Desensitization of an Internet Nation

Nicholas Carr says constant Internet use is rewiring our brains. He and his pals, "literary types, most of them," have become so used to skimming the Internet they are beginning to find it difficult to concentrate and read deeply.

"Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." He's laid it all out for us in "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in the July/August issue of the Atlantic Monthly.

What evidence does he have? He admits that science has not shown how Internet use affects cognition. He cites one study. Scholars at University College of London examined the computer logs of visitors to two popular research sites. The users hopped from source to source, rarely reading more than one or two pages of any.

To Carr this "suggests that we may well be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think."

That's drawing unreasonably weighty conclusions from slim data. How do we know those computer users weren't rushing through their online research so they could get back to "War and Peace?" We don't.

That is it for scientific evidence.

In the absence of hard data, Carr references experts by the score. A developmental psychologist at Tufts worries that the Internet may be sapping our ability to read deeply. That's good as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far.

Other experts are a bit beside the point. Nietzsche said his prose was affected by learning to use a typewriter. A computer scientist from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology says clocks have impoverished us because we use them instead of our senses to decide when to eat, work, and sleep. None of them has much to say about Google.

Carr also quotes a 15th century Italian who worried that printed books would weaken men's minds. Heironimo Squarciafico was wrong about that, admits Carr, which is mighty big of him, but how many people do you know who quote 15th century Italians?

Which brings up my primary objection to Carr's thesis: It's too damned elitist. It's a precious picture, Nick Carr and his literary pals bemoaning the Internet's erosion of their ability to kick back and really savor Tolstoy, but for many of the rest of us, the Internet has been our invitation to the party.

We can find bills online and email our legislators. We can check out the side effects of medicines and discuss them with our doctors. We can find books that aren't readily available and order them online.

And we can still think as deeply as we ever did, only now we can share our thoughts. After all, what's the point of a right to free speech if the only audience you ever have is sitting around your kitchen table? Google is not making me stupid, however, I can't speak for Nick Carr.