all comes down to the the fact that

00:30:34.420 links are distractions they're distractions when you click on them and you suddenly jump to somewhere

00:30:38.780 else and they're distractions even when you don't click on them so all of these studies and

00:30:43.780 these are studies from quite a long time ago because you're absolutely right that in the early

00:30:48.120 days of the web everybody was really excited about hyperlinks i mean for one thing it was fun to click

00:30:54.100 on them and jump somewhere else but also there was there were all sorts of scholars and educators that

00:30:59.080 thought oh this is going to be a big breakthrough in reading because you'll you know be able to read

00:31:03.840 contrasting opinions or whatever and all of that is true i i mean links are can be very helpful

00:31:09.480 but nevertheless when you look at the way people come reading comprehension in the retention of

00:31:16.340 information from reading they go down when links are incorporated into text and there was one study

00:31:22.700 i talk about that actually took the same piece of text and just varied the number of links that appeared

00:31:28.460 in the text and then had lots of different people participants in the experiment read and what they found is

00:31:34.480 that the more links you get the lower the comprehension is so that created a very clear

00:31:41.020 kind of sign that links are intruding on our ability to read deeply and as a result derive the benefits that

00:31:52.000 come from deep reading which are everything from remembering what you've read to also getting into that

00:31:59.400 that deep state i talked talked about earlier where your your your mind is kind of bringing all of its

00:32:06.280 all of its resources and all of its existing learning into the act of reading and you're kind of

00:32:11.980 challenging yourself and expanding both what you know but also expanding the context of your understanding

00:32:20.100 and as you you expand that then whenever you get new information coming into you then you can fit it into

00:32:25.840 this bigger context and it becomes more meaningful so there is this big trade-off i think with reading

00:32:32.300 online versus reading on a printed page and unfortunately as a culture we're we're voting for

00:32:38.800 we're voting for the screen so well i think you also mentioned another study in the shallows where

00:32:44.460 they didn't experiment it relates to task switching or trying to multitask and that can cause comprehension to

00:32:49.820 go down as well so they gave people in one group they gave people two things to read but they had to read

00:32:55.040 one first and then the next thing and then the next group they gave like you could like go back and

00:33:00.860 forth between the two with hyperlinks and what ended up happening was the people who just read things one

00:33:05.680 at a time remember were able to remember more the people who were going back and forth i think they

00:33:10.920 thought they knew a lot about the topic but when we actually tested from comprehension they didn't

00:33:15.580 actually remember that much right they they they remembered less and they also they had a much more

00:33:21.780 superficial understanding of what they read and also and this is also important they enjoyed it less

00:33:29.500 they thought it was less fulfilling to read it they didn't think it was as worthwhile so it kind of this

00:33:35.140 this sense we have that oh if we could only just do things simultaneously we'd get the benefits of

00:33:40.700 contrasting and and everything it just doesn't it just doesn't hold up i mean i mean what all this

00:33:47.120 research points to is that sure there are times when you want to be distracted you want to be sharing

00:33:52.200 information very very quickly but if you really want to think deeply you have to focus because that's

00:33:59.240 when it all comes down to this this process that scientists refer to as memory consolidation which is moving

00:34:06.560 information that's coming into your mind new information into your long-term memory in that

00:34:11.680 it's during that process memory consolidation that you create associations and connections

00:34:18.340 with the new information between the new information and everything else you know everything else contained

00:34:23.900 in your brain and it's those connections and associations not the little isolated bits of information

00:34:29.860 that are the basis for personal knowledge and one thing we know about memory consolidation

00:34:36.480 is that it really only happens when we're attentive if you're distracted and you're taking in a jumble

00:34:43.200 of information you're not going to develop those associations and connections those rich associations

00:34:49.920 and as a result yeah you might have quick access to a particular particular fact but you're not going

00:34:55.800 to weave that fact into a broader in deeper context instead of knowledge in your own mind

00:35:02.500 oh this segues nicely to my next question which is another thing that happens with the internet is

00:35:06.960 because we know that we can just look something up we can google it or we can like my email i treat my

00:35:13.000 email basically like google now because i use gmail so i just archive everything and i'm like well

00:35:16.720 if i need to remember something i'll just search for it and one one argument is that for the sort of

00:35:23.040 pro internet is that well this is great because now that you're not having to remember all these facts

00:35:27.500 or all this stuff you're able to spend you have more brain power to expend on creativity and reasoning

00:35:33.860 and solving complex problems is there anything to that argument that having this external memory

00:35:39.400 like google that we it gives us more time or more brain power to focus on higher level thinking

00:35:45.820 no i think that i think that's a misreading of of how the mind works it and i'm not making an

00:35:53.920 argument against having stores of information outside of our own memory that we can draw on

00:35:59.780 that's i mean that's one thing books and everything else gave us and it's extremely important but it's

00:36:06.520 also important to recognize that the depth of our thought the the rigor of our analysis and everything

00:36:13.040 is all about is all about building context so we can fit new information into this kind of bigger

00:36:19.720 picture in actuality what the what the research suggests is that the more the richer the store

00:36:26.800 of information you have in your own mind in your own memory the more deeply you'll process new

00:36:33.700 information and as a result the more thoughtful you'll be the more analytical you'll be the better

00:36:38.580 able you'll be to evaluate the worth of some new piece of information so memory the store of

00:36:46.480 information in your own head is very very tightly linked to the depth and rigor of your thinking

00:36:53.140 it's not like these are two separate things and oh if i spend energy on remembering things then i'll

00:36:58.660 have less mental energy to to go toward analysis or whatever that's that simply gets our thought

00:37:05.880 processes wrong it's it it's actually very important to build up this deep store of information in our

00:37:14.780 own heads in our own memory and supplement it with the stuff that's that we can google or the stuff

00:37:21.780 that's in books so if we think of it in terms of supplementing our own rich store of information with

00:37:29.480 all the information that's outside of us and is written down somewhere or is on videos or whatever

00:37:35.000 that's fine that that gives us the best of both worlds but if we think of of the web and of google

00:37:41.120 as a substitute for our own memory and this is what a lot of people argue i think mistakenly

00:37:48.460 then that's when we get into trouble because at that point we no longer develop the context

00:37:54.780 necessary to really fully evaluate all the information that's coming at us so quickly online

00:38:00.940 well that's interesting because that kind of goes against i mean the pedagogy that they're

00:38:04.260 doing in elementary schools or high schools it's like well we want to teach kids

00:38:07.780 how to reason and think so we're not going to spend a lot of time learning facts but i was like

00:38:13.140 how do you expect a kid to like reason about the constitution or whatever if they don't even know

00:38:19.180 like what the constitution is like no like you have to have the building blocks in order to you know make

00:38:25.920 an argument or or analyze something exactly and and so you know i've been we've been talking about this in

00:38:32.440 terms of the technology but really this there's something broader that's been going on culturally

00:38:38.380 and socially where we've come to believe that you can you can separate memory what you know from

00:38:47.620 how you think in actuality you can't do that so this isn't i'm not making an argument for rote

00:38:53.500 memorization for sitting down and just you know going through a set of numbers or a set of facts and

00:38:59.480 and just going over them over and over and over again what i am arguing for is that we have to

00:39:05.800 recognize that to think deeply about anything you have to actually know stuff otherwise our minds start to

00:39:13.960 to work like computers where you have some particular fact you need to plug into some

00:39:19.800 some something you're doing and you grab that fact and then immediately forget it and go on to the next

00:39:25.480 thing some you can you can do some activities some mental activities that way and you can do them

00:39:31.740 quite successfully but if you really if you really want to think deeply you have to know things because

00:39:39.140 that's the that's the only way to build the context necessary to connect a new piece of information with

00:39:46.760 the lots of other pieces of information and it's only at that point that thinking actually becomes

00:39:51.600 really interesting that's interesting you mentioned you brought up that idea that we treat the brain

00:39:55.920 like a computer i was i think it's fascinating to study the history of metaphors for brains throughout

00:40:00.520 history because it says a lot about the technology of the time so you know back in the you know

00:40:05.800 industrial evolution the brain was like a machine or it was like a hydraulic pump in the way you think

00:40:12.340 about your brain it actually there's there's a there's a tendency for it to influence how you you go about

00:40:18.080 interacting with the world so what do you think of the implications of us thinking of our brain as

00:40:22.300 just a computer beyond just what you just said that oh you can just sort of just data in data out

00:40:26.740 that's all it is i think that i think the danger is that we we begin to we begin to value only those ways

00:40:36.320 of thinking that resemble the way a computer works and that's very much you know maximizing the

00:40:43.220 efficiency of input and output so we start to think oh the more information i can get the more

00:40:49.440 the more quickly then that's all to the good and what we begin to devalue are the ways of thinking that

00:40:56.880 happen when we're not being stimulated by flows of information so things like contemplation

00:41:02.160 reflection attentiveness in general all of those ways of thinking which are completely

00:41:10.080 you know go against the grain of what computers can do all of those ways of thinking we begin to think

00:41:16.880 are dispensable and i believe that's i believe that's one of the stories of our times that that

00:41:22.740 not only are we engaging in things like contemplation and reflection

00:41:27.760 less often but we're beginning to think we don't really need those ways of thinking

00:41:33.120 as long as we as long as we're processing lots of information and lots of messages

00:41:37.840 as quickly as possible as long as we're googling a lot of stuff clicking on a lot of buttons and icons

00:41:44.080 then then we're thinking in a kind of optimum fashion because then we're thinking more and more

00:41:49.760 like computers and you know i think i think that might be one of the great tragedies of modern times

00:41:57.700 is that we're we're losing even this sense that contemplation and attentiveness in quiet deep thought

00:42:05.940 has value well let's go let's talk about this idea of the the social media so like the smartphone

00:42:12.800 obviously they just it just amplifies our distractiveness i mean you're there's so many

00:42:16.380 things you can you're you're surfing the web on your phone you're like get a notification from your

00:42:20.000 app and then you're going to check instagram but let's talk about what is this increased social

00:42:25.620 interactivity of the web what is that doing or sort of amplifying with how the internet is is

00:42:32.660 affecting our brain yeah and that's a you know that's one of the questions i i tried to wrestle

00:42:37.920 with when i was writing this the new um afterward to the book because the shallows focus is very much

00:42:44.680 on on personal thinking and how having access to all this information online changes the way

00:42:52.080 we as individuals think what's become very very clear over the last 10 years as social media has

00:43:00.180 become more and more popular and become more and more kind of central not only to how we use

00:43:05.160 computers but how to how we live our lives is that there's very very much a social aspect that wasn't

00:43:11.320 as clear 10 years ago and i think and i think we're still learning about the effects of of this and

00:43:18.480 there are good effects and and there are ill effects and in some ways during the pandemic

00:43:23.120 we're kind of we're we're we're speeding up our learning because now even more than before we're

00:43:30.620 reliant on social media of various sorts to to do things that we used to do in person whether it's

00:43:37.260 business meetings or classrooms or or cocktail parties or whatever and so i i think in in in recent

00:43:44.100 years well let me back up i i think again one of the stories here is that in the beginning we focus on

00:43:52.000 all the good things that come out of of having social media and our ability to exchange information

00:43:58.280 with others and to express ourselves we focus very much on the positive side of that oh we've broken

00:44:04.000 down the barriers to media so each of us can be a producer and a content creator and we get our messages

00:44:11.940 out to the world and that that's very important i think and that is a big benefit but in recent years

00:44:17.400 we've learned that there are big negatives as well and a lot of those big negatives come from the fact

00:44:24.160 that human nature has a bright side and it has a dark side and to think that if we have this technology

00:44:31.340 that allows everybody to express everything going on in their head all the time that that's going to

00:44:38.480 draw out the very negative qualities of human nature as well as the sunnier qualities of human nature

00:44:44.240 human nature and once you create this this kind of web of social media it becomes very very hard

00:44:51.880 to to figure out how to regulate it how to emphasize the good qualities but get rid of the trolling and

00:44:59.320 the fake news and the vindictiveness and everything else that we we've been struggling with and i think

00:45:05.880 companies like facebook and google and twitter they they're in a position now where it's quite clear that a lot of

00:45:12.880 the you know a lot of effect the effects of their services are are quite negative but the social

00:45:19.060 media work at such a scale and such a speed it becomes very very difficult to figure out how do we

00:45:25.820 how do we rein in this information and and i think that's what we're we're seeing today is is a lot of

00:45:33.460 struggles with all of these these things and what's interesting too and thanks to the smartphone because

00:45:38.900 it's got a camera a lot of the way we communicate is very visual or video so it's like you you show

00:45:45.380 share a picture on instagram you a meme you create these memes on your smartphone that's just sort of an

00:45:50.060 image with a few simple words tick tock videos youtube like that's what people people gravitate

00:45:55.400 they're not gravitating towards like long-form articles in the new yorker they just want the the 15

00:46:01.580 second tick tock video yeah it's been a quite a dramatic change i you know particularly over the

00:46:08.240 last 10 years i i you know we had youtube and we were we had a lot of visual ways of exchanging

00:46:14.140 information online 10 years ago but but that's all accelerated greatly i mean i mean if you look back

00:46:21.380 in the early days of facebook it was very very text-based that's no longer the case and so

00:46:26.340 you know again i i think there's there's good and bad things here there's i think one of the things

00:46:33.260 that's going on is that the way we communicate is changing to respond to the fact that with our

00:46:43.100 phones or other computers connected to the internet there's a super abundance of information and it's all

00:46:49.620 streaming by very very quickly so you have to kind of you have to grab a person's attention and get as

00:46:55.340 much information across as quickly as possible and i think i think videos photographs and certainly

00:47:02.200 memes which are kind of this new form new form of expression that often intermingles text and in

00:47:09.460 pictures images i think all of these are a response to the to the need to make a point very very quickly

00:47:16.120 because you know that the audience is is not going to stay focused on one thing for very long and so

00:47:21.560 what you get is this a great deal of creativity in expressing things visually with maximum efficiency

00:47:28.660 and sometimes with great humor and wit and stuff but what you lose i think is is the depth of

00:47:35.780 engagement so you have to not only you have to not only design communications to fit within the medium

00:47:44.040 but you have to make them more and more superficial because you know that that's that's about the best you

00:47:49.640 can the best way you can you can grab a person's fleeting attention uh superficial and also amp up

00:47:57.820 any emotional content because that's what what stands out in the flow of information well i mean how

00:48:03.120 have you so i think i think the case you're not i mean you're critiquing the internet but you're also

00:48:07.980 saying okay there's some good things about the internet too he's got to be aware of what it's doing to

00:48:11.900 our brains to our minds and the way we think how have you personally tried to sort of balance the

00:48:19.540 benefits of the internet while also trying to downplay or mitigate its downsides and in sort of

00:48:25.340 have to keep that literate brain if that you you once had yeah and so you know as i said that my writing

00:48:32.420 about this subject and you know the inspiration for the shallows initially came out of my own experience

00:48:37.500 struggling with maintaining my ability to to be attentive and to be contemplative and things i

00:48:43.420 value and and it's still you know even after even after doing the research and writing the book and

00:48:49.700 kind of coming to i think a better understanding of why i and others are experiencing this it's still

00:48:55.640 a struggle in fact it is probably even even more of a struggle for a long time i i held off

00:49:02.460 and didn't get a get a smartphone and then finally i gave in and of course now like everyone i carry it

00:49:11.380 with me all the time it's always on it's always kind of even if it's not actively distracting me

00:49:16.400 you know part of my part of my brain is saying gee i should pull out my phone see what's going on

00:49:20.900 and so even that is a distraction so you know i guess i guess what i've done is tried to at least

00:49:28.680 at least moderate some of the biggest sources of distraction so i i've turned off notifications

00:49:36.960 on my apps and the other phone functions and stuff to the extent possible uh they still come through

00:49:44.940 because it's almost a full-time job turning off and keeping off notifications because companies who

00:49:50.800 develop these apps really want to keep you distracted and it also i i try at least and sometimes i'm

00:49:58.240 successful sometimes not to actually not take my phone with me all the time because it in in there's

00:50:05.920 some recent research that i that i talk about in the afterward that that shows that even even when

00:50:10.820 your phone's in your pocket you're not using it and there's it's not buzzing or anything it's still

00:50:15.540 a major drag on your attention major draw on your attention so i try to you know if i'm going to go out

00:50:23.380 to have dinner or something i'll say do i really need to bring my phone with me and more often than

00:50:28.780 not the answer is no and so i'll leave it behind or if i'm going for a walk or so i'm trying to be

00:50:33.680 more disciplined in choosing when i have my phone with me and when it's going to distract me rather

00:50:41.440 than simply go rather than simply take the course that i think as a society we've kind of accepted

00:50:47.300 without thinking which is you should have your phone with you all the time so those are a couple

00:50:51.660 of things but you know i have to be i have to be honest it's it's a constant struggle and i i still

00:50:56.840 find it distressingly uh difficult to kind of shut off this craving for stimulation and sit down and

00:51:07.340 do something that requires concentration like like reading a long article or a book so i think this is you

00:51:15.360 know i think very much this is the new environment cultural environment social environment intellectual

00:51:21.960 environment we've created for ourselves and it values some ways of thinking and devalues other it others

00:51:29.640 and for those of us who want to try to maintain a inability to to to think deeply and read deeply

00:51:37.340 it really does mean that that we're gonna it's we're gonna be kind of constantly in a sense

00:51:45.000 working against pushing back against not only the technology but the the set of cultural and

00:51:51.180 social norms that has developed around the technology and is constantly telling us we have to be always

00:51:58.320 online always exchanging messages watching messages replying very very quickly our culture has changed

00:52:06.440 in a way that is very much a process of adapting to the technology well nick this has been a great

00:52:15.280 conversation where can people go to learn more about the the new book the update and the rest of

00:52:19.520 your work um well i have a website so you can go there and be distracted it's nicholas carr.com

00:52:25.120 and that has a list of my various books as well as some of the articles and essays i've written over

00:52:31.500 the years so that would be the best starting point fantastic well nicholas carr thanks for your time

00:52:36.000 it's been a pleasure thank you brett my guest today was nicholas carr he is the author of the book

00:52:40.520 the shallows what the internet is doing to our brains is available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:52:44.540 everywhere you can find out more information about his work at his website nicholas carr.com also check

00:52:49.640 out our show notes at aom.is slash shallows where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper

00:52:54.420 into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at

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00:53:35.760 as always thank you for the continued support and until next time this is brett mckay reminding you

00:53:39.700 not only to listen to the aom podcast but put what you've heard into action

00:53:51.460 yeah

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00:53:56.640 you

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The Art of Manliness - August 03, 2020

#632： How the Internet Makes Our Minds Shallow

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