![]() ![]() In a chapter on memory, Carr notes the growing perception that we can use computers to store the memories and knowledge we have been accustomed to keeping in our brains. It’s this “pinched conception of the human mind” that Carr mourns and resists. ![]() Companies such as Google, Carr observes, apply Industrial Revolution–era ideals of efficiency and mechanization to our thought processes-at the expense of ambiguity, complexity and the gradual emergence of new ideas. ![]() The book also airs out some of our assumptions about the mind. A great deal of recent research, he says, points to this conclusion: “When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning.” That’s a scary thought for those who value deep reading and careful, leisurely thinking. And he provides an intelligent observer’s history of the study of how the brain works. Carr explores past examples of new technologies, beginning with Friedrich Nietzsche’s experience with an early version of the typewriter. ![]()
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