Press Lever, Get Pellet: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

I recently read Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. Published in 2010, the book sounds the alarm about how our increasingly wired state is literally rewiring our heads, and making concentration —and the kind of sustained, deep thought required for any meaningful piece of writing —difficult.

I picked up the book after realizing how rarely I actually finish reading a piece of writing published online. Since my goal here was to give myself the impetus to explore how digital media is changing the writing process and the publishing world, I have, regrettably, continued in my old habits: I get books from the library, and I use the internet for work and for socializing. I don’t have an e-reader, I rarely look at online journals, and when I find something online that I do want to read, I often scan instead: sweeping the top two paragraphs and then clunk, to the bottom, to get the gist of an article, essay, or story. If I REALLY want to read something, I print it out. I’m 42, a member of the generation that straddles the digital divide. I had, as Carr puts it, an “analog youth.”

I’ve also been noticing diminishing returns in my own ability to concentrate effectively for long periods of time. My job requires me to be online for the bulk of the day, most days: answering email, gathering information, sending press releases, updating social media sites, etc. Sometimes, at the end of a long commute, I’ll arrive home to find myself once again seated in front of the screen, as though the hours I’ve already spent there have triggered some sort of addiction.

This notion, of the internet being addictive, is supported by much evidence in Carr’s cautionary tale – it turns out our brains reshape themselves around the paths most often followed, and then all synapses start firing in that same direction. There is a bit of the “press lever, get pellet” aspect to my own digital habits, and, more disturbing, a lonesome, disappointed “where is my pellet?” response when I tap said lever with my paw (i.e., check my personal email, visit Facebook, trawl around for an entertaining story or fact) and get NOTHING.

Interestingly, when I spoke with a few highly digitized friends about these ideas, their responses were, well, a little defensive. Like, I don’t have a problem, I have to do this (press lever, get pellet, press lever, get pellet) for all of these legitimate reasons, it’s none of your damn business anyway, you backwards book-reading weirdo.

A cautious writer, Carr dedicates an absurd amount of space to the backstory of evolutions in thought, personal expression, reading, and writing; I thought I would tear my hair out by the time we got to Gutenberg. But there is a method to his madness —he is charting for the reader, and for himself, all that he believes we are in danger of losing: the power of introspection, the ability to speak private thoughts without being self-conscious about audience, and of course, deep concentration. My two main frustrations with his book are that he presents a problem and doesn’t appear to be interested in exploring realistic solutions: the internet is now the dominant mode of communication and commerce, and that isn’t going to change. He also doesn’t address the possibility that not everybody’s brain is wired the same way, and so this medium will have different effects on different people. But see Chapter 7, “The Juggler’s Brain,” (of course, I’m not advocating skipping all that juicy stuff about scribes and the oral tradition) for his most salient points about the changes in cognition he ascribes to our web-centric culture. Here’s a summary: http://howwewatch.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/the-shallows-chapter-7/

Yes. I did check this book out of the library. And there was only a little bit of somebody else’s lunch dotting the pages. Curry, I think.