If you're on the road and listen to this, it doesn't matter where you're going across town to run errands or cross-country with family with Jiffy Lube. Anywhere is possible. You're skilled technicians are here to change oil plus so much more and they're committed to keeping you and your vehicle moving forward. So you can celebrate from anywhere work from anywhere or connect from anywhere check out Jiffy Lube.com to find a Jiffy Lube near you now more than ever anywhere is possible with Jiffy Lube.
Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Have you found it harder and harder to stay with a good book for long periods of time without getting that itch to check your phone. Well, you're not alone. My guest day makes the case that the internet has changed our brains in ways that make deep focus thinking harder and harder. His name is Nicholas Carr and he documented what was then a newly emerging phenomenon 10 years ago in his book the shallows what the internet is doing to our brains. The shallows has now been re-released the new afterward and Nick and I began our conversation with how he thinks the effect of digital.
Undermines has or hasn't changed over the last decade. We then discussed the idea of the medium being the message when it comes to internet and how this particular medium changes our brains and the ways we think and approach knowledge and the world Nick then explains how he read text on screens differently than text and books why hyperlinks mess with our ability for comprehension why it's still important to develop our own Memory Bank of knowledge, even in a time where we can access facts from Outsource digital brain and how social media amplifies our craving for the fast and easy to digest over the slow and contemplative and we enter conversation with how
Nick himself has tried to strike a balance and keeping the advantage of the internet while mitigating its downsides after the show's over check out our show notes at a whim dot is / shallows.
All right, Nicholas Carr, welcome back to the
show. Thank you Brent's my my pleasure to return.
So we had you on the show a few years ago to talk about your collection of essays. Utopia is creepy got you back on the show because ten years ago. You wrote a book called the shallows how the internet is changing our brains and it's been 10 years. You got a new addition out with an additional like a an afterword kind of an update on how things have changed.
Changed or not changed in those ten years. What do you think would have been the big changes that have taken place on the internet that have affected how we think in the ten years since you originally released the shallows.
I think that what's changed is the technology of computing, you know back 10 years ago when we talked about going online that was still mainly we were still mainly talking about laptops and desktop computers and the smartphone smartphone had was their it I think the iPhone was was introduced in 2007.
Evan but it hadn't really taken over by 2010. So I was I was writing the book in the era of the laptop and desktop and and now not only have smartphones kind of taken over from the cellphone I would argue they've taken over from the personal computer as the dominant form of computing device that that people use so I think on the one hand, what's the big changes is the smartphone took over and the other big change, is that social media, which was also
Round in 2010 in on Facebook was there in Twitter was there but but it hadn't become so dominant in the way it is now. So that's the second big changes what we do with our phones more often than not is something involving social media
and as we talk about the shallows, I think about the book The Still the main thesis that you have that you put out there I think still holds up. It's just that I think it's even been refined even more because as you note in the after there's been more research that's come out to sort of confirm what you
you were writing about 10 years
ago. Okay, I think in many ways the what the basic themes and the basic messages and research of the book if anything is is even more relevant today as we've switched to smartphones and social media because if you think about you know, what I talked about in the book is how there's a trade-off involved when we go online when we use the internet on the one hand we get the benefit of having huge amounts of information.
Very very quickly from all sorts of different sources all sorts of overlapping forms audio video text and so forth. But what we what we lose is the ability to pay attention because the internet is a distraction machine and so we're constantly shifting our Focus constantly getting interrupted with alerts and notifications. So we have more information, but I don't think we're thinking as deeply as we used to because we're so distracted and if you think about
Out smartphones and social media if if the internet in general is distraction Mystery Machine smart phones and social media amp up the distractions way more than was true. Even 10 years ago. So I think at the level of the basic analysis of the book, unfortunately things have gotten worse rather than better. Well at the beginning of
the shallows you talked about like the thing that sort of kick started this whole thing ten years or This research project of yours was that
I had noticed that you had had a hard time like doing deep concentrated reading of like long-form articles or even books and you started talking about this with other people and they're saying yeah, I got the same thing. I can't read like I used to and how did you decide or suspect that the internet had something to do with it, you know back in 2007,
right? Well, I mean, I've always since I was a since I was a boy, I've been a big reader love books and around 2006 2007 after
they're having spent quite a bit of time surfing web as we used to call it. I noticed that I was having trouble sitting down in Reading not just books but even long articles and what I began to realize is that my brain seemed to want to seem to Crave the stimulation it gets when I'm online when I'm looking into a computer screen so I can click on email, you know, go to a website get a text message or whatever and it was having trouble. I was having
Trouble shutting off that desire for this constant information stimulation and concentrate on the text for page after page after page. And what I began to realize is that it really did seem like the time I was spending online was innocence training me to think in a different way in that was making it harder and harder to screen out distractions and filter out this desire for
Or information stimulation in concentrate on the page and that was really the spur because it you know, one of the things I ask myself is is this possible. I mean can a tool that we use for particular purpose actually change the way we think and some some deep way that that continues even when we're not using the tool and so that's what started me down the research that ultimately became the shallows and
In a sense, it was an exercise in self-diagnosis at least in the beginning.
And so this idea that you know, I think most critiques. So this is this is a critique of the internet unlike a lot of critiques of the internet or even television or whatever whenever you see that see people critique the media, they're typically critiquing the content right like the internet there's porn there's violence trolls fake news, whatever but like your critique is more metal than that. You're actually critiquing or sort of looking at how the
The the medium of the internet can shape the way we think in basically who we are
that's right. And you know to give credit where credit is due. I'm kind of building on the work of earlier media theorists in particular Marshall mcluhan from the 1960s who coined the phrase the medium is the message and what he what he argued and what I argue is that it's only natural when we get a new communication medium or device to focus on the content, you know, if it's an old-fashioned telephone were
Christian the conversation we're having with somebody if it's a newspaper were focused on the news stories. But but really the deeper change comes from the technology itself as we adapt to the new medium or the new device we do in a way train ourselves to perceive things differently to think differently to have different levels of attentiveness. And I think we tend to ignore that side of things because
Cuz we're so wrapped up in the content whether we think it's good or bad or indifferent and as a result, what happens is we adapt ourselves to the technology very very quickly. And only later do we begin to say hold on? Maybe I've done something to myself and to into my mind. That isn't beneficial it. Maybe I've I've paid a cost that I wasn't aware of but now all of a sudden I can't escape this this deficit that I've taken on.
Now there's that quote. I forgot who said it know, it's like we shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape
us right. That was I can't remember the guy who said it but he was he was picking up on mcluhan thought their room
and silly mcluhan. He wrote he came with the idea of you know, the medium is the message. This is like in the 50s 60s, like what was he seen was he's seen like television changing the way people think or interact with the
world. Yeah. So he was he was looking mainly at what he called a lek.
Trick media and back then that meant radio and TV essentially although he looked ahead to computers and stuff. But what he was what his big argument was that for 500 years ever since Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1450 or so text in particular particularly text in books or in magazines and so far had been the dominant cultural medium the dominant way we exchanged information transmitted information in text.
If you think about text it's kind of an anti-social technology because you can't read a book with somebody else. You have to kind of, you know, you have to kind of set up a barrier or a real barrier or at least a kind of mental barrier in order to concentrate on text and he thought that this really shaped not only the way we read but also the way we communicate the way we think about ourselves. He argued that it brought in much more individualism.
mmm, and also this sense that were in charge of our own knowledge, we're in charge of our own building our own knowledge in our brains through this kind of isolated deep reading and he he believed that electric media was overthrowing the dominance of text and bringing in a very very different way of thinking and communicating that on the one hand was much more social and had all sorts of benefits and I think we see this today, but also kind of
Withdrew us from both the practice of deep reading and deep thinking and the sense that that that practice that very contemplative attentive practice was even all that important and I think you know that so he wrote this back in 64 1964. So if so long time ago, but I think that part of his message resonates even more today when when the internet and various online tools and social media and stuff has
Really taken over from the book in the printed page as a basic means of cultural
transmission and we'll get into more detail about that's where that transition from through. I guess we call it a literate brain to the I guess internet brain, but I mean, I think one of the things I like about this book as you strive to explain like, how is this even possible? How is it that the brain can change or tool can change the brain because for a lot of human history there's this idea that once you reach a certain point in your
Development after adolescence your brain is basically like concrete and you're pretty much set for the rest of your life. And then so the argument is well, how could it be that if you use the internet in your 50s and 60s your brain changes because your brains already said and sort of this concrete, but then you bring this idea of neuroplasticity to explain how interacting with something like the internet can can reshape how your brain functions.
Yeah. So I mean when I was growing up and it really until just a few decades ago there.
Or was this conception of the brain as being very malleable in your youth where you laid down your your circuits for thinking and then at the age of 20, it was believed that that ended in in the circuits who had built up at that point where the ones that remained throughout the rest of your life and they didn't change. The only thing that happened was kind of the dark view of the brain is that your neurons slowly died off so you had fewer and fewer but it turns out, you know brain scientists since then.
Beginning in this I think 70s and then building up much more recently have discovered that in fact our brains are changing at a physical level and anatomical level throughout our entire lives so that so that malleability or as they call it plasticity doesn't stop at 20 but but continues on and what what happens is we adapt to our environment.
When we think just just in an analogous way to the way we adapt to our environment physically with our body. So if your exercises heard muscle it gets stronger. If you don't exercise it atrophies something similar the mechanisms different, of course something similar goes on with our brain the more we practice certain ways of thinking or exercise those circuits and in our minds, they literally become stronger. They literally recruit more neurons more synaptic.
ends, but on the other hand if we don't practice certain ways of thinking we begin to lose those our ability to do that and I think that you know, I talked about mcluhan coming up with this idea that that that media changes the way we think what he didn't understand and the this come outcomes more recently is that there's a real deep scientific biological reason for that and that is our brains are adapting to the medium the medium kind of
creates a new environment. We think in ways that the medium encourages and as a result, we strengthen certain ways of thinking but we weaken other ways of thinking
so to explore this idea of how intellectual Technologies. So these are things like abstract things like Maps or intellectual Technologies clocks books schools Etc. You kind of take readers in the shallows sort of it on an intellectual history to show how these things these technologies have probably shaped the
Mind so let's talk about like what was it? What was the human mind like before, you know, like an oral culture before there's even reading and writing do we have any idea of what how they might have had with that beat that preliterate brain was like,
well one thing we know is that our sense of sight in terms of in terms of reading the environment the actual natural environment around us was probably much much sharper, which is why if you look at societies that have an kind of come to be dominated by
Text you see you see Feats of navigation and kind of reading the natural world that that are amazing to us because we can't contemplate them in the re one of the reasons for that. Is that when we when we learn how to read we have to recruit a huge portion of our visual cortex the part of the brain that processes sight in order to become efficient readers, if you think if you watch a kid learning to read he or she goes really really slowly they
Sound out every letter and then put the letters together to make a word what happens is a lot of our neurons as we train ourselves to read get dedicated to recognizing not only letters but but syllables and words and then reading becomes automatic. And so I think there's a great example of neuroplasticity in the kind of deep influence it can have so in effect when we teach ourselves to read were we're changing the way our visual cortex Works in a really quite a fundamental way.
Way and we gain all the benefits that come with with the ability to read but we lose this kind of ability to read the natural world because we've simply we've simply rededicated those mental resources to something else. So, I mean, that's one example, I think it's fair to say that, you know in oral cultures the way we think about Society the way we think about each other is very very different to pick up on that earlier theme of reading encouraging individual.
Them. I think I think individual I think people were much less focused on themselves in isolation in oral cultures and much more thought much more about you know, society as a group of people the boundaries between them were not so sharp as they became so so my thinking and I think other, you know other people have come up with this as well and you know, you can look at
current societies that are you know, that that don't have modern Technologies and stuff and see some evidence of this but I think it's fair to say that people thought in perceived things in very very different ways before the alphabet came along and reading and writing came along.
We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.
Summer's here, which means warm weather and Lawn games your great accepting they lead the lawn full of brown spots and weeds this summer. You keep the long green the easy way with Sunday Sony makes take your Lon he's and ever without having to know anything about soil or micronutrients. Just go their website gets Sunday.com you type in your home address and their free lawn analysis tool does the rest in seconds Sunday create a custom lawn plan based on your soil climate and Lon and we'll send everything you need to your door with free shipping plus Sunday looks plain what you're getting and why so for example, I got my lawn plan right here my
Hand that Sunday sent to me based on the analysis. They did I've learned I didn't I didn't know this but soil my area is still teen acidic and the first application I'll be applying is the green out so it's got is the soil booster with humic acid seaweed and potassium snow those nice thing about Sunday all these the stuff they use their applications natural. So it's kid friendly pet friendly. You just attach the nozzle sprayer with the application to your hose and you just sprayed super easy then in September middle of September. I'll be applying a grass Powerhouse a high nitrogen blend with seaweed humic acid and potassium. I'm really excited.
About this. I think it's a really great idea because I've gone along care store and like kind of looked at stuff and like am I getting the right thing for my lawn? I don't really know with this Sunday takes all the thinking out of it. You don't need to know everything about soil grass or micronutrients. Have a great Lon. So if you're not 100 percent sure what your lawn needs to be green. No worries. Just get Sunday visit get Sunday.com for $20 off your summer plan. When you use promo code manliness 20 at checkout. That's get Sunday.com promo code manliest 24 $20 off your summer plan. Check it out today having clothes that fit just right.
I can be a huge confidence booster but buying clothes off the rack like suits or dress shirts. There's Parts you can tailor but you can't Taylor all of it. So it's not going to fit you. Just right when you get a custom-made suit. I mean it made to measure feel so great. Like you're wearing pajamas. You're probably thinking Brett made-to-measure custom suit. It's going to cost an arm and a leg Not So within doe Chino Endo Chino, we started it on the belief that custom clothing shouldn't cost a fortune with an OG know you can get made-to-measure clothing at fair prices including suits Blazers shirts and coats and you can get to customize everything from the fabric and lining.
His lapel shape in the monogram. The choice is all yours. Your clothing is then made to your exact measurement. So it fits you perfectly and the best part in don't you know suit started just two hundred and $99 all customizations included. I've talked about my navy blue suit from Endo. Chino got this couple years ago. Still going strong you get to customize how you want to look I did no pleats on this one. No cuffs. I decided how I want my lapels and then you follow this video measuring guy. You'll need some help with some parts of the measurements. Send it in a couple weeks. I had a made-to-measure suits and directly to my door.
Fits me like a glove and feels like pajamas super comfortable and no Gino has showrooms across North America or you can book a virtual appointment and shop online at in dochi know.com. And right now you get an extra $30 off any purchase of 399 dollars or more in don't you know.com when entering code manliness at checkout that's in dochi know.com promo code manliness to get another $30 off any purchase of 399 dollars or more. Check it out into Chino.com.
And now back to the show well and speaking this idea that the medium is the message or the tool can shape your brain it even Socrates a couple thousand years ago. He was kind of down on he didn't like writing because he said I think writing is going to help us or it's going to cause us to forget things. I'd have a sharp memory. You don't remember anything. She was kind of making a mcluhan critique of of the media of media technology, you know, a couple thousand years ago.
Exactly. And I mean one thing that that story brings up is that
Reading and writing. I mean never mind the printing press reading and writing are are quite new phenomena in human history. You know, they are just a little over two thousand years old when the alphabet was invented during the time when Socrates was alive and what you know before then the way people learned was by talking with each other by going to a wise person or an expert like Socrates himself and having a long conversation and he worried that a couple of things.
It happened. Thanks to reading one is that we wouldn't be able to challenge the speaker quote-unquote anymore because the speaker would be we'd confront the speaker through text. Therefore. There was nobody to ask questions questions of anymore. So the kind of dialogue that he thought was very very important to having a rich understanding of everything would no longer be available. And also he worried that because we'd be able to look everything up in books.
Then we wouldn't we would no longer need to hold all our knowledge in our own memory and he feared that that would weaken memory which he very much associated with the richness of thinking and I think it's pretty clear that he was right about that that that there's there. I think there's little question that after the alphabet came along and Reading Writing came along people's memories their store of information their heads kind of went down pretty dramatically
because
Outsource it to an external memory in a book or scroll or
whatever right neuroscientists often refer to that as transactional memory because rather than holding it in your own mind your you're in some way or another transacting with a book or with somebody else to get the information you
need, but you know student Plato he was a writer and he wrote lots of treatises like his dialogues they were written down and I can plate it would say well, yeah, you might you might there's a there's a trade-off. Yeah you your memory might be weekend, but it says when you write
Right the thing down like it's becomes objective. Right? So you can like point to and say this is what you said because if you rely on your memory, there's all sorts of things that can happen there where you miss remember or something. I don't know if it can change inside you as you processed it, but would writing you can say well no, this is what this is what you said. We're going to focus on this.
Yeah. So I mean the big irony is of course everything pretty much everything we know about. So everything we know about Socrates comes from Plato's writing and if fighting hadn't come along and Plato hadn't written all down.
All these dialogues we wouldn't we have no knowledge of Socrates or in would have no opportunity to be taught by him. Even if the way we're being taught is imperfect and Socrates size. And so yeah, I think Socrates I think it was right in much of his diagnosis about what would happen to memory, but I think he underestimated the power of the written word to to expand.
The facts and opinions and arguments and stories that people would have access to as we build up this huge store of literature that's suddenly available in and so the written word kind of breaks down the barriers to the transmission of knowledge speeds it up speeds it up over space and over time you no longer have to be a resident of Athens and have immediate access to Socrates. Tacna Socrates has knowledge.
And in a way this kind of tension between Socrates and Plato is attention that that is ultimately resolved in favor of Play-Doh the writer and yet I do think that in many ways, you know, our intellectual lives our store of knowledge all were greatly expanded by the arrival of the written word in the Persistence of text. That doesn't mean that that Socrates was wrong. It just means he didn't really foresee.
All the implications of the new technology
and then so as the alphabets developed books were developed as you mentioned this this shape the way we thought because writing and reading could become a private Affair you could have thoughts and experiment which gave way to new ideas and also writing or reading and writing encourages what you call linear thinking where you're not everything's not sort of like disorganized. It's like you have to make an argument so it flows and the paper and that had big implications for us as a
society.
I think so and I think it did. I think it greatly encouraged all sorts of experiments with expressiveness experiments with arguments experiments with narrative everything we benefit from today that was built up through, you know decades and centuries of writing but it also I think it also one thing we take for granted or don't fully appreciate about the act of deep reading and here I'm talking about really
No getting lost in a book or an article as the saying goes is that's often portrayed today as kind of a passive activity. Oh, you don't get to you know, you don't get to click a like button or you don't get to comment on on it because it's all it's all just fixed Pros, but I think that gets a totally wrong. I think one of the great things that comes from Deep reading of something in print where you're focusing your whole mind on it. Is that it in a sense opens a clearing inside your mind where your
Ideas in your own not store of knowledge in your own memory collides with whatever the author's writing whether it's a fictional story or whether it's an argument of of nonfiction in as we read in that way. We're constantly kind of testing our own ideas. We're constantly bringing our own experience into the story or the narrative in it. There's this dialogue. I think this is one thing that Socrates missed. I think there's this dialogue between author and reader
that goes on that very very much in riches. I believe our own not only our own store of knowledge, but really our own our own ability to think deeply into analyze other people's ideas and to put new information into a broader context. I think all of that was helped by the arrival the written word in particular the printed word which made it by over time reducing the cost of books.
Important advantage of the printing press is it was an economic Advantage. It opened these Works to a much broader portion of the population and encouraged ultimately widespread literacy
or let's talk about how the internet is possibly changing the way we think are not possibly we have there's scientific evidence that showing that it's changing the way we think let's talk about this just the fact of reading on a screen. So when the internet first came on the scene the first thing that people put up there because it was the easiest and take up that much memory or Ram or bandwidth was just text and
So the idea is like well your if it's just text on a screen. It's just basically like reading a printed book. There's not going to be much of a difference but you highlight all this research that says whenever text is on a screen we read it differently than we are in a physical paper book.
Yeah, you know, there's one kind of assumption that is very common, which is that text is text. You know, who cares if I'm reading it in a book or on a desktop screen or even on my on my phone.
All the same it's still the same words. And so it's the same meaning and therefore we shouldn't worry about it. I think the research is pretty clear that that's not true that actually the medium through which we read influences the way we read in and the reason for that I think is pretty clear. You know, if you think about a printed book for instance, there's nothing else going on in the book other than the text and therefore the book itself in a
kind of almost literal way serves as a screen against distractions because there are always distractions in our lives are always other things going on. Our minds are wander all the time. It's very very hard for human beings to screen out distractions and really concentrate and focus our mind and I think the printed book by kind of isolating text very very much helped train us to pay attention to not give in to
Since and not let our mind waiver all the time as it sort of wants to do compare that to a computer screen any kind of computer screen whether it's your phone or your laptop or whatever.
Sure, there's the texture reading but then there's all sorts of other things going on or available to you. There are alerts there's notifications. There's text messages other messages. There's social media notifications. There's all the websites you might click on and even the text itself is different because there are links in the text. So the links in this is some of the most interesting I think research that I explore in the book.
Links themselves are little distractions. We're not even aware of it. But when you come across a highlighted piece of text that you can click on when you're reading online somewhere in your mind. You're evaluating it you're saying why is this highlighted? Why is this a link? What's going to happen? If I click on it while I get something useful or useless? Should I click on it or not? All of that, which we're not conscious of disrupts our attention as we read and there's some some very good studies that show that
That people who read the exact same text if it has links in it, they comprehend less and they retain less. So all of these all of these differences in the medium itself mean that while we certainly can read online. We spent still spend a lot of time reading online. The quality of that reading in the depth of that reading is not the same as we get when we're reading printed material where there are
All of those distractions going on simultaneously
the done eye-tracking whenever you comparing reading in a book and reading on a screen and when you read on a screen you just skim like you're kind of just you're like a hunter like looking for bit just sort of big piece of information and once you get it you move on and with a book you're more likely just to read the whole thing
through right? So yeah, there's a the eye-tracking studies show that we read on a screen we read in an F pattern, which means we kind of are
Our eyes go across the first couple of lines of text all the way and then it we drift down the left margin then go about halfway across then just drift down the left margin and continued to drift down the left margin and then click and go out and I want to say that there's nothing wrong with skimming and scanning even in printed text. I mean, I mean think of how we used to read still some of us do printed newspapers. It's not like we're reading every article in depth with total attentiveness. There's all sorts of skimming.
Scanning going on the difference though. Is that skimming and scanning becomes the dominant form of reading on a computer screen because there's so much going on and so many distractions. So we rarely give ourselves the operative in the opportunity to get lost in a text to really engage in deep reading there are many ways to read and they're all very very important. The problem with the computer screen is it steals from us both the practice of it?
The encouragement to engage in really attentive contemplative deep-rooted
and we go back this idea of hyperlinks because this was a one of the big selling points of the internet is that you could take all this information and hyperlink it together and give people more context about a particular topic without, you know, having to focus on a particular piece. So so if you're reading War and Peace, for example, the ideas you can link to different things with in War and Peace like to a Wikipedia article to explain something about Russian history and the
Like what can this will actually help people know more about this, but the study say actually hyper linking all this information together often results in people knowing and understanding less of about a topic.
Yeah, nigga it all comes down to the fact that links are distractions their distractions when you click on them and you suddenly jump to somewhere else in their distractions, even when you don't click on them, so all of these studies and these are studies from quite a long time ago because you're absolutely right that in the early days.
Days of the web everybody was really excited about hyperlinks. I mean for one thing it was fun to click on them and jump somewhere else. But also there was there were all sorts of Scholars and Educators that thought. Oh, this is going to be a big breakthrough in Reading because you'll you know be able to read contrasting opinions or whatever and all of that is true. I mean links are can be very helpful, but nevertheless when you look at the way people come reading comprehension in the retention of information from Reading they go
down when links are incorporated into text and there was one study I talked about that actually took the same piece of text and just vary the number of links that appeared in the text and then had a lots of different people participants in the experiment read and what they found is that the more links you get the lower the comprehension is so that created a very clear kind of sign that links are intruding on our ability to
To read deeply and as a result derive the benefits that come from Deep reading which are everything from remembering what you've read to also getting into that that deep State. I talked talked about earlier where your mind is kind of bringing all of its all of its resources and all of its existing learning into the act of reading and your kind of challenging yourself and expanding both what you know, but also expanding the
Of your understanding and as you expand that then whenever you get new information coming in to you, then you can fit it into this bigger context and it becomes more meaningful. So there is this big trade-off. I think with reading online versus reading on a printed page and unfortunately as a culture where we're voting for we're voting for the screen.
Well, I think you also mention another study in the shallows where they did an experiment it relates to task switching or trying to multitask and
That can cause comprehension to go down as well. So they gave people in one group they gave people to things to read but they had to read one first and then the next thing and then the next group they gave like you could like go back and forth between the two with hyperlinks and when it up happening was the people who just read things one at a time. Remember we're able to remember more the people who are going back and forth. I think they thought they knew a lot about the topic, but we actually tested the from comprehension. They didn't actually remember that
much right they
Remembered less and they also had a much more superficial understanding of what they read and also in this is also important. They enjoyed it less. They thought it was less fulfilling to read it. They didn't think it was as worthwhile. So it kind of this this sense we have that. Oh if we could only just do things simultaneously we'd get the benefits of contrasting and everything. It just doesn't it just doesn't hold up. I mean what all this research points to
to is that sure there are times when you want to be distracted you want to be sharing information very very quickly. But if you really want to think deeply you have to focus because that's when it all comes down to this this process that scientists refer to as memory consolidation, which is moving information that's coming into your mind new information into your long-term memory in that. It's during that process memory consolidation that you create associations and connections.
Ends with the new information between the new information and everything else, you know, everything else contained in your brain and it's those connections and associations not the little isolated bits of information that are the basis for personal knowledge. And one thing we know about memory consolidation is that it really only happens when were attentive if you're distracted and you're taking in it a jumble of information, you're not going to develop those associations and connections.
Actions those Rich associations and as a result. Yeah, you might have quick access to particular particular fact, but you're not going to weave that fact into a broader and deeper context instead of knowledge in your own mind. This
segues nicely into my next question, which is another thing that happens with the Internet is because we know that we can just look something up we can Google it or we can I get my email I treat my email basically like Google now because I use Gmail. So I just archived everything. I'm like, well if I need to remember something I'll just
For it and one one argument. Is that for the sort of pro internet? Is that well, this is great because now that you're having to remember all these facts or all this stuff you're able to spend you have more brain power to expend on creativity and reasoning and solving complex problems. Is there anything to that argument that having this external memory like Google that we gives us more time or more brain power to focus on higher level thinking
no.
I think that I think that's a misreading of how the mind works and and I'm not making an argument against having stores of information outside of our own memory that we can draw on. That's I mean, that's one thing books and everything else gave us and it's extremely important but it's also important to recognize that the depth of our thought though the rigor of our analysis and everything is all about is all about building context so we can fit new.
And into this kind of bigger picture in actuality what the research suggests is that the more the Richer the store of information you have in your own mind and your own memory the more deeply you'll process new information and as a result the more thoughtful, you'll be the more analytical you'll be the better able you will be to evaluate the worth of some new piece of information so memory to store of information in your own head.
Is very very tightly linked to the depth and rigor of your thinking it's not like these are two separate things and know if I spend energy on remembering things that I'll have less mental energy to go toward analysis or whatever. That's that's simply gets our thought processes wrong. It's actually very important to build up this deep store of information in our own heads in our own memory in supplement it.
With the stuff that's that we can Google or the stuff that's in books. So if we think of it in terms of supplementing our own Rich store of information with all the information that's outside of us and is written down somewhere or is on videos or whatever. That's fine. That that gives us the best of both worlds. But if we think of the web and of Google as a substitute for our own memory in this is what a lot of people argue I think mistake,
Only then that's when we get into trouble because at that point we no longer develop the context necessary to really fully evaluate all the information that's coming at us so quickly online,
that's interesting because it kind of goes against some of the pedagogy that they're doing in elementary schools or high schools. It's like well we want to teach kids how to reason and think we're not going to spend a lot of time learning facts, but I was like, how do you how do you expect a kid to like reason about the Constitution or
If they don't even know like what the Constitution is, like syndrome know like yet have the building blocks in order to make an argument or analyze something
exactly. And and so, you know, I've been we've been talking about this in terms of the technology but really this there's something broader that's been going on culturally and socially where we've come to believe that you can you can separate memory what you know from how you
You think in actuality you can't do that. So this isn't I'm not making an argument for rote memorization for sitting down and just you know going through a set of numbers or a set of facts and just going over them over and over and over again. What I am arguing for is that we have to recognize that to think deeply about anything you have to actually know stuff otherwise our mind start to to work like computers where you have some particular.
You need to plug into some some something you're doing and you grab that fact and then immediately forget it and go on to the next thing something you can you can do some activity some mental activities that way and you can do them quite successfully, but if you really if you really want to think deeply you have to know things because that's the that's the only way to build the context necessary to connect a new piece of information with a lots of other pieces.
Information and it's only at that point that thinking actually becomes really interesting.
That's interesting. You mentioned you brought that idea that we treat the brain like a computer. I was I think it's fascinating to study the history of metaphors for brains throughout history because it says a lot about the technology of the time so, you know back in the you know, Industrial Revolution, the brain was like a machine or it was like a hydraulic pump in the way you think about your brain it actually there's there's a there's a tendency for it to influence. How you go about it.
Acting with the world. So what do you think the implications of us thinking of our brain as just a computer Beyond just what you just said. They oh, yes sort of just data and data out. That's all it is.
I think the I think the danger is that we begin to
We begin to Value only those ways of thinking that resemble the way a computer works and that's very much, you know, maximizing the efficiency of input and output. So we start to think oh the more information I can get the more the more quickly than that's all to the good and what we begin to devalue are the ways of thinking that happen when we're not being stimulated by flows of information. So things like contemplation reflection.
Shirin but attentiveness in general all of those ways of thinking which are completely go against the grain of what computers can do all of those ways of thinking we begin to think are dispensable and I believe that I believe that's one of the stories of our times that that not only are we engaging in things like contemplation and reflection less often, but we're beginning to think we don't really need those ways of thinking
and as long as we as long as we're processing lots of information and lots of messages as quickly as possible, as long as we're Googling a lot of stuff clicking on a lot of buttons and icons then then we're thinking in a kind of optimum fashion because then we're thinking more and more like computers and you know, I think I think that might be one of the great tragedies of modern times is that we're losing even this sense that contemplation and
Witness in quiet deep thought has value.
Let's go. Let's try this idea of the the social media silly the smartphone. Obviously. They just it just amplifies our distraction as I mean, you're so many things you can you're out you're surfing the web on your phone. You're like get a notification from your app. And then you're going to check Instagram. But let's talk about what is this increased social interactivity of the web. What is that doing or sort of amplifying with how the internet is is affecting our
A
brain. Yeah, and that's a you know, that's one of the questions I tried to wrestle with when I was writing this the new afterward to the book because the shallows focus is very much on personal thinking and how having access to all this information online changes the way we as individuals think what's become very very clear of the last 10 years as social media has become more and more popular and become more and more kind of
Central not only to how we use computers, but how to how we live our lives is that there's very very much a social aspect that wasn't as clear 10 years ago. And I think and I think we're still learning about the effects of this and in there good effects in there are ill effects and in some ways during the pandemic. We're kind of work were speeding up our learning because now even more than before were reliant on social media of various.
Sorts to do things that we used to do in person whether it's business meetings or classrooms or cocktail parties or whatever. And so I I think in recent years. Well, let me back up. I think again one of the stories here is that in the beginning we focus on all the good things that come out of having social media in our ability to exchange information with others in to express ourselves. We focus very much on the positive side of that.
We've broken down the barriers to Media. So each of us can be a producer and a content creator and we get our messages out to the world and that that's very important. I think than that is a big benefit. But in recent years we've learned that there are big negatives. There's well in a lot of those big negatives come from the fact that you mean Nature has a bright side and it has a dark side and to think that if we have this technology that allows everybody.
To express everything going on in their head all the time that that's going to draw out the very negative qualities of human nature as well as the sunnier qualities of human nature. And once you create this this kind of web of social media, it becomes very very hard to figure out how to regulate it how to emphasize the good qualities, but get rid of the trolling in the fake news in the vindictiveness and
Everything else that we've been struggling with and I think companies like Facebook and Google and Twitter. They they're in a position now where it's quite clear that a lot of the, you know, a lot of effects the effects of their services are quite negative, but the social media work at such scale in such a speed it becomes very very difficult to figure out. How do we how do we reign in this information in and I think that's what we're we're seeing today is
A lot of struggles with all of these these things
and with it for you too, and thanks to the smart phone because it's got a camera a lot of the way we communicate is very visible or video. So it's like you you should share a picture on Instagram you amim you create these memes on your smartphone. That's just sort of an image with a few simple words Tick Tock videos YouTube, like that's what people people gravitate. They're not gravity to or taking towards like long-form articles in the New Yorker. They just want The 15-second Tick-Tock video.
Yeah, it's been quite a dramatic change, you know particularly over the last 10 years. I you know, we had YouTube and we were we had a lot of visual ways of exchanging information on line 10 years ago. But but that's all accelerated. Greatly. I mean, I mean if you look back in the early days of Facebook, it was very very text-based. That's no longer the case. And so, you know again, I think there's there's good and bad things here. There's I think one of the
the things that's going on is that the way we communicate is changing to respond to the fact that with our phones or other computers connected to the internet. There's a super abundance of information and it's all streaming by very very quickly. So you have to kind of you have to grab a person's attention and get as much information across as quickly as possible. And I think I think videos photographs in certainly means which are
Kind of this new form new form of expression that often intermingles text and in pictures images, I think all of these are a response to the to the need to make a point very very quickly because you know that the audience's is not going to stay focused on one thing for very long. And so what you get is this a great deal of creativity in expressing things visually with maximum efficiency and sometimes with great humor and wit and stuff, but what you lose I think
Is is the depth of Engagement? So you have to not only have to not only design Communications to fit within the medium, but you have to make them more and more superficial because you know that that's that's about the best you can the best way you can you can grab a person's fleeting attention superficial and also amp up any emotional content because that's what what stands out in the flow of information what
I mean.
Love you. So I think the case you're not I mean you're critiquing the internet, but you're also saying okay, there's some good things about the internet to he's got to be aware of what it's doing to our brains to our minds in the way. We think how have you personally tried to sort of balance the benefits of the internet while also trying to downplay or mitigate its downsides and in sort of have to keep that literate brain if that you once had
yeah, and so, you know, as I said that my writing about this
Subject and you know the inspiration for the shallows initially came out of my own experience struggling with maintaining my ability to be attentive and to be contemplative and things I value and it still, you know, even after even after doing the research and writing the book and kind of coming to I think a better understanding of why I and others are experiencing this it's still a struggle. In fact, it is probably even even more of a struggle for a long time I held off in
Didn't get a get a smartphone then finally I gave in and of course now like everyone I carry it with me all the time. It's always on it's always kind of even if it's not actively distracting me, you know part of my part of my brain is saying to you I should pull out my phone to see what's going on. And so the even that is a distraction, so, you know, I guess I guess what I've done is tried to at least
At least moderate some of the biggest sources of distraction. So I've turned off notifications on my apps and other phone functions and stuff to the extent possible. They still come through because it's almost a full-time job Turk turning off and keeping off notifications because companies who develop these apps really want to keep you distracted and it also I try at least in sometimes I'm successful sometimes not
To actually not take my phone with me all the time because it in there's some recent research that I talked about in the afterward that that shows that even even when your phones in your pocket. You're not using it. There's it's not buzzing or anything. It's still a major drag on your attention major drawn your attention. So I tried to you know, if I'm going to go out to have dinner or something. I'll say do I really need to bring my phone with me and more often than not the answer is
No, and so I'll leave it behind or if I'm going for a walk or so. I'm trying to be more disciplined in choosing when I have my phone with me and when it's going to distract me rather than simply go rather than simply take the course that I think as a society. We've kind of accepted without thinking which is you should have your phone with you all the time. So those are a couple of things but you know, I have to be I have to be honest. It's a constant struggle and I still find it distressing Lee.
Difficult to kind of shut off this craving for stimulation in sit down and do something that requires concentration like Mike reading a long article or a book. So I think this is you know, I think very much this is the new environment cultural environment social environment intellectual environment. We've created for ourselves and it values some ways of thinking and D values other it.
Others and for those of us who want to try to maintain a inability to think deeply and read deeply it really does mean that that we're going to it's we're going to be kind of constantly in a sense working against pushing back against not only the technology but the set of cultural and social norms that has developed around the technology and is constantly telling us we have to be always online.
Always exchanging messages watching messages replying very very quickly. Our culture has changed in a way that is very much a process of adapting to the
technology. Well Nick this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the the new book the update and the rest of your
work. Well, I have a website so you can go there and be distracted. It's Nicholas car.com and that has a list of my various books as well as
Some of the Articles and essays I've written over the years so that would be the best starting point.
It doesn't well Nicholas Carr. Thanks for your time. It's been a
pleasure. Thank you Brett.
I guess they was Nicholas Carr. He is the author of the book the shallows what the internet is doing to our brains is available at amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his website Nicholas car.com. Also check out our show notes at a wound is / shallows refined links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.
Well that wraps up another edition of the a win podcast. Check out our website at Art of Manliness.com where you find our podcast archives will see thousands of Articles written over the years about pretty much anything you can think of and if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes they own podcast you can do. So on Stitcher premium head over to Stitcher premium.com sign up use code manliness at checkout for a free month trial once you're signed up download the Stitcher app on Android and iOS, and you start enjoy ad-free episodes they and podcast and if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it.
You take one minute to give your view an apple podcast or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. If you done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think we get something out of it as always thank you for the continued support and until next time this is Brett McKay reminding you not only lists they went podcast but put what you've heard into action.
