The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: Norton, 2010.

"Things are in the saddle and ride mankind," said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Substitute "Internet" for "Things" and you have the thesis of this volume, namely that the Web has made us compliant clickers in a wired world. Such clicking, Nicholas Carr argues, contrary to the technology of the printed book, has diminished our ability for sustained concentration, focus, and thinking in a...