The Shallows (35 page)

This book grew out of an essay I wrote for the
Atlantic
called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” which appeared in the magazine’s July–August 2008 issue. I thank the
Atlantic
’s James Bennet, Don Peck, James Gibney, Timothy Lavin, and Reihan Salam for their help and encouragement. My discussion of Google’s strategy in chapter 8 draws on material that originally appeared in “The Google Enigma,” an article I wrote for
Strategy & Business
in 2007. I am grateful to Art Kleiner and Amy Bernstein at that magazine for their expert editing. For their generosity in taking time to answer my questions, I thank Mike Merzenich, Maryanne Wolf, Jim Olds, Russell Poldrack, Gary Small, Ziming Liu, Clay Shirky, Kevin Kelly, Bruce Friedman, Matt Cutts, Tom Lord, Caleb Crain, Bill Thompson, and Ari Schulman. I owe particular thanks to my editor at W. W. Norton, Brendan Curry, and his talented colleagues. I am also indebted to my agent, John Brockman, and his associates at Brockman Inc. Finally, I salute the book’s intrepid first readers: my wife Ann and my son Henry. They made it to the end.