Preface: In 2010 I posted a long book review on  Nicholas Carr's....The Shadows. It's much too long to bring back but I have chosen just a few paragraphs. The reason is this....evangelicals want to make their country great again....and do not want anything more than a token reminder now and then about judgment of the last days. Carr's book does not mention this....(although he did include some Bible verses)....but he does inadvertently address the issue in that the coming and even present world that he describes....is not a world that we should look forward to....and 'making America great again' or not....we are in line to enter a horror movie. In this scenario....do you see how we in the church today are strenuously laboring to restart the ship's motor....to get to the scheduled destination....not realizing that if we finally get to that destination....and step on shore....and see what is before us....we will turn in a panic and attempt to take the skiff back to the ship....and as far away as possible from this future dystopia as possible? A lot has changed and been discovered in the sixteen years this book was published....and it is all even far worse than what the book describes! If there is to be a Last Days revival....there will have to be....mouths in the pulpit that finally begin to speak....and ears in the pews that can hear what previously has not been spoken....and eyes to see and discern what is going on....and noses to smell the stench....and hands to lift to God seeking mercy....and feet to run....to run as fast as we can from the false prophets....and to the ship whose Captain is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! I recently went back to Pitt's Hillman Library....after its remodeling....where I had worked as a student fifty-some years ago....and I walked from the fourth floor down to the bottom....five floors....looking for books....any books? We do not need books anymore....we need links....to information. We today would hardly know how to process....let alone read through academic and scholarly books. We no longer need to know how to analyze anything. Others do that for us!

           "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 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. 

                Memory is outsourced as Carr quoted another author.. 

                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;