review of "the shallows"

ReviewedBy

Daksha Bhat

On Sunday, 17th July 2016 at 11:30 am

Venue: Cafe Soul Square, Bodakdev, Ahmedabad

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For the first Book Browsers Meet

THE WATCHDOG AND THE THIEF

Prologue

THE WATCHDOG AND THE TH IEF

“The medium is the message”-McLuhan

Understanding Media:The Extensions of Man

1964

The computer screen …. is so much our servant that it would be churlish to notice that it is also our master.

These are quotes from other people that Carr has quoted in the book

These are quotesfrom the book

Note

HAL AND ME

One

HAL AND ME

“Dave, my brain is going, I can feel it”- the supercomputer HAL as it is being

disconnected2001: A Space Odyssesy,

-Stanley Kubrick

Now my concentration drifts after a page or two. I get fidgety, lose the thread, look for something else to do.

Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.

HAL AND ME

The Net has become his all purpose medium, where he does his banking, renewals and spends time “foraging in the Web’s data thickets.”

But the boons come at a price.

Books are no more being read across academics and intellectuals. They are content to skim information, he himself feels a change in the way he reads.

HAL AND ME

“By following the links – click, and the linked document appears – you can travel through the online worlds along paths of whim and intuition

Article in Wired1994

My brain… was demanding to be fed the way the Net fed it- the more it was fed the hungrier it became.

Take your time the books whispered to me in their dusty voices. We are not going anywhere.

HAL AND ME

Carr compares his childhood analogue life with the adult digital one. And the progression from the old TV with antennas in the 60s through the early Apple Mac in 1986, and upgrades and additions, the advent of the graphical browser, followed by faster chips, quicker modems, blogging, and the writer could get instant responses from readers…

He worries that his way of paying attention has changed, he keeps wanting to check email, google something, “it was turning me into a high speed processing machine.”

THE VITAL PATHS

Two

THE V ITAL PATHS

The writing ball is a thing like me: made of iron Yet easily twisted on journeys. Patience and tact are required in abundance, As well as fine fingers to use us.

-Friedrich Nietzche

“…my ‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”

-Heinrich Köselitz, writer and composer

THE V ITAL PATHS

…the cells of our brains literally develop and grow bigger with use, and atrophy or waste

away with disuse, it may be that every action leaves some imprint upon the nervous tissue.”

-J.Z.Young, biologistBBC lecture, 1950

“The nervous tissue seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity.”

-William James, psychologistPrincipals of Psychology, 1890

THE V ITAL PATHS

“In the adult brain centers, the nerve paths are something fixed, ended, immutable. Everything may die, nothing may

be regenerated.”-Ramón y Cajal,

Physician, Neuroanatomist and Nobel Laureate1913

These speculations were contemptuously dismissed by most, who thought that the “Vital paths” once laid were

final. They thought the brain’s plasticity ended with childhood.

THE V ITAL PATHS

Rene Descartes

BrainMaterial

Ethereal

Thought, memory… seen as the outputs of physical operations in the brain.

The brain as a machine.

Behaviour seen to be “hardwired”.

THE V ITAL PATHS

Merzenich in 1968 used a probe in monkeys brains -a hair thin micro electrode creating a micro map of how the monkey’s brain process what the hand feels.He then severs the sensory nerves on the hands of the monkeys. And sees that the brain is confused about where the hand is being touched. After a few months the confusion is cleared up and the brain knows exactly what is happening! Even Freud had once supported the idea of plasticity but later discarded it.A lot of research on neuroplasticity is described in a very interesting fashion.

THE V ITAL PATHS

“…it was astounding reorganisation, … Looking back on it I realized that I had seen the evidence of neuroplasticity.”

-Michael Merzenich,

“The brain has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly altering the way it functions

-James OldsProfessor of Neuroscience

Evolution has given us a brain that can literally change its mind – over and over again.

THE V ITAL PATHS

If we stop exercising our mental skills we do not just forget them, the brain space for those skills is turned over to the

skills we practice instead.”-Norman Doige,

The possibility of intellectual decay is inherent in the malleability of our brains.

THE V ITAL PATHS

“Survival of the busiest”-Jeffery Schwartz

Professor of Neuroscience

The vital paths in brains become the paths of least resistance

on what the brain thinks about when it thinks about itself

a digression

on what the brain thinks about when it thinks about itself

He leads us away from the the main subject to explore something else interesting, I believe it is his way of imitating or even lampooning the non linear internet experience. Is he imitating hyperlinks and the multiple sources of information we see on the screen? These have been cited as the greatest culprits in distracting our attention.

Aristotle - believed the brain kept the body from overheating, and Descartes - saw the brain as a great hydraulic pump.We know that the brain is a sensitive monitor of experience, yet we would like to believe that it is beyond the influence of experience.

TOOLS OF THE MIND

Three

TOOLS OF THE M IND

The technology of the map gave to man a new and more comprehending mind, better able to understand the unseen

forces that shape his surroundings and existence

…the clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and scientific man.

TOOLS OF THE M IND

From drawing lines in sand with a stick, to drawing a map, then using maps to describe even ideas or for analysis, lead to a new way of understanding . Our intellectual maturation … can be traced through the way we draw pictures or maps…

Time keeping became more precise, mechanical clocks designed by monks with swinging weights regimented their activities.People started living their lives by the bells that were rung, time needed to be the same and standardized everywhere,

TOOLS OF THE M IND

Every technology is an expression of human will

Extends our range of senses(Geiger counter, microscope)

Enables us to reshape nature(the reservoir, the pill)

Extends physical strength(the plow, fighter jet)

Extends our mental powers(abacus, the book)

TOOLS OF THE M IND

Every intellectual technology embodies an intellectual ethic, a set of assumptions about how the human mind works or should work

“The windmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam mill society with the industrial capitalist.”

-Karl Marx

The debate between determinists and instrumentalists continues, but it is harder to distinguish the influence of

technologies on peoples brains.

TOOLS OF THE M IND

“It will implant forgetfulness in their souls: they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written. They will be filled not with wisdom

but with the conceit of wisdom”-Plato

From Phaedrus

By substituting outer symbols for inner memories, writing threatens to make us shallower thinkers, he (Socrates) says…

THE DEEPENING PAGE

Four

THE DEEPENING PAGE

They began giving voice to unconventional, skeptical, and even heretical and seditious ideas, pushing the boundary of knowledge

and culture

Once a standard system of syntax was devised it became easier for people to read. And to write. With reading attention needed to be focused on a single task, uninterrupted. Book production moved from monasteries to secular workshops where scribes were employed, but the handwritten codices were still costly and scarce till Gutenberg invented the letter press in the 15th century. After that books became cheaper, and in another 100 years newspapers and a variety of periodicals were available.

THE DEEPENING PAGE

The book became the primary means of exchanging knowledge and insight

“So many books – so much confusion!All around us an ocean of print

And most of it covered by froth”-Lope de Vega

All Citizens Are Soldiers, 1612

…the computer … and the internet became our medium, of choice for storing processing and sharing information in all forms, including text

on lee de forest and his amazing audion

a digression

on lee de forest and his amazing audion

“A melancholy view of our national mental level is obtained from a survey of the majority of today’s

radio programs”-Lee de Forest

Article in Popular Mechanics, 1952

He turned the diode into a triode, amplifying currents. These were used in radio transmitters, receivers, early computers.

A MEDIUM OF THE MOST GENERAL NATURE

Five


Charles Babbage had much earlier drawn a design for an analytical engine that would be a machine of the most general nature.

After his death, the computer did become a universal medium.


“…various computing processes… can all be done with one digital computer, suitably programmed for each case,”

-Alan TuringComputing Machinery and Intelligence, 1950

Everything from Beethoven’s Ninth to a porn flick can be reduced to a string of ones and zeros and processed


Over the past three decades, the number of instructions a computer chip can process has doubled every three years,

while the cost of processing those instructions has fallen by almost half every year.

As faster chips were created, network bandwidth expanded, high resolution pictures, entire songs were

available in hi fidelity, and then came video. Meanwhile email made the personal letter obsolete.


The Net differs from most of the mass media it replaces in an obvious and important way, it is bidirectional.

Once information is digitized, the boundaries between media dissolve.


The Net connects us, it is a personal as well as commercial medium, there are social networks

and sometimes antisocial networks.

The future of knowledge and culture lies in digital files shot through our universal medium at the speed of light


Searches also lead to fragmentation of online works.

By combining many different kinds of information on a single screen the multimedia Net further fragments

content and disrupts our concentration.


Public schools are pushing students to use online reference materials in place of what California Governor

Arnold Schwarzenegger refers to as “antiquated heavy expensive textbooks”

THE VERY IMAGE OF A BOOK

Six


You can take a book to the beach without worrying about sand getting in its works. You can take it to bed without

being nervous about it falling to the floor should you nod off. You can spill coffee on it. You can sit on it. … You never

have to be concerned about … having its battery die.

Its links and digital enhancements propel the reader hither and yon


E books and digtal readers have improved greatly over the years, Font size can be increased in the e-reader, The Kindle comes with a built in always available wireless connection for no additional cost

BUT the links available in the digital book distract the reader.

Social media becomes entwined with the books. Authors would tailor their work to “groupiness” Writing will become a means for recording chatter.

He talks about the Japanese cell phone novels, which are composed on the go by women on their mobile phones, He says, “Japan is a country given to peculiar fads,” making it sound like some sort of racial slur.


“People will carry around a tiny audio player called an ‘indispensable’ which would contain all their books,

magazines and newspapers.”-Edward Bellamy

Harper’s, 1889

THE JUGGLERS BRAIN

Seven

THE JUGGLERS BRA IN

When a Xerox presented a new operating system, the presenter clicked from a window where he had been composing code, to another to check email, some of the scientist were horrified,” why would you want to be interrupted and distracted” they asked.

There was a conflict between working with single minded concentration and juggling multiple threads, what we have come to call multitasking.

THE JUGGLERS BRA IN

The Net commands our attention with far greater insistency than our television or radio or morning newspaper ever did.

When the cognitive load increases , and we reach the limits of our working memory, it becomes difficult to understand what is relevant, We become mindless consumers of data.

THE JUGGLERS BRA IN

“The increased demands of decision making and visual processing in hypertext impaired reading performance.”

-Diana Destefano, Jo-Anne LeFevre,Psychologists, 2005

We want to be interrupted because each interruption brings us valuable information.

We vastly over value the constant stream of information, Tuning out is not an option for many.

THE JUGGLERS BRA IN

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it.”

-Dr. Samuel Johnson,

on the buoyancy of IQ scores

a digression

THE CHURCH OF GOOGLE

Eight


“Founded around the science of measurement.”-Eric Schmidt,

CEO Google

What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the mind

Without its search engine … the Internet would have long ago become a Tower of Digital Babel


“Today there more information is available to us than ever before, but there is less time to make use of it - and

specifically to make use of it with any depth of reflection.”-David Levy,

The strip-mining of “relevant content” replaces the slow excavation of meaning


“I thought the coziness to be almost overwhelming…. People waving and smiling, toys everywhere. I

immediately suspected that unimaginable evil was happening somewhere in the dark corners. If the devil

came to earth, what place would be better to hide.”-George Dyson

Describing a fr iends visit to Google

Unsubstantiated, illogical and irrational negativity!


In Google’s world the human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive – and

better algorithms to steer the course of its thought

Google equates intelligence with data processing efficiency. Artificial intelligence is their ultimate problem.

Since we do not understand the brain’s hierarchy, the fabrication of an artificial mind is likely to remain an

aspiration for generations to come.

SEARCH, MEMORY

Nine

SEARCH, MEMORY

“It ’s no longer terribly efficient to use our brains to store information”

-Peter Suderman,

SEARCH, MEMORY

The number of synapses in the brain is not fixed – it changes with learning! Moreover long term memory persists for as long

as the anatomical changes are maintained.

“While the artificial brain absorbs information and immediately stores it in its memory, the human brain

continues to process information long after it is received, and the quality of the memories depends

upon how the information is processed.”-Kobi Rosenblum,

SEARCH, MEMORY

The Web is a technology of forgetfulness.

Our brains become adept at forgetting.

SEARCH, MEMORY

The offloading of memory to external data banks doesn’t just threaten depth and distinctiveness of the self. It threatens the

depth and distinctiveness of the culture we all share.

We risk turning into pancake people. Spread wide and thin

on the writ ing of this book

a digression

A THING LIKE ME

Ten

A TH ING L IKE ME

Is it intelligent?

The Turing test, or the ‘imitation game,’ suggested by Alan Turing involved having a person having a typed conversation with a computer, and if the interrogator was unable to distinguish the computer from the

real person then the computer could be considered intelligent.

Weizenbaum In 1966 created a program in which the computer would carry out a conversation with a person by transforming the first sentence into another. This program was named Eliza after Eliza

Doolittle from Shaw’s pygmalion.

A TH ING L IKE ME

Person : Men are all alike.ELIZA : In what way?Person : They're always bugging us about something or other.ELIZA : Can you think of a specific example?Person : Well, my boyfriend made me come here.ELIZA : Your boyfriend made you come here?Person : He says I'm depressed much of the time.ELIZA : I am sorry to hear that you are depressed.

ELIZA(Weizenbaum, 1966)

One of the first AI programs

Here is a sample script from an Eliza session

A TH ING L IKE ME

“…extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional

thinking in quite normal people.”- Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT

A TH ING L IKE ME

… our brains mimic the states of the other minds we interact with, whether those minds are real or imagined.

Another reason why our nervous systems seem so quick to merge with our computers is our powerful social instinct, and

so when Eliza speaks we hear another human being.

A TH ING L IKE ME

The brighter the software the dimmer the user

When we go online we are following a script written by others

It is altering the depth of our emotions as well as our thoughts.

A TH ING L IKE ME

“…For some sort of thoughts especially moral decision making about other peoples social and

psychological situations we need to allow for adequate time and reflection.”

-Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

We are welcoming the frenziedness into our souls.

HUMAN ELEMENTS

Epilogue

A TH ING L IKE ME

That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it

is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

The Book• 224 pages of content• 28 pages of notes• A novel TOC design• Over 200 names dropped• A way with words• A huge amount of research• Very interesting anecdotes• Introduction to many milestones

in the development of todays thinking humans.

• Some actually unsubstantiated conclusions• Eclectic choice of research that

supports his hypothesis• Usage of older no longer

relevant philosophy to explain modern issues• Appeal to emotions by

mentioning familiar situations, (Beatles, HAL.)

Thank you

Daksha Bhat