The Shallows (28 page)

There are those who are heartened by the ease with which our minds are adapting to the Web’s intellectual ethic. “Technological progress does not reverse,” writes a
Wall Street Journal
columnist, “so the trend toward multitasking and consuming many different types of information will only continue.” We need not worry, though, because our “human software” will in time “catch up to the machine technology that made the information abundance possible.” We’ll “evolve” to become more agile consumers of data.
³⁸
The writer of a cover story in
New York
magazine says that as we become used to “the 21st-century task” of “flitting” among bits of online information, “the wiring of the brain will inevitably change to deal more efficiently with more information.” We may lose our capacity “to concentrate on a complex task from beginning to end,” but in recompense we’ll gain new skills, such as the ability to “conduct 34 conversations simultaneously across six different media.”
³⁹
A prominent economist writes, cheerily, that “the web allows us to borrow cognitive strengths from autism and to be better infovores.”
⁴⁰
An
Atlantic
author suggests that our “technology-induced ADD” may be “a short-term problem,” stemming from our reliance on “cognitive habits evolved and perfected in an era of limited information flow.” Developing new cognitive habits is “the only viable approach to navigating the age of constant connectivity.”
⁴¹

These writers are certainly correct in arguing that we’re being molded by our new information environment. Our mental adaptability, built into the deepest workings of our brains, is a keynote of intellectual history. But if there’s comfort in their reassurances, it’s of a very cold sort. Adaptation leaves us better suited to our circumstances, but qualitatively it’s a neutral process. What matters in the end is not our becoming but what we become. In the 1950s, Martin Heidegger observed that the looming “tide of technological revolution” could “so captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking may someday come to be accepted and practiced
as the only
way of thinking.” Our ability to engage in “meditative thinking,” which he saw as the very essence of our humanity, might become a victim of headlong progress.
⁴²
The tumultuous advance of technology could, like the arrival of the locomotive at the Concord station, drown out the refined perceptions, thoughts, and emotions that arise only through contemplation and reflection. The “frenziedness of technology,” Heidegger wrote, threatens to “entrench itself everywhere.”
⁴³

It may be that we are now entering the final stage of that entrenchment. We are welcoming the frenziedness into our souls.

A
s I was finishing this book late in 2009, I stumbled on a small story tucked away in the press. Edexcel, the largest educational testing firm in England, had announced it was introducing “artificial intelligence-based, automated marking of exam essays.” The computerized grading system would “read and assess” the essays that British students write as part of a widely used test of language proficiency. A spokesman for Edexcel, which is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Pearson, explained that the system “produced the accuracy of human markers while eliminating human elements such as tiredness and subjectivity,” according to a report in the
Times Education Supplement
. A testing expert told the paper that the computerized evaluation of essays would be a mainstay of education in the future: “The uncertainty is ‘when’ not ‘if.’”
¹

How, I wondered, would the Edexcel software discern those rare students who break from the conventions of writing not because they’re incompetent but because they have a special spark of brilliance? I knew the answer: it wouldn’t. Computers, as Joseph Weizenbaum pointed out, follow rules; they don’t make judgments. In place of subjectivity, they give us formula. The story revealed just how prescient Weizenbaum had been when, decades ago, he warned that as we grow more accustomed to and dependent on our computers we will be tempted to entrust to them “tasks that demand wisdom.” And once we do that, there will be no turning back. The software will become indispensable to those tasks.

The seductions of technology are hard to resist, and in our age of instant information the benefits of speed and efficiency can seem unalloyed, their desirability beyond debate. But I continue to hold out hope that we won’t go gently into the future our computer engineers and software programmers are scripting for us. Even if we don’t heed Weizenbaum’s words, we owe it to ourselves to consider them, to be attentive to what we stand to lose. How sad it would be, particularly when it comes to the nurturing of our children’s minds, if we were to accept without question the idea that “human elements” are outmoded and dispensable.

The Edexcel story also stirred, once again, my memory of that scene at the end of
2001
. It’s a scene that has haunted me ever since I first saw the film as a teenager back in the 1970s, in the midst of my analogue youth. What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer’s emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut—“I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid”—and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of
2001
, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. 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.

Prologue
THE WATCHDOG AND THE THIEF

1.
Marshall McLuhan,
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
, critical ed., ed. W. Terrence Gordon (Corte Madera, CA: Gingko, 2003), 5.

2.
Ibid., 30.

3.
Ibid., 31.

4.
Ibid., 23.

5.
Ibid., 31.

6.
David Thomson,
Have You Seen?: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films
(New York: Knopf, 2008), 149.

One
HAL AND ME

1.
Heather Pringle, “Is Google Making Archaeologists Smarter?,”
Beyond Stone & Bone
blog (Archaeological Institute of America), February 27, 2009, http://archaeology.org/blog/?p=332.

2.
Clive Thompson, “Your Outboard Brain Knows All,”
Wired
, October 2007.

3.
Scott Karp, “The Evolution from Linear Thought to Networked Thought,”
Publishing 2.0
blog, February 9, 2008, http://publishing2.com/2008/02/09/the-evolution-from-linear-thought-to-networked-thought.

4.
Bruce Friedman, “How Google Is Changing Our Information-Seeking Behavior,”
Lab Soft News
blog, February 6, 2008, http://labsoftnews.type pad.com/lab_soft_news/2008/02/how-google-is-c.html.

5.
Philip Davis, “Is Google Making Us Stupid? Nope!”
The Scholarly Kitchen
blog, June 16, 2008, http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2008/06/16/is-google-making-us-stupid-nope.

6.
Scott Karp, “Connecting the Dots of the Web Revolution,”
Publishing 2.0
blog, June 17, 2008, http://publishing2.com/2008/06/17/connecting-the-dots-of-the-web-revolution.

7.
Davis, “Is Google Making Us Stupid? Nope!”

8.
Don Tapscott, “How Digital Technology Has Changed the Brain,”
BusinessWeek Online
, November 10, 2008, www.businessweek.com/ technology/content/nov2008/ tc2008117_034517.htm.

9.
Don Tapscott, “How to Teach and Manage ‘Generation Net,’”
BusinessWeek Online
, November 30, 2008, www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov 2008/tc20081130_713563.htm.

10.
Quoted in Naomi S. Baron,
Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 204.

11.
John Battelle, “Google: Making Nick Carr Stupid, but It’s Made This Guy Smarter,”
John Battelle’s Searchblog
, June 10, 2008, http://battellemedia. com/archives/004494.php.

12.
John G. Kemeny,
Man and the Computer
(New York: Scribner, 1972), 21.

13.
Gary Wolfe, “The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun,”
Wired
, October 1994.

Two
THE VITAL PATHS

1.
Sverre Avnskog, “Who Was Rasmus Malling-Hansen?,” Malling-Hansen Society, 2006, www.malling-hansen.org/fileadmin/biography/biography.pdf.

2.
The story of Nietzsche and his typewriter draws from Friedrich A. Kittler,
Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 200–203; J. C. Nyíri, “Thinking with a Word Processor,” in
Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences
, ed. R. Casati (Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1994), 63–74; Christian J. Emden,
Nietzsche on Language, Consciousness, and the Body
(Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 27–29; and Curtis Cate,
Friedrich Nietzsche
(Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 2005), 315–18.

3.
Joseph LeDoux,
Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are
(New York: Penguin, 2002), 38–39.

4.
In addition to the 100 billion neurons in our brains, there are about a trillion glial cells, or glia. It was once assumed that glia were inert, essentially providing padding to the neurons. (
Glia
means “glue” in Greek.) Over the last two decades, however, neuroscientists have found clues that glia may play important roles in the brain’s functioning. A particularly abundant kind of glial cell, called an astrocyte, appears to release carbon atoms and produce neurotransmitters in response to signals from other cells. Further discoveries about glia may deepen our understanding of the brain’s workings. For a good overview, see Carl Zimmer, “The Dark Matter of the Human Brain,”
Discover
, September 2009.

5.
J. Z. Young,
Doubt and Certainty in Science: A Biologist’s Reflections on the Brain
(London: Oxford University Press, 1951), 36.

6.
William James,
The Principles of Psychology
, vol. 1 (New York: Holt, 1890), 104–6. Translation of Dumont’s essay is from James E. Black and William T. Greenough, “Induction of Pattern in Neural Structure by Experience: Implications for Cognitive Development,” in
Advances in Developmental Psychology
, vol. 4, ed. Michael E. Lamb, Ann L. Brown, and Barbara Rogoff (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1986), 1.

7.
See Norman Doidge,
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
(New York: Penguin, 2007), 223.

8.
Quoted in Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley,
The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2003), 130.

9.
Quoted in Doidge,
Brain That Changes Itself
, 201.

10.
The Nobel laureate David Hubel made this remark to the neurosurgeon Joseph Boden, report Schwartz and Begley in
Mind and the Brain
, 25.

11.
Doidge,
Brain That Changes Itself
, xviii.

12.
A video of the debate between Mailer and McLuhan can be seen at Google Videos: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5470443898801103219.

13.
Schwartz and Begley,
Mind and the Brain
, 175.

14.
R. L. Paul, H. Goodman, and M. Merzenich, “Alterations in Mechanoreceptor Input to Brodmann’s Areas 1 and 3 of the Postcentral Hand Area of
Macaca mulatta
after Nerve Section and Regeneration,”
Brain Research
, 39, no. 1 (April 1972): 1–19.

15.
Quoted in Schwartz and Begley,
Mind and the Brain
, 177.

16.
James Olds, interview with the author, February 1, 2008.

17.
Graham Lawton, “Is It Worth Going to the Mind Gym?,”
New Scientist
, January 12, 2008.

18.
The workings of synapses are extraordinarily complicated, influenced by a wide array of chemicals including transmitters like glutamate (which encourages the transfer of electrical signals between neurons) and GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid, which inhibits the transfer of the signals) and various modulators, like serotonin, dopamine, testosterone, and estrogen, that alter the efficacy of the transmitters. In rare cases, the membranes of neurons fuse, allowing electrical signals to pass without the mediation of synapses. See LeDoux,
Synaptic Self
, particularly 49–64.

19.
Eric R. Kandel,
In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind
(New York: Norton, 2006), 198–207. See also Bruce E. Wexler,
Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 27–29.

20.
Kandel,
In Search of Memory
, 202–3.

21.
LeDoux,
Synaptic Self
, 3.

22.
The use of the visual cortex in reading Braille was documented in an experiment undertaken by Alvaro Pascual-Leone in 1993. See Doidge,
Brain That Changes Itself
, 200.

23.
McGovern Institute for Brain Research, “What Drives Brain Changes in Macular Degeneration?,” press release, March 4, 2009.

24.
Sandra Blakesley, “Missing Limbs, Still Atingle, Are Clues to Changes in the Brain,”
New York Times
, November 10, 1992.

25.
In some of the most promising experimental treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, currently being tested with considerable success in mice, drugs are used to promote plastic synaptic changes that strengthen memory formation. See J.-S. Guan, S. J. Haggarty, E. Giacometti, et al., “HDAC2 Negatively Regulates Memory Formation and Synaptic Plasticity,”
Nature
, 459 (May 7, 2009): 55–60.

26.
Mark Hallett, “Neuroplasticity and Rehabilitation,”
Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development
, 42, no. 4 (July–August 2005): xvii–xxii.

27.
A. Pascual-Leone, A. Amedi, F. Fregni, and L. B. Merabet, “The Plastic Human Brain Cortex,”
Annual Review of Neuroscience
, 28 (2005): 377–401.

28.
David J. Buller,
Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 136–42.

29.
M. A. Umiltà, L. Escola, I. Instkirveli, et al., “When Pliers Become Fingers in the Monkey Motor System,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
, 105, no. 6 (February 12, 2008): 2209–13. See also Angelo Maravita and Atsushi Iriki, “Tools for the Body (Schema),”
Trends in Cognitive Science
, 8, no. 2 (February 2004): 79–86.

30.
E. A. Maguire, D. G. Gadian, I. S. Johnsrude, et al., “Navigation-Related Structural Change in the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
, 97, no. 8 (April 11, 2000): 4398–403. See also E. A. Maguire, H. J. Spiers, C. D. Good, et al., “Navigation Expertise and the Human Hippocampus: A Structural Brain Imaging Analysis,”
Hip-
pocampus
, 13, no. 2 (2003): 250–59; and Alex Hutchinson, “Global Impositioning Systems,”
Walrus
, November 2009.

31.
A. Pascual-Leone, D. Nguyet, L. G. Cohen, et al., “Modulation of Muscle Responses Evoked by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation during the Acquisition of New Fine Motor Skills,”
Journal of Neurophysiology
, 74, no. 3 (1995): 1037–45. See also Doidge,
Brain That Changes Itself
, 200–202.

32.
Michael Greenberg, “Just Remember This,”
New York Review of Books
, December 4, 2008.

33.
Doidge,
Brain That Changes Itself
, 317.

34.
Ibid., 108.

35.
Pascual-Leone et al., “Plastic Human Brain Cortex.” See also Sharon Begley,
Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves
(New York: Ballantine, 2007), 244.

36.
Doidge,
Brain That Changes Itself
, 59.

37
.
Schwartz and Begley,
Mind and the Brain
, 201.