The Shallows

Rating: 4.25 stars

I like the structure and execution of this book. It's extremely well-written but I wish that there wasn't any mention of technology that feels like ADHD because ADHD is much more complicated than a lack of focus and shortened attention span. I actually have ADHD and my symptoms vary based on the activity. ADHD can also mean hyperfocusing on an activity, which isn't as often talked about. Other than that, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to others.

I tried really hard to not just type, “Ok, boomer” and hit post.

Maybe it's just the age of the book showing a smidge, but the things this guy bemoans hardly seem catastrophic. Kindles come with the Internet built into the price! The Indianapolis Symphony lets people vote by text for the encore song! There are children who use laptops instead of books!

I am far from a tech-only booster. I think plenty of people would do well to thoughtfully reconsider the value of technology to the extent devices should be a tool. What this author misses is what I was after: reasonable arguments to analyze whether reading that book on your iPad is actually more distracting. Do you sit down to read the “newspaper” only to get sucked into Twitter? That stuff is problematic.

I'm sure many of us could remember our parents complaining we “always had our nose in a book”, as if it was a bad thing. But unlike reading, which the author tries to hold up as far back as Gutenberg, people didn't walk around incapable of working because they were reading. People didn't have “reading addictions”.

Tech like our phones should be tools, but the apps on them are increasingly engineered to be addictive and sociologically sticky.

This book doesn't get very deep into that.

Phenomenal book! Usually, I don't write reviews of more than 3-4 words, but this book was an excellent pleasure to read that I cannot resist to fully acknowledge about how well written this book is. I won't give away contents of the books, which I leave it to the readers to figure out. I read this book out of curiosity and I was surprised at the level of details it gave me and the depth of the authors' research is commendable. I was fully indulged in reading this book from the start. Possibly one of those rare books I've enjoyed reading from the beginning and the one of those authors whose train of thoughts and concerns matched with mine.
This book talked about a lot of subtle ideas which I haven't seen any other author talk about (and I wish someone did), which may explain why I enjoyed this book.

Good book, but went into a lot of detail about specific things and repeated itself some. I'd rather have read a short blog post about it... which is ironically what the book is about 😂 (our short attention spans)

I picked this up because it was referenced in Deep Work by Cal Newport (which I'd definitely recommend). I feel bad for rating this book so low, but it seemed to just reiterate concepts and research I've already heard. Carr wrote this from 2007-2009, and it's age showed given it's focus on technology. I probably would have rated it higher if I had read it closer to the publishing date, but it was super interesting to read about technology of the last decade as “innovative” and “on the leading edge.”

Interested? Stick to the abstract and pick up a book on the “similar” list on Amazon.

While this book is an interesting read the way it is structured isn't always clear. Many times Nicholas Carr would digress from the main subject and goes on and on about something unrelated keeping us wondering “so what?”. However, I can only recognise the extensive references that are backing up his claims, all the conclusions in this book are based on science and the extensive bibliography will satisfy the most curious readers.

I thoroughly enjoyed the tons and the author's ability to weave in history and science. Think what you will about the Internet–this book is worth the few hours it takes to read.

Very relevant stuff about the internet's onslaught on our attention but I expected the guy to have some ideas about what to do about it, not just complain (ok, raise awareness).

Everyone who spends a significant amount of time on the computer should at least read chapters 9 and 10.

I was drawn to this book after reading the author's article “Is Google Making us Stupid” in The Atlantic, and I share some of the author's concerns about becoming less attentive and finding it difficult to concentrate on tasks for any length of time. Carr does a remarkable job of bringing together relevant research, and he provides an impressive history of how technology has changed how people think over time. Obviously new information technologies draw our attention and distract us in many ways, but Carr seems less able to explain how we will continue to adapt than he seems to be defending the necessity of preserving how we have thought in the past.