The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Nicholas Carr. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010. 276 pp.
Has technology ever been our friend? That’s been the debate every time humans have come up with new ways to tell their tales, from Ooog the Caveman and his cave-wall mastodon hunts, to the noise of the Tweets, twits and instant-messaging on the Internet. In Aldous Huxley’s version of the Brave New World, distraction—or misdirection—is the key: “And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts.” In this opening pair of essays, Tricia Farwell examines Nicholas Carr’s version of technology, friend or foe, in The Shallows, while Joseph Hayden considers Clay Shirky’s somewhat more optimistic interpretation in Cognitive Surplus—dueling perspectives on the latest edition of our brave new electronic world.