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By: Taylor Barkley, Program Officer for Tech and Innovation at Stand Together

提供者：Stand Together技术与创新计划官Taylor Barkley

Given the subject matter of The Shallows, it seems necessary to state up front that I read the 2011 paperback edition of this book. No dreaded hyperlinks here! Although I did appreciate the footnotes, so hyperlinks may have been handy.

鉴于《 The Shallows》的主题，似乎有必要预先声明我阅读了这本书的2011平装版。 这里没有可怕的超链接！ 尽管我确实很喜欢脚注，但是超链接可能很方便。

Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains is a book I’ve known about since at least the mid-2010s, but had not read until this year. It is a book cited in speeches, podcasts, policy papers, sermons, and of course other books. Carr’s work in The Shallows seems to have risen to the status of canon in the context of technology critique. Ten years after its publication seemed the right time to read and review it.

尼古拉斯·卡尔(Nicholas Carr)的《 The Shallows：Internet对我们的大脑的作用》是我至少从2010年代中期以来就知道的一本书，但直到今年才读过。 这是在演讲，播客，政策文件，讲道中引用的书，当然还有其他书籍。 在技​​术评论的背景下，卡尔在《浅滩》中的工作似乎已经升为佳能的地位。 出版十年后，似乎是阅读和审阅它的正确时间。

I was also behind on other Carr readings, so on this 10th anniversary decided to read his three recent books. It has been a pleasant month diving into a part of Nicholas Carr’s mind.

我在其他卡尔的著作中也落后于其他人，因此在成立十周年之际，他决定阅读他的三本书。 进入尼古拉斯·卡尔(Nicholas Carr)思想的一部分，这是一个愉快的月份。

In The Shallows, I was struck by how the bulk of the work does not deal with “the internet,” words that are, after all, in the subtitle. The first 140 pages are an intriguing yet brief history of the written word and books. More strictly, it is a history of the ways in which humans have communicated and transmitted their thoughts to others in spoken and then written form. It is woven throughout with citations to various studies on how the writing and reading processes affect the human brain.

在《 The Shallows》中，令我震惊的是，大部分作品都没有涉及“互联网”，毕竟这些文字都是副标题。 前140页是文字和书籍的有趣而简短的历史。 更严格地说，这是人类以口头然后书面形式交流和传播思想的方式的历史。 它始终引用各种写作和阅读过程如何影响人脑的研究。

The book begins with a story from the author. Analogizing himself to Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey where Hal tells Dave he feels his mind going as Dave disconnects key components in Hal’s computer “brain.” Where once he felt he could focus for long periods on reading or other projects, now he feels “fidgety” and “lose[s] the thread.” The culprit? “The Net.”

这本书从作者的故事开始。 从2001年开始模仿哈尔：《太空漫游》 ，哈尔告诉戴夫，当戴夫断开哈尔计算机“大脑”中的关键组件时，他感到自己的想法正在改变。 他曾经觉得自己可以长期专注于阅读或其他项目，而现在他感到“烦躁”和“失去主线”。 罪魁祸首？ “互联网。”

As a brief aside, “the Net” is one of the few ways in which this book feels its date. The other is a reference to MySpace in a list of major social media companies from which to choose. Still, The Shallows has perhaps aged better than other technology books. The thesis at least has proven viable and relevant from Carr’s essay on which the book is based in the July/August 2008 issue of The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” The other glaring omission is any extensive discussion of the smartphone and its impacts.

简短地说，“网络”是本书感受其年代的几种方式之一。 另一个是可供选择的主要社交媒体公司列表中对MySpace的引用。 尽管如此， 《浅滩》的年龄可能比其他技术书籍要好。 至少从Carr的论文中证明了该论点是可行的，并且该论文的依据是该书在2008年7月/ 8月出版的《大西洋 》杂志上发表，“ Google会让我们变得愚蠢吗？ 互联网正在为我们的大脑做什么。” 另一个明显的遗漏是对智能手机及其影响的任何广泛讨论。

If a summary of The Shallows has to be made in two sentences it is there at the start: “The boons are real. But they come at a price.” This is the theme of nearly all technology critiques that border on the formula: invite the reader in with a dire prognosis about some popular or emerging technology, list the negative effects, but then two-thirds of the way down, state how the author is no Luddite and in fact technology has many benefits, end with dire thesis. If I have a major critique of The Shallows, this is it. The price we pay to use digital technologies are our brain power. But it sure is a help!

如果必须用两句话对《浅滩》做一个总结，那就是开头：“恩赐是真实的。 但是它们是有代价的。” 这是几乎所有与公式有关的技术批评的主题：邀请读者对某些流行或新兴技术的预后感到悲观，列出负面影响，然后三分之二指出作者的态度。没有Luddite，实际上技术有很多好处，最后是可怕的论点。 如果我对《浅滩》有重大批评，就是这样。 我们使用数字技术所付出的代价是我们的大脑力量。 但这肯定是有帮助的！

Carr backs up his own subjective evidence in the introductory chapter with anecdotes from three other people. One friend lamented that he can’t read War and Peace anymore. Another that he “stopped reading books altogether.” Indeed, he asks readers to examine or reflect on their own sense of unease about lack of focus or other ailments. At the outset there is no other evidence offered to connect these feelings of unease to the internet other than subjective experience. In a recent interview with Ezra Klein, Carr confirms that many of the arguments in The Shallows are subjective and open for debate.

Carr在介绍性章节中以其他三个人的轶事来支持自己的主观证据。 一位朋友感叹他不再能阅读《 战争与和平》 。 他“完全停止读书”的另一个。 实际上，他要求读者检查或反思自己对缺乏重点或其他疾病的不安感。 首先，除了主观体验之外，没有其他证据可以将这些不安情绪与互联网联系起来。 在最近接受Ezra Klein的采访中，Carr确认《 The Shallows》中的许多论点都是主观的，可以公开辩论。

Indeed, this is where I would start. Why point to the internet as the reason? What else is going on in your life? What other stressors, voices, pains, worries, or preferences are pulling on your attention? I read War and Peace two years ago under a full dose of the internet. Carr’s writing in these earlier passages reflect a scapegoat that too often is asserted without critique. The internet becomes a scapegoat for all human ills.

确实，这是我要开始的地方。 为什么以互联网为指向？ 您的生活中还有什么？ 还有哪些其他压力，声音，痛苦，担忧或偏好引起您的注意？ 两年前，我在充分利用互联网的情况下阅读了《 战争与和平》 。 卡尔在这些较早的段落中的著作反映了一个替罪羊，而这个替罪羊常常被批评而没有批评。 互联网已成为所有人类疾病的替罪羊。

But for the internet we would have a President Hillary Clinton. But for the internet climate change would be solved. But for the internet we wouldn’t be so angry. But for the internet we wouldn’t be so polarized. And with this book, but for the internet we wouldn’t be so stupid.

但是对于互联网，我们将有希拉里·克林顿总统。 但是对于互联网而言，气候变化将得到解决。 但是对于互联网，我们不会那么生气。 但是对于互联网，我们不会两极分化。 有了这本书，但是对于互联网，我们不会那么愚蠢。

In the main body of the book there are many helpful tidbits and stories. For instance, Carr’s outline of the four categories of technologies in chapter three. The excellent chapter four that walks through a history of words written on paper and some hilarious pessimistic reactions a la Pessimists Archive, like the bookseller who was run out of Paris on “suspicion of being in league with the devil” for selling books. This chapter relies heavily on Elizabeth Eisenstein’s book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. These historical anecdotes of early worries in the Europe of the 1500s just after Gutenberg’s printing press launched cheap and available literature into the world echo today’s worries about the proliferation of information via the internet absent gatekeepers. However, there is no acknowledgement of these negative reactions and The Shallows proceeds apace as if there is no lesson to be learned from these historical reactions. And that may be the case, but the matter is not considered one way or the other.

在本书的主体中，有许多有用的花絮和故事。 例如，卡尔在第三章中概述了四类技术。 出色的第四章讲述了纸上文字的历史以及悲观主义者档案馆中的一些热闹的悲观React，例如以“怀疑与魔鬼同居”而出卖巴黎的书商。 本章在很大程度上依赖于伊丽莎白·爱森斯坦(Elizabeth Eisenstein)的著作《印刷出版社作为变革的推动者》。 古登堡印刷厂将廉价廉价的文献推向世界后，这些早期的忧虑在1500年代的欧洲传遍了欧洲，这回荡了当今人们对缺乏网守的情况下信息传播的担忧。 但是，没有人承认这些负面React， 《浅滩》Swift进行，好像没有从这些历史React中汲取的教训。 可能是这种情况，但此问题不被视为一种方法。

I wonder what Nicholas Carr of 2010 would have thought of the time we spend on the internet now. In chapter five he offers up a litany of statistics to demonstrate the increased time that people are spending online. It seems to be a shock factor. If only he knew how “bad” it could get! Then later in chapter five, in perhaps the section of objective facts that suggested a future worse than the one we are in, he outlines the decline of newspapers, including The Washington Post. Of course, things did look dire then, and continue to be difficult for numerous small papers. But The Post and other major papers such as The New York Times have been able to turn around the slide and are hiring more journalists.

我想知道2010年的尼古拉斯·卡尔(Nicholas Carr)会如何考虑我们现在花在互联网上的时间。 在第五章中，他提供了大量统计数据，以证明人们在网上花费的时间增加了。 这似乎是一个令人震惊的因素。 如果他能知道它会变得多么“糟糕”！ 然后，在第五章的稍后部分，也许在客观事实部分暗示了未来比我们所处的未来还要糟糕，他概述了包括《华盛顿邮报》在内的报纸的衰落。 当然，那时确实看起来很可怕，并且对于许多小论文来说仍然很困难。 但是《邮报》和《纽约时报》等其他主要报纸已经能够扭转幻灯片的局面，并正在招聘更多的记者。

The second major flub is at the start of chapter six. He cites the decline business publishers have suffered as eyes have shifted from the page to the screen. But by certain indicators, business for publishers is better than ever. This was a point I kept returning to in my own mind. Through The Shallows it is clear Carr loves literature and writing. He seems to be a very curious fellow, ravenous for literature and new information. Frankly, these are traits I admire in his writing.

第二个主要的蠢事是在第六章的开头。 他引用了业务发布者因将目光从页面转移到屏幕而遭受的衰落。 但是从某些指标来看，发布商的业务比以往任何时候都要好。 我一直想着这一点。 通过《浅滩》 ，很明显卡尔喜欢文学和写作。 他似乎是一个很好奇的人，对文学和新信息狂热。 坦白说，这些是我在他的著作中所欣赏的特质。

But book sales are higher than ever now. Combine those numbers with the availability and boom of information available for free (non-priced), we are living in an age of super abundance. I don’t have time, even if I dedicated myself full-time to reading, to read all the things that merely interest me, let alone the works I should read for my edification that lie outside my strict interests. This reality seems to undermine a key point of evidence in Carr’s argument. Aside from COVID-19 impacts, independent booksellers, and books overall are doing well. Perhaps one could quibble that buying books is different than reading books. That of course requires more analysis.

但是书籍的销量比以往任何时候都要高。 将这些数字与免费(非定价)的可用性和大量信息相结合，我们正处在一个超级丰富的时代。 即使我全职读书，我也没有时间阅读所有我只感兴趣的东西，更不用说我应该为我的兴趣而阅读的作品了，这些东西超出了我的严格兴趣。 这种现实似乎破坏了卡尔论证中的关键证据。 除了COVID-19的影响外，独立书商和书籍整体上都表现良好。 也许有人会怀疑买书和看书是不同的。 当然，这需要更多的分析。

About two-thirds of the way through the book, Carr’s writing starts turning more dire. This is the content I expected. Some highlights: Citing an interview with neuroscientist Michael Merzenich, who says the consequences of the internet’s effects on our brains could prove “deadly”; “We are welcoming the frenziedness into our souls”; “The price we pay to assume technology’s power is alienation”; “Outsource memory, and culture withers.”

在本书写作过程的三分之二左右，卡尔的写作开始变得更加可怕。 这是我期望的内容。 一些要点：引用神经科学家迈克尔·梅尔泽尼奇(Michael Merzenich)的一次采访，他说互联网对我们大脑的影响可能会“致命”。 “我们欢迎疯狂进入我们的灵魂”； “我们承担技术力量所付出的代价是疏远”； “外包内存，文化枯萎。”

Chapter eight, “The Church of Google,” is a specific application of Carr’s riff that the internet has systematized information at the expense of deep reading and our organic approach to information. It is full of quotes from Google’s founders and former executive officers Larry Page and Sergey Brin as well as former CEO Erich Schmidt that seem to be an attempt to scare the reader of The Shallows by demonstrating the ulterior motives of one of the world’s largest companies. The chapter ends with an interesting, short paragraph:

第八章“ Google的教会”是Carr riff的一个特殊应用，即互联网已将信息系统化，而以深度阅读和我们对信息的有机处理为代价。 谷歌创始人，前执行官拉里·佩奇(Larry Page)和谢尔盖·布林(Sergey Brin)以及前首席执行官埃里希·施密特(Erich Schmidt)的名言充斥其中，这似乎是在试图通过展示全球最大公司之一的别有用心来吓The《浅滩》的读者。 本章以一段有趣的简短段落结尾：

Google is neither God nor Satan, and if there are shadows in the Googleplex they’re no more than the delusions of grandeur. What’s disturbing about the company’s founders is not their boyish desire to create an amazingly cool machine that will be able to outthink its creators, but the pinched conception of the human mind that gives rise to such desire.

谷歌既不是上帝也不是撒旦，如果Googleplex中有阴影，它们不过是宏伟的幻想。 该公司创始人的烦恼不是他们的男孩子般的愿望来创造出一款能够超越其创造者的，令人赞叹的酷炫机器，而是引起这种渴望的人性思维的狭pin观念。

He should have finished the thought and explained an alternative way of thinking. Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power suffers from an equal lack of detail about the alternative. When I read Zuboff’s book, I waited intently throughout the over 500 pages for her to explain what a better system than the one she was critiquing might look like. Likewise, with Carr in chapter eight. If Brin, Page, Schmidt et al have such devious views, but those views brought about these products billions of people use, what is the worldview they should adopt? I’m not convinced a worldview other than the one they had would have brought about such useful technology.

他应该已经完成​​了思考，并解释了另一种思考方式。 肖珊娜·祖波夫(Shoshana Zuboff)的《监视资本主义时代：在权力的新疆域为人类未来而战》同样缺乏关于替代方案的细节。 当我阅读Zuboff的书时，我专心地等待了500余页，向她解释了比她所批评的系统更好的系统。 同样，第八章中的卡尔。 如果布林，佩奇，施密特等人有如此曲解的观点，但是这些观点带来了数十亿人使用的这些产品，那么他们应该采用什么世界观？ 除了他们本来会带来这种有用技术的那种世界观之外，我不相信一种世界观。

Perhaps I misunderstand the role of the critic and am thinking through the lens of public policy writing, of which I am most familiar. Carr and Zuboff would probably say the alternatives are best left to the reader to develop and deploy.

也许我误解了批评家的角色，并正在通过我最熟悉的公共政策写作来思考。 卡尔和祖波夫可能会说，替代方案最好留给读者进行开发和部署。

Chapter nine summarizes research into memory physiology, neuroscience, and the workings of the brain, mainly focusing on memory. It is an impressive survey of medical and scientific literature and offers a compelling case that the internet is affecting our mental capacity to recall facts or develop creative thoughts. As Carr succinctly notes, “The Web is a technology of forgetfulness.”

第九章总结了对记忆生理学，神经科学和大脑运作的研究，主要侧重于记忆。 这是对医学和科学文献的令人印象深刻的调查，并提供了令人信服的案例，说明互联网正在影响我们回忆事实或发展创造性思维的思维能力。 正如卡尔简洁地指出的那样：“网络是一种健忘的技术。”

The conclusions of chapter nine carry over into chapter 10, where he discusses how simplicity in software design can be deleterious to our memory capacity. Again, as succinctly stated, “The brighter the software, the dimmer the user.” That particular sentence, though, is backed up by an experiment in 2003 from a Dutch cognitive psychologist, Cristof van Nimwegen. Carr struggles with what to do with such findings because he admittedly, during a chapter interlude, regularly uses and quickly adopts new technologies. Such a struggle highlights broader issues with the genre of technology critiques.

第九章的结论延续到了第十章，他在该章中讨论了软件设计的简单性如何对我们的存储能力有害。 再次简洁地说：“软件越亮，用户越暗淡。” 不过，这一特定的句子得到了荷兰认知心理学家Cristof van Nimwegen在2003年的一次实验的支持。 卡尔为处理这些发现而苦苦挣扎，因为他承认，在一章插曲中，他会定期使用并Swift采用新技术。 这场斗争突出了技术评论类型的更广泛问题。

Both chapters imply and offer scientific evidence that harder cognitive tasks are better for our brains. Such tasks are like weightlifting for our neurons. But where do these critics draw the line? Carr latter laments his declining skill in longhand writing. Is writing in stone better than because it is harder and takes longer? Where is the line drawn between convenience, speed, cognitive effort, aesthetic pleasure, and other squishy notions? It remains unstated here and elsewhere. The best we can get is a reference to the cutting-edge technology of the previous generation, which of course carried its own critiques.

这两章都暗示并提供了科学的证据，表明较困难的认知任务对我们的大脑更好。 这样的任务就像举重神经元。 但是这些批评家在哪里划清界限？ 卡尔后来感叹他的速写能力下降。 用硬文字写的总比用硬文字写的要好吗？ 便利，速度，认知努力，审美愉悦和其他糊涂概念之间的界限在哪里？ 它在这里和其他地方仍未声明。 我们所能得到的最好的是对上一代尖端技术的引用，当然，这些技术也有自己的批评。

The Shallows obviously scratches an itch and fills a felt need. People are still buying it and it has a 10th anniversary printing. It is one perspective on the effects of the internet with compelling research summaries that aim to prove the internet as the original sin for any contemporary ennui or malaise. Perhaps this is the primary critique and not to Carr’s fault but to our own misunderstanding of the book’s purpose.

The Shallows很明显会挠痒痒，满足了感觉的需求。 人们仍然在购买它，并且它有十周年纪念版印刷。 这是有关互联网影响的一种观点，并提供了引人注目的研究摘要，旨在证明互联网是任何当代Ennui或不适的原始罪恶。 也许这是主要的批评，而不是卡尔的错，而是我们对本书目的的误解。

What is held up as an objective, prescriptive diagnosis of society-wide ills is instead one man’s exploration of his struggle with these tenuous lines between the appropriate amount of technology use. That’s on us and maybe the book’s marketers, not on Carr.

客观地，规范地诊断全社会疾病的方法是，一个人探索自己在适当的技术使用量之间的这些脆弱界限所产生的挣扎。 那是我们的责任，也许是书的营销商的责任，而不是卡尔的责任。

Given that context, I would recommend reading this book alongside Clive Thompson’s Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better and Virginia Postrel’s The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress. The meta-critique of technology critique is that these issues are perceived as one-sided: Serious thinkers are worried about the effects of technology and/or the internet and therefore you should be too; non-serious thinkers take the opposing position. That’s just not the case.

在这种情况下，我建议与克莱夫·汤普森(Clive Thompson)的《 聪明比你想的》：技术如何使我们的思想变得更好，以及弗吉尼亚·波斯特尔(Virginia Postrel)的《未来及其敌人：关于创造力，企业和进步的不断增长的冲突》阅读本书。 对技术批评的元批评是，这些问题被认为是单方面的：认真的思想家担心技术和/或互联网的影响，因此您也应该这样做。 不认真的思想家采取相反的立场。 事实并非如此。

As Carr notes, our experiences with technology vary from person to person. He is correct to point out that we should examine our uses of technology. How are we using our tools? How do those uses make us feel? Are they encouraging or hindering healthy behaviors? But blaming tools for all ills will shortcut the critical and helpful self-reflection we can all endorse.

正如卡尔所说，我们在技术方面的经验因人而异。 他是正确的指出我们应该研究技术的使用。 我们如何使用我们的工具？ 这些用途如何使我们感到？ 它们是在鼓励还是阻碍健康的行为？ 但是，指责所有疾病的工具将使我们大家都认可的批判性和有益的自我反省成为可能。