The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr is known for his writing at the intersection of technology, sociology, and business. His debut book, Does IT Matter?, published in 2004, analyzes the role of artificial intelligence and computer engineering in business strategy. Four years later, Carr published The Big Switch, which is about cloud computing and its effects on society. In August 2008, The Atlantic published Carr’s feature article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains is an expansion of those original arguments and was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. Subsequent editions of The Shallows include discussions of social media, smartphones, and human emotion. Following The Shallows, Carr published The Glass Cage: Automation and Us (2014), which analyzes how automation technology has affected human psychology and society. 

Carr maintains a blog where he comments on contemporary developments in technology, and in 2016, he published a compilation of his articles and essays titled Utopia Is Creepy. Continued scientific research into the impact of the Internet on human cognition has complemented and confirmed the arguments Carr presented in The Shallows. While Carr’s scholarship is widely applauded, some critics have argued that Carr’s writing encourages a stagnant, pessimistic attitude toward new technology, offering much in the way of analysis but little in actionable advice.