Devoirs
ALSO BY NICHOLAS CARR
The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google Does IT Matter?
THE SHALLOWS
What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
NICHOLAS CARR
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
New York * London
Copyright © 2010 by Nicholas Carr All rights reserved “The writing ball is a thing like me…” from Gramophone, Film, Typewriter by Friedrich A. Kittler, translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz. Copyright © 1996 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University for translation; © 1986 by Brinkmann and Bose. All rights reserved. Used with the permission of Stanford University Press, www.sup.org. “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm,” copyright 1947 by Wallace Stevens, from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 Library of Congress Cataloging-inPublication Data Carr, Nicholas G., 1959– The shallows: what the Internet is doing to our
brains/Nicholas Carr.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN: 978-0-393-07936-4 1. Neuropsychology. 2. Internet—Physiological effect. 3. Internet—Psychological aspects. I. Title. QP360.C3667 2010 612.80285—dc22 2010007639 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 www.wwnorton.com W. W. Norton & Company Ltd. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
to my mother and in memory of my father
Contents
Prologue
The Watchdog And The Thief
One
Hal And Me
Two
The Vital Paths A Digression On What The Brain Thinks About When It Thinks About Itself
Three
Three
Tools Of The Mind
Four
The Deepening Page A Digression On Lee de Forest And His Amazing Audion
Five
A Medium Of The Most General Nature
Six
The Very Image Of A Book
Seven
The