Friday.....America.....Dave, My Mind Is Going

Nicholas Carr begins and ends his book The Shallows, What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains with thoughts on HAL from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. "Dave, my mind is going...I can feel it. I can feel it" were the computers last words as the astronaut disconnected circuits. Carr follows with I can feel it too. Over the last few years I've had an uncomfortable sense, that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. Marshall McLuhan appears throughout the book with warnings from years ago that we would experience the dissolution of the linear mind and that we were breaking the tyranny of text over our thoughts and senses. Carr says that he no Luddite and points out that because of the Web, research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes but that this boon comes at a price for it shape (s) the process of thought. His book gives us a history of the written word and dissemination of books throughout the world in general. Likewise there's a history of the computer, it's ever increasing use along with some fascinating anecdotes. He spends considerable time on the latest discoveries on the human brain, memory, the processes of learning and cognitive thought...all very readable for the layman. He also gives a caveat on social networking and  companies such as Google. Since Gutenberg's invention, according to Carr, the linear, literary mind has been at the center of art, science and society. The heightened consciousness of the elite in earlier times and most people in more literate times has devolved into computerized minds today that experience cognitive overload from the massive input of semi-related data which eliminates deep thought. Books once enhanced and refined people's experience of life and of nature, writes Carr but this is being replaced by the shallows as the new technologies can displace but not replace the written word and linear mind. Carr details how his own normal  usage of the PC became a dependence upon it and its services. He had first been turned into a human word processor (my present condition) and then something like a high-speed data processing machine, a human HAL, and laments I missed my old brain then set out on research that resulted in this book. We get a fair amount of history and philosophy, from Gutenberg's invention to Nietzsche's use of a typewriter prototype after he went blind but these are only morsels, for the main course is the human brain, how it functions and how it ultimately became dependent on the technology that it invented. We read thoughts on wisdom from Socrates and Aristotle to McLuhan and Henry David Thoreau. This topic isn't new to me and I've recommended Arthur W. Hunt's book The Vanishing Word, The Veneration Of Visual Imagery In The Postmodern World a few times. I recommend both books but Hunt writes of God's design of the written word as a primary method of communicating with man, whereas Carr barely mentions the biggest selling and most powerful book, and source of all wisdom, the Bible.  I'm mentioned in the book! Well, not me personally but the millions of bloggers who wield a keyboard like a magic sword, sending their thoughts into cyberspace. The statistics are there to prove his assertions that extreme computer usage tends to lowers intelligence. It may increase "knowledge" but neuters what intelligence can do with it.  Carr writes The Net's cacophony of stimuli short circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively. Our brains turn into simple signal-processing units, quickly shepherding into unconsciousness and then back again....If our brains are computers, then intelligence becomes indistinguishable from machine intelligence.   Numerous experiments are referenced showing that the hypertext-laden usage of the Internet is producing that cognitive overload. Carr writes research continues to show that people who read linear text comprehend more, remember more, and learn more than those who read text peppered with links. He quotes a certain Rhodes Scholar in that he is comfortable admitting not only that he doesn't read books but that he doesn't see any particular need to read them and cites a digital expert in that we have been emptily praising  great writers of the past. Carr asks Why bother, when you can Google the bits and pieces you need in a fraction of a second. The Net is making us smarter he writes only if we define intelligence by the Net's own standard. Carr explores the phenomenon of Social Networking but saves his greatest concerns for Google, Google's Silicon Valley headquarters-the Googleplex-is the Internet's high church, he writes, and the religion that it practices is nothing more than long established theories on how to improve efficiency in industry transferred to efficiency in the circuitry of the mind. He quotes Google's CEO Eric Schmidt in that the company is founded on the science of measurement striving to systematize everything constantly seeking to refine algorithms to find meaning in our navigation of the Web, the next best thing to actually being able to read (our) minds. Carr quotes Neil Postman in that technical calculation is in all respects (deemed) superior to human judgement; that in fact human judgement cannot be trusted and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts. Carr writes the last thing the company (Google) wants is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. Google is, quite literally, in the business of distraction. Google, Facebook and others are in a constant competition to keep us distracted. The efforts to digitalize every book in the world is explored with the comments by some in government who were suspicious of Google's motives, despite the altruistic rhetoric...that... when businesses like Google look at libraries, they do not merely see temples of learning...they see potential assets...ready to be mined. Another observer wrote that Google has become a true believer in its own goodness, a belief which justifies its own set of rules regarding corporate ethics, anti-competition, customer service and its place in society and that the real value of books in not in the self-contained literary work but in the data to be mined. Carr enters the debate on artificial intelligence coming down solidly in that it will not happen but does warn that humans may indeed be transformed into computers. He quotes David Brooks of the New York Times in that he once thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more but came to realize that the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. A little bit of personal commentary here in that this is in no small way related to our voting patterns today. Our knowledge of national and international affairs comes from snippets of information garnered from television shows where hosts who speak in soundbites devoid of any deep meditation on any of the issues seem totally ignorant of accurate opposing views. And this is all that we want, for the pace of the Internet allows no contemplation. Memory is outsourced as David Books put it. Carr enters into this thought with evidence that memory is unstable for a brief period of time and the Internet is the perfect antidote for the development of long-term memory. Allow me another personal comment here in that the proclamation of the Gospel is also effected by the information age in that decisions for Christ are all too often mere hyperlinks in religious surf, just one more piece of data to be stored. The short-term memory of an altar call fails to plow deep in the mind and heart. This is why I concluded my short story, Seaman Murphy, from October 25th with John Cermak's refusal to lead Shane Murphy in the sinner's prayer. Nicholas Carr sums up his theories in that it is becoming much easier for humans to operate computers...but also....easier for computer networks to operate human beings. I want to add Carr's experience in writing this book as he was without the Internet as he worked on it: The dismantling of my online life was far from painless. For months, my synapses howled for their Net fix. I found myself sneaking clicks on the "check for new mail" button. Occasionally, I'd go on a daylong Web binge. but in time the cravings subsided, and I found myself able to type at my keyboard for hours on end or to read through a dense academic paper without my mind wandering. Some old, disused neural circuits were springing back to life, it seemed, and some of the newer, Web-wired ones were quieting down. I started to feel generally calmer and more in control of my thoughts-less like a lab rat pressing a lever and more like, well, a human being. My brain could breath again. Carr's brief sojourn in the Bible was profound in these verses:
Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of men's hands.
They have mouths, but they speak not;
eyes have they, but they see not;
They have ears, but they hear not;
Noses have they, but they smell not;
They have hands, but they handle not;
Feet have they, but they walk not;
Neither speak they through their throat;
They that make them are like unto them;
So is every one that trusteth in them.