Philip Ball finds Nicholas Carr’s “Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart” disturbingly compelling.
At root, we’re the problem. Our minds don’t simply distill useful knowledge from a mass of raw data. They use shortcuts, rules of thumb, heuristic hacks—which is how we were able to think fast enough to survive on the savage savanna. We pay heed, for example, to what we experience most often. “Repetition is, in the human mind, a proxy for facticity,” says Carr. “What’s true is what comes out of the machine most often.”
The central issue, Carr implies, is that we have tended to suppose that new technologies for communication are either neutral media for making what was once laborious and expensive cheaper and easier, or positive developments that, by putting us ever more in touch with people and information, lubricate social discourse and make us more rational. This was the message pushed by advocates since the early days of radio, if not earlier: more information, and easier access to it, would lead to greater democratization. It was a nice story, and many tech entrepreneurs probably believed it—but only because they were ignorant of what social and political scientists had long been saying.