There’s a bunch being said about Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows”. Most notably a lot of print media jumping onto the the Ever-Betters bandwagon. Obviously Carr stating that reading long form print is being drowned out by the internet is right up the alley of the old media in their death throes.
That clinging of the moribund is however just a side-effect.
Carr’s argument is wholly one of self-preservation. If you are an old media and old academia educated intellectual, you will be passed by left and right by those that are able to strike the right balance between the old and the new. Those that use Twitter and Wikipedia to their full extents while still reflecting on their relative merits, those that can process megatons of information every day while doing their best jobs and retreat from time to time still to read a book or write a piece.
In short: Carr has nothing on us and he knows it. The Shallows is a desperate attempt by the older generation to remain relevant in a new world. Ultimately futile of course, but it should still provide Mr. Carr with some temporary currency.
Update: Or as James Bridle puts it in part one of his seven part futurist tome (better than I can, but I hope I may be excused):
I am paying attention, but I am paying attention to everything, and even if my knowledge is fragmented and hard to synthesise it is wider, and it plays in a vaster sphere, than any knowledge that has gone before. — “Stop Lying About What You Do”, James Bridle
