“The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.”
This book came strongly recommended, and it seemed interesting enough so I decided to pick it up and give it a go.
The Shallows is a nonfiction book about the effects of the Internet, specifically why people have shortened attention spans. Not only does it explore and discuss the intellectual effects, but also the social and cultural ones. This book weaves cultural criticism, science, and history in order to fully understand and explain the shortened attention spans.
Overall, I found this book to be really interesting. As someone interested in science and history, I enjoyed how it jumped from talking about neuroscience and brain plasticity to the history of books to philosophy. It was just really engaging and interesting. Also, even when it was discussing topics that I don’t know much about, like neuroscience, it clearly explained examples from various scientific studies or just real life examples which made it very understandable and surprisingly easy to read.
I really enjoyed this book, and it made me remember that I really should be reading more nonfiction, which is a genre I often neglect since it seems like it will be too hard to understand. This was a pretty good book overall, I would recommend it, and honestly at times it was even quite ironic and funny, such as explaining that people can’t focus on reading books anymore 80 something pages into a book…
4.5 stars, would recommend, it was generally just really interesting.