Once upon a time there was an island named Blogosphere, and at the very center of that island stood a great castle built of stone, and spreading out from that castle for miles in every direction was a vast settlement of peasants who lived in shacks fashioned of tin and cardboard and straw.

Nicholas G. Carr

Categorized in : Islands Once Upon A Time Castles

What the book does as a technology is shield us from distraction.

Nicholas G. Carr

shields technology book

You can take a book to the beach without worrying about sand getting in its works. You can take it to bed without being nervous about it falling to the floor should you nod off. You can spill coffee on it. You can sit on it. You can put it down on a table, open to the page you're reading, and when you pick it up a few days later it will still be exactly as you left it. You never have to be concerned about plugging a book into an outlet or having its battery die.

Nicholas G. Carr

coffee reading beach

What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking.

Nicholas G. Carr

depth loss thinking

In popular books and articles, information technology writer Carr has worried over the ways that algorithms like those employed by Google are reshaping the ways we think.

Nicholas G. Carr

technology book thinking

The Internet, like all intellectual technologies has a trade off. As we train our brains to use it, as we adapt to the environment of the internet, which is an environment of kind of constant immersion and information and constant distractions, interruptions, juggling lots of messages, lots of bits of information.

Nicholas G. Carr

technology intellectual brain

Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Nicholas G. Carr

scuba-divers guy sea

The brain likes to be efficient and so even as its strengthening the pathways you're exercising, it's pulling - it's weakening the connections in other ways between the cells that supported old ways of thinking or working or behaving, or whatever that you're not exercising so much.

Nicholas G. Carr

cells exercise thinking

A lot of your mental energy goes to figuring out where does one word end and the next begin.

Nicholas G. Carr

next energy doe

It's interesting to think about how the book changed us.

Nicholas G. Carr

book interesting thinking

The only thing going on is the progression of words and sentences across page after page and so suddenly we see this immersive kind of very attentive thinking, whether you are paying attention to a story or to an argument, or whatever. And what we know about the brain is the brain adapts to these types of tools.

Nicholas G. Carr

stories brain thinking

One of the fascinating things about early writing on slates, on papyrus, even on early handwritten books, is for instance, there were no space between the words. People just wrote in continuous script.

Nicholas G. Carr

space writing book

All reading was done in the early years out loud, there was no such thing as silent reading because you had to read out loud in order to figure out you know, where was a word ending and where is the word beginning.

Nicholas G. Carr

reading order years

The book, I think, like the map before it, like the clock, created or help create a revolution in the human mind in the way our habits of mind and ultimately the way we use our brains.

Nicholas G. Carr

brain book thinking

I think that the book in some ways is the most interesting from our own present standpoint, particularly when we want to think about the way the internet is changing us.

Nicholas G. Carr

book interesting thinking

I think what the book did in addition to its practical uses, is it gave us a more attentive way of thinking.

Nicholas G. Carr

book way thinking

I think, that after the arrival of the mechanical clock we see an explosion in scientific thinking and scientific discovery.

Nicholas G. Carr

clock discovery thinking

We become, after the arrival of the printing press in general, more attentive more attuned to contemplative ways of thinking.

Nicholas G. Carr

printing way thinking

As soon as you introduce the mechanical clock, you get a radically different view of time. Suddenly, it's not a flow; it's a series of discreet, precisely measurable units, seconds, minutes, hours, and so forth.

Nicholas G. Carr

different flow views

I think we begin to lose the ability to read in the deepest, most interpretive ways because were not kind of calming our mind and just focusing on the argument or the story.

Nicholas G. Carr

stories mind thinking

When somebody's talking to us, they're not putting pauses - carefully putting pauses between words. It all flows together. The problem with that though, it's very hard to read.

Nicholas G. Carr

flow together talking