The Shallows - what the internet is doing to our brains
by Carr, Nicholas - 1959-.
pub by - W.W. Norton, NY 2011 - isbn 978-393-07222-8 - - LCCN = 2010007639 - - Prologue p. 1-4 - - Notes p. 1-3 - - Notes by Chapter 229-256 - - Further Reading p. 257-260 - - Acknowledgements p.261 - - Index p. 263-280 - - total book length 280 p.
This book was published in 2010 and had a bit added in 2011. It shows its age. It was advertised as a NY Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Each chapter seems to be mini books strung together. It is only nearly at the end that they make sense as a whole.
Chapters -
1. HAL and me - the state of computers and how they have grown.
2. Vital Paths - For me a very interesting chapter was Chapter 2 - where the author describes the inner working of the brain and the discovery of neuroplasticity.
3. Tools of the Mind - Technology (such as books) extend human beings abilities.
4. The Deepening Page - How the written record changed from recording verbal language which would be read aloud to pages which record thought which might be read silently.
5. A Medium of the Most General Nature - Alan Turing imagining a universal, but imperfect, machine - like our modern computers
6. The Very Image of a Book - popularity of e-books
7. The Jugglers Brain - How Hypertext distracts and makes reading long bits of text difficult.
digression - What is intelligence. IQ scores changing ?
8. The Church of Google - how Google responds to information requests. not so simple - and Google project to scan whole libraries of books - The concept of Vannever Bush. the Memex a personal data machine
9. Search, Memory - Erasmus. De Copia. Later the Commonplace Book that each person would make for him/her self taken from their readings - Short term - Long Term Memory and how information changes from on to another. The hippocampus -
digression - how the author wrote this book - backed off connectivity to be able to concentrate
10. A Thing Like Me - how we can be fooled into thinking that a computer is understanding when it is only responding - ELIZA - and how memory works and diminishes when not needed.
Epilog - Human Elements - beware educational testing reporting by computer, lacks subtlety.

- This was an interesting read - but be prepared to do some slogging through the denser parts.
~ 2018-09-29 ~

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