
Nicholas Carr on deep reading and digital thinking - elorant
https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/7/1/21308153/the-ezra-klein-show-the-shallows-twitter-facebook-attention-deep-reading-thinking
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ciarannolan
His book, _The Shallows_ , is an incredible journey into the human/technology
relationship. As much as we create and change technology, it likewise changes
us.

Worth a read for anyone in tech.

[https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-
Brains/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-
Brains/dp/0393339750)

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shmageggy
How does it hold up almost 10 years later? The internet has changed a lot in
that time. I recently became interested in reading this, but I was wondering
if I'd be missing out on anything more recent.

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kmote00
From the article: "His book, a finalist for the Pulitzer that year, was
dismissed by many, including me. Ten years on, I regret that dismissal.
Reading it now, The Shallows is outrageously prescient, offering a framework
and language for ideas and experiences I’ve been struggling to define for a
decade."

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flocial
One thing that surprised me about this pandemic is how vulnerable people are
to misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media. For many people
their idea of authority or "credentials" directly correlate with the strength
of the source's social media profile (much like the impact factor of peer-
reviewed articles only it feeds on itself). I don't know if they are simply
looking for a theory to fit their current preconceptions or information that
affirms their sense of self but it's really phenomenal. I honestly had no idea
how many people I know could take these crazy conspiracies so seriously.

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zahma
What are you on about? While I don't really disagree with what you wrote, this
article and interview has nothing to do conspiracy theories and their
propagation through social media.

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flocial
Guilty as charged but I thought it was a reasonable jump to speculate on how
there might be a cumulative effect of being in the "shallows" where critical
thinking skills are atrophied and people are susceptible to misinformation. I
did read the article but I was under the impression that HN doesn't restrict
comments to the specifics of the article.

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sgt101
>"But we also lost something. One thing we lost is a lot of our visual acuity
in reading nature and reading the world. If you look at older cultures that
aren’t text-based, you see incredible abilities to, for instance, navigate by
all sorts of natural signs. This acuity in reading the world, which also
requires a lot of the visual cortex, we lost some of that simply because we
had to reprogram our brain to become good readers."

Or because larger numbers of people lived in cities and used craft skills to
get money to live rather than hunting and gathering?

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camillomiller
Good point. And what if, from an evolutionary point of view, this new way of
acquiring information is actually better in the long term?

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lacker
It’s ironic to read an article about how it’s a shame the internet is so full
of distractions, when that article has multiple inline video advertisements.

