Depth perceptions (Review of "The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr)

Abstract

This book review of The Shallows (Norton, 2010, 288 pages) examines how the internet and social media are affecting how we perceive ourselves as people, as members of society and as thinking beings. The author presents his evaluation of The Shallows through the lens of his own experiences as a university professor, describing two emerging trends among students: first, a vanishing attention span; and second, that cultural and intellectual depth of knowledge has grown astonishingly thin as more and more students become unmoored from the time-tested intellectual and cultural points of reference upon which a literate civilization rests.

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