By Jim Heffernan
I used to be interested in “Superbloom” as a brand new 2025 e-book. It opened me as much as the writing of Nicholas Carr and I needed to have extra. I went on to the 2010 e-book, “The Shallows”. Each books are refinements of the concepts he first raised in a 2008 cowl article for the Atlantic, “Is Google Making You Stoopid?”.
The reply to the query about Google is sure. I’m a sufferer. I consider many people are. I feel Mr. Carr explains the method higher than anybody I’ve encountered.
“The Shallows” is 225 pages and principally talks about how our use of the web adjustments how our mind works. Right here’s a few excerpts
From Web page 6, “What the Web appears to be doing is chipping away my capability for focus and contemplation. Whether or not I’m on-line or not, my thoughts now expects to absorb info the best way the Web distributes it: in a swiftly shifting stream of particles. As soon as I used to be a scuba diver within the sea of phrases. Now I zip alongside the floor like a man on a Jet Ski.”
From Web page 64, “Within the quiet areas opened up by the extended, undistracted studying of a e-book, individuals made their very own associations, drew their very own inferences and analogies, fostered their very own concepts. They thought deeply as they learn deeply.”
“Superbloom” is 223 pages and is about how revolutions in the best way we talk change us. The printing press fueled the Reformation and elimination of kings. The telegraph radio and tv, and the web all arrived with the promise of bringing us nearer collectively. I don’t assume it’s labored out that method. He concludes the e-book with speaking about our newest revolution, A.I. (Synthetic Intelligence). Right here’s an excerpt from web page 184 that I feel captures my sense of concern. “However it’s additionally necessary to take the end-time visions propagated by Musk, Altman, and their ilk with skepticism. Behind immediately’s dystopian AI goals lurk character traits all too frequent to the tech elite: grandiosity, hubris, and self-aggrandizement. The visions are yet one more expression of Silicon Valley’s god advanced: we might have failed in our try to make use of computer systems to determine a brand new Eden on Earth, however not less than we nonetheless have the facility to put all the pieces to waste.”
Each books discover the topic deeply and have a depth of thought that my overview can’t convey. Each books include quite a lot of fascinating historical past. Each can be found at Cloud and Leaf Bookstore, Manzanita and Tillamook County Library.
As all the time, dialogue is welcome at codger817@gmail.com
