The Shallows
Examines the influences computer-delivered information may have on human cognition using Marshall McLuhan as the hook, the history of communication as the trajectory, and brain science as the tool.
Stats for nerds
39recommend
78mentions
67people
2010–2026years
55% recommend42% neutral3% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Humans are notoriously bad at multitasking. In the "traditional" way of writing software, you'd spend hours focused on one or two things. You'd tick one thing off the list and move to another, usually with some kind of logical connection between them. Its similar to reading a novel, one long continuous narrative requiring prolonged attention. It's exhausting in its own way, but it doesn't leave you feeling fragmentation and wrung out.
But whereas that's like reading a book, the way people are using agents is like scrolling tick tock. If you have 6 or 7 agents going, and you want to keep the pipeline full, you are constantly context switching. Your brain never has a chance to get into deep focus mode. Your attention is constantly being yanked from one thing to the next.
The same thing happens to me if I let myself get distracted at work and try to focus on too many things at once (emails, teams, Jira, actual work...). My brain feels like a fractured mess.
There are some good books on the subject if you're interested:
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains — by Nicholas Carr
Amusing Ourselves to Death — by Neil Postman
Dopamine Nation — by Anna Lembke
- This reminded me of this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9778945-the-shallows
"The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr, I found it an interesting read, "As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer"
- That's true, but are TVs and comics in your pocket or beside your bed 24/7 like phones? Are they computers that also directly attach you to several friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers instantaneously across several avenues? Do they notify you that you are "missing" something? I don't think there's any example in human history of things that have garnered the daily and sustained use of human attention more than smartphones, tablets, and the Internet.
There is the book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr that covers this stuff and points to research.
There's also the Wall Street Journal article by him called Does the Internet Make You Dumber?.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704025304575284...
- See also Neil Postman, particularly Amusing Ourselves to Death, and Nicholas Carr, The Shallows.
Ezra Klein with Nick Carr:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nicholas-carr-on-deep-...
- I’d also recommend Nicholas Carr’s 2011 book “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”. I read it a long time ago and was impressed with its insights on attention (or the lack of it) and the usage of the Internet.
- > I'm simply incapable of doing things I've set out to do. Simple things. Everything is difficult.
“Independent discharges of dopamine neurons (tonic or pacemaker firing) determine the motivation to respond to such cues. As a result of habitual intake of addictive drugs, dopamine receptors expressed in the brain are decreased, thereby reducing interest in activities not already stamped in by habitual rewards.”
From: Dopamine and Addiction | Annual Review of Psychology — https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-...
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Edit:
I'd like to add a couple more ideas, because what you're describing in your article is spot on, and I believe can be generalized past your own experience.
> Another angle that makes this ever more distressing is that my memory is very, very fallible ... I can confidently say that I've done nothing I said I would do there.”
Herbert Simon says: “In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”.
As an information-addict myself, I've been meditating a lot about this topic. During the past two years I've been researching it from a psychological perspective (And for that, I'm grateful to @ericd for this HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24581016). I'll throw in some resources that I've came across during this journey, in case anyone finds them useful:
- Dr Gabor Mate: Addiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-APGWvYupU
- Dr. Anna Lembke: Understanding & Treating Addiction | Huberman Lab Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3JLaF_4Tz8
- The book “The Molecule of More” by by Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long.
- The book “The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr.
