Review of "The Shallows"

By
Daksha Bhat
On Sunday, 17th July 2016 at 11:30 am
Venue: Cafe Soul Square,
Bodakdev, Ahmedabad
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For the first Book Browsers Meet

“The medium is the message”
-McLuhan
Understanding Media:
The Extensions of Man
1964
The computer screen …. is so much our servant that it
would be churlish to notice that it is also our master.
These are quotes
from other people
that Carr has
quoted in the book
These are quotes
from the book
Note

“Dave, my brain is going, I can feel it”
- the supercomputer HAL as it is being
disconnected
2001: A Space Odyssesy,
-Stanley Kubrick
Now my concentration drifts after a page or two. I get
fidgety, lose the thread, look for something else to do.
Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip
along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.

The Net has become his all purpose medium, where
he does his banking, renewals and spends time
“foraging in the Web’s data thickets.”
But the boons come at a price.
Books are no more being read across academics and
intellectuals. They are content to skim information, he
himself feels a change in the way he reads.

“By following the links – click, and the
linked document appears – you can
travel through the online worlds along
paths of whim and intuition
Article in Wired
1994
My brain… was demanding to be fed the way the Net fed it-
the more it was fed the hungrier it became.
Take your time the books whispered to me in their dusty
voices. We are not going anywhere.

Carr compares his childhood analogue life with the adult
digital one. And the progression from the old TV with
antennas in the 60s through the early Apple Mac in 1986,
and upgrades and additions, the advent of the graphical
browser, followed by faster chips, quicker modems, blogging,
and the writer could get instant responses from readers…
He worries that his way of paying attention has changed, he
keeps wanting to check email, google something, “it was
turning me into a high speed processing machine.”

The writing ball is a thing like me: made of iron
Yet easily twisted on journeys.
Patience and tact are required in abundance,
As well as fine fingers to use us.
-Friedrich Nietzche
“…my ‘thoughts’ in music and language often
depend on the quality of pen and paper.”
-Heinrich Köselitz, writer and composer

…the cells of our brains literally develop and
grow bigger with use, and atrophy or waste
away with disuse, it may be that every action
leaves some imprint upon the nervous tissue.”
-J.Z.Young, biologist
BBC lecture, 1950
“The nervous tissue seems endowed with a
very extraordinary degree of plasticity.”
-William James, psychologist
Principals of Psychology, 1890

“In the adult brain centers, the nerve paths are something
fixed, ended, immutable. Everything may die, nothing
may be regenerated.”
-Ramón y Cajal,
Physician, Neuroanatomist and Nobel Laureate
1913
These speculations were contemptuously dismissed by
most, who thought that the “Vital paths” once laid were
final. They thought the brain’s plasticity ended with
childhood.

Rene Descartes
Brain
Material
Ethereal
Thought, memory… seen as
the outputs of physical
operations in the brain.
The brain as a machine.
Behaviour seen to be “hardwired”.

Merzenich in 1968 used a probe in monkeys brains -a hair thin
micro electrode creating a micro map of how the monkey’s brain
process what the hand feels.
He then severs the sensory nerves on the hands of the monkeys.
And sees that the brain is confused about where the hand is
being touched. After a few months the confusion is cleared up
and the brain knows exactly what is happening! Even Freud had
once supported the idea of plasticity but later discarded it.
A lot of research on neuroplasticity is described in a very
interesting fashion.

“…it was astounding reorganisation, … Looking back on it I
realized that I had seen the evidence of neuroplasticity.”
-Michael Merzenich,
“The brain has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly
altering the way it functions
-James Olds
Professor of Neuroscience
Evolution has given us a brain that can literally change its
mind – over and over again.

If we stop exercising our mental skills we do not just forget
them, the brain space for those skills is turned over to the
skills we practice instead.”
-Norman Doige,
The possibility of intellectual decay is
inherent in the malleability of our brains.

“Survival of the busiest”
-Jeffery Schwartz
Professor of Neuroscience
The vital paths in brains become the paths of least resistance

on what the brain thinks about when it
thinks about itself
a digression

on what the brain thinks about when it
thinks about itself
He leads us away from the the main subject to explore something else
interesting, I believe it is his way of imitating or even lampooning the
non linear internet experience. Is he imitating hyperlinks and the
multiple sources of information we see on the screen? These have
been cited as the greatest culprits in distracting our attention.
Aristotle - believed the brain kept the body from overheating, and
Descartes - saw the brain as a great hydraulic pump.
We know that the brain is a sensitive monitor of experience, yet we
would like to believe that it is beyond the influence of experience.

The technology of the map gave to man a new and more
comprehending mind, better able to understand the unseen
forces that shape his surroundings and existence
…the clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the
scientific mind and scientific man.

From drawing lines in sand with a stick, to drawing a map, then using
maps to describe even ideas or for analysis, lead to a new way of
understanding . Our intellectual maturation … can be traced through
the way we draw pictures or maps…
Time keeping became more precise, mechanical clocks designed by
monks with swinging weights regimented their activities.
People started living their lives by the bells that were rung, time
needed to be the same and standardized everywhere,

Every technology is an expression of human will
Extends our range of senses
(Geiger counter, microscope)
Enables us to reshape nature
(the reservoir, the pill)
Extends physical strength
(the plow, fighter jet)
Extends our mental powers
(abacus, the book)

Every intellectual technology embodies an intellectual ethic, a set
of assumptions about how the human mind works or should work
“The windmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the
steam mill society with the industrial capitalist.”
-Karl Marx
The debate between determinists and instrumentalists
continues, but it is harder to distinguish the influence of
technologies on peoples brains.

“It will implant forgetfulness in their souls: they will
cease to exercise memory because they rely on that
which is written. They will be filled not with wisdom
but with the conceit of wisdom”
-Plato
From Phaedrus
By substituting outer symbols for inner memories, writing
threatens to make us shallower thinkers, he (Socrates) says…

They began giving voice to unconventional, skeptical, and even
heretical and seditious ideas, pushing the boundary of knowledge
and culture
Once a standard system of syntax was devised it became easier for people to
read. And to write. With reading attention needed to be focused on a single
task, uninterrupted. Book production moved from monasteries to secular
workshops where scribes were employed, but the handwritten codices were
still costly and scarce till Gutenberg invented the letter press in the 15th
century. After that books became cheaper, and in another 100 years
newspapers and a variety of periodicals were available.

The book became the primary means of exchanging knowledge and insight
“So many books – so much confusion!
All around us an ocean of print
And most of it covered by froth”
-Lope de Vega
All Citizens Are Soldiers, 1612
…the computer … and the internet became our medium, of choice for
storing processing and sharing information in all forms, including text

on lee de forest and his amazing audion
a digression

on lee de forest and his amazing audion
“A melancholy view of our national mental level is
obtained from a survey of the majority of today’s
radio programs”
-Lee de Forest
Article in Popular Mechanics, 1952
He turned the diode into a triode, amplifying
currents. These were used in radio transmitters,
receivers, early computers.

Charles Babbage had much earlier drawn a design for an analytical
engine that would be a machine of the most general nature.
After his death, the computer did become a universal medium.

“…various computing processes… can all be done with one
digital computer, suitably programmed for each case,”
-Alan Turing
Computing Machinery and Intelligence, 1950
Everything from Beethoven’s Ninth to a porn flick can be
reduced to a string of ones and zeros and processed

Over the past three decades, the number of instructions a
computer chip can process has doubled every three years,
while the cost of processing those instructions has fallen by
almost half every year.
As faster chips were created, network bandwidth
expanded, high resolution pictures, entire songs were
available in hi fidelity, and then came video. Meanwhile
email made the personal letter obsolete.

The Net differs from most of the mass media it replaces in
an obvious and important way, it is bidirectional.
Once information is digitized, the boundaries between
media dissolve.

The Net connects us, it is a personal as well as
commercial medium, there are social networks
and sometimes antisocial networks.
The future of knowledge and culture lies in digital files shot
through our universal medium at the speed of light

Searches also lead to fragmentation of online works.
By combining many different kinds of information on a
single screen the multimedia Net further fragments
content and disrupts our concentration.

Public schools are pushing students to use online
reference materials in place of what California Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger refers to as
“antiquated heavy expensive textbooks”

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 never
have to be concerned about … having its battery die.
Its links and digital enhancements propel
the reader hither and yon

E books and digtal readers have improved greatly over the years, Font size can
be increased in the e-reader, The Kindle comes with a built in always available
wireless connection for no additional cost
BUT the links available in the digital book distract the reader.
Social media becomes entwined with the books. Authors would tailor their work
to “groupiness” Writing will become a means for recording chatter.
He talks about the Japanese cell phone novels, which are composed on the go
by women on their mobile phones, He says, “Japan is a country given to peculiar
fads,” making it sound like some sort of racial slur.

“People will carry around a tiny audio player called an
‘indispensable’ which would contain all their books,
magazines and newspapers.”
-Edward Bellamy
Harper’s, 1889

When a Xerox presented a new operating system, the presenter clicked
from a window where he had been composing code, to another to check
email, some of the scientist were horrified,” why would you want to be
interrupted and distracted” they asked.
There was a conflict between working with single minded concentration
and juggling multiple threads, what we have come to call multitasking.

The Net commands our attention with far greater insistency
than our television or radio or morning newspaper ever did.
When the cognitive load increases , and we reach the limits
of our working memory, it becomes difficult to understand
what is relevant, We become mindless consumers of data.

“The increased demands of decision making and visual
processing in hypertext impaired reading performance.”
-Diana Destefano, Jo-Anne LeFevre,
Psychologists, 2005
We want to be interrupted because each interruption
brings us valuable information.
We vastly over value the constant stream of information,
Tuning out is not an option for many.

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves
or we know where we can find information upon it.”
-Dr. Samuel Johnson,

on the buoyancy of IQ scores
a digression

“Founded around the science of measurement.”
-Eric Schmidt,
CEO Google
What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing
for the mind
Without its search engine … the Internet would have long
ago become a Tower of Digital Babel

“Today there more information is available to us than ever
before, but there is less time to make use of it - and
specifically to make use of it with any depth of reflection.”
-David Levy,
The strip-mining of “relevant content” replaces the slow
excavation of meaning

“I thought the coziness to be almost overwhelming….
People waving and smiling, toys everywhere. I
immediately suspected that unimaginable evil was
happening somewhere in the dark corners. If the devil
came to earth, what place would be better to hide.”
-George Dyson
Describing a friends visit to Google
Unsubstantiated, illogical and irrational negativity!

In Google’s world the human brain is just an outdated computer
that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive – and
better algorithms to steer the course of its thought
Google equates intelligence with data processing efficiency.
Artificial intelligence is their ultimate problem.
Since we do not understand the brain’s hierarchy, the
fabrication of an artificial mind is likely to remain an
aspiration for generations to come.

“It’s no longer terribly efficient to use our
brains to store information”
-Peter Suderman,

The number of synapses in the brain is not fixed – it changes
with learning! Moreover long term memory persists for as long
as the anatomical changes are maintained.
“While the artificial brain absorbs information and
immediately stores it in its memory, the human brain
continues to process information long after it is
received, and the quality of the memories depends
upon how the information is processed.”
-Kobi Rosenblum,

The Web is a technology of forgetfulness.
Our brains become adept at forgetting.

The offloading of memory to external data banks doesn’t just
threaten depth and distinctiveness of the self. It threatens the
depth and distinctiveness of the culture we all share.
We risk turning into pancake people. Spread wide and thin

on the writing of this book
a digression

Is it intelligent?
The Turing test, or the ‘imitation game,’ suggested by Alan Turing
involved having a person having a typed conversation with a computer,
and if the interrogator was unable to distinguish the computer from the
real person then the computer could be considered intelligent.
Weizenbaum In 1966 created a program in which the computer would
carry out a conversation with a person by transforming the first
sentence into another. This program was named Eliza after Eliza
Doolittle from Shaw’s pygmalion.

Person : Men are all alike.
ELIZA : In what way?
Person : They're always bugging us about
something or other.
ELIZA : Can you think of a specific example?
Person : Well, my boyfriend made me come here.
ELIZA : Your boyfriend made you come here?
Person : He says I'm depressed much of the time.
ELIZA : I am sorry to hear that you are depressed.
ELIZA
(Weizenbaum, 1966)
One of the first
AI programs
Here is a sample
script from an
Eliza session

“…extremely short exposures to a relatively simple
computer program could induce powerful delusional
thinking in quite normal people.”
-Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT

… our brains mimic the states of the other minds we interact
with, whether those minds are real or imagined.
Another reason why our nervous systems seem so quick to
merge with our computers is our powerful social instinct, and
so when Eliza speaks we hear another human being.

The brighter the software the dimmer the user
When we go online we are following a script written by others
It is altering the depth of our emotions as well as our thoughts.

“…For some sort of thoughts especially moral
decision making about other peoples social and
psychological situations we need to allow for
adequate time and reflection.”
-Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
We are welcoming the frenziedness into our souls.

That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to
rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it
is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

• 224 pages of content
• 28 pages of notes
• A novel TOC design
• Over 200 names dropped
• A way with words
• A huge amount of research
• Very interesting anecdotes
• Introduction to many milestones
in the development of todays
thinking humans.
• Some actually unsubstantiated
conclusions
• Eclectic choice of research that
supports his hypothesis
• Usage of older no longer
relevant philosophy to explain
modern issues
• Appeal to emotions by
mentioning familiar situations,
(Beatles, HAL.)

Review of "The Shallows"

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