The Internet Makes You Shallow

Nicolas Carr tells The Atlantic that the Internet has changed our way of life, sometimes for the worse. Today we are a distracted and anxious society because of our voracious appetite for information, Carr says. “What sets the Internet apart from radio and television—earlier mass media—is that the Net doesn’t just process sound and video. It processes text. Until recently text was distributed through the printed page, which encouraged immersion in a single narrative or argument. With the Net, text becomes something that can be broadcast electronically the way sound and pictures can be. So you begin to see the same habits of thought: distracted, hurried, and (I would argue) superficial.”