By Jim Heffernan
I was attracted to “Superbloom” as a new 2025 book. It opened me up to the writing of Nicholas Carr and I had to have more. I went on to the 2010 book, “The Shallows”. Both books are refinements of the ideas he first raised in a 2008 cover article for the Atlantic, “Is Google Making You Stoopid?”.
The answer to the question about Google is yes. I am a victim. I believe many of us are. I think Mr. Carr explains the process better than anyone I’ve encountered.
“The Shallows” is 225 pages and mostly talks about how our use of the internet changes how our brain works. Here’s a couple of excerpts
From Page 6, “What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”
From Page 64, “In the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged, undistracted reading of a book, people made their own associations, drew their own inferences and analogies, fostered their own ideas. They thought deeply as they read deeply.”
“Superbloom” is 223 pages and is about how revolutions in the way we communicate change us. The printing press fueled the Reformation and removal of kings. The telegraph radio and television, and the internet all arrived with the promise of bringing us closer together. I don’t think it’s worked out that way. He concludes the book with talking about our latest revolution, A.I. (Artificial Intelligence). Here’s an excerpt from page 184 that I think captures my sense of fear. “But it’s also important to take the end-time visions propagated by Musk, Altman, and their ilk with skepticism. Behind today’s dystopian AI dreams lurk character traits all too common to the tech elite: grandiosity, hubris, and self-aggrandizement. The visions are yet another expression of Silicon Valley’s god complex: we may have failed in our attempt to use computers to establish a new Eden on Earth, but at least we still have the power to lay everything to waste.”
Both books explore the subject deeply and have a depth of thought that my review cannot convey. Both books contain a lot of fascinating history. Both are available at Cloud and Leaf Bookstore, Manzanita and Tillamook County Library.
As always, discussion is welcome at codger817@gmail.com