home | archives & search | rough type store | nicholasgcarr.com

Google's chief executive worrywart

March 08, 2009

Shortly after my article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” came out in the Atlantic last summer, Google CEO Eric Schmidt pooh-poohed my suggestion that the fast-paced distractions of the Net are reducing our capacity for deep reading and deep thinking. “This is exactly what people said when color television arrived at my home in Virginia 40 years ago,” he said at a conference. “This is also what people said 25 years ago when the MTV phenomenon occurred.”

It appears that Schmidt has changed his mind at least a little bit since then. Here’s what he said about the Net’s influence on deep reading and thinking in his interview with Charlie Rose Friday: “I worry that the level of interrupt, the sort of overwhelming rapidity of information — and especially of stressful information — is in fact affecting cognition. It is in fact affecting deeper thinking. I still believe that sitting down and reading a book is the best way to really learn something.  And I worry that we’re losing that.”

You and me both, brother.

Posted by nick at March 8, 2009 12:39 AM

Advertisement: Are you ready for "The Big Switch"? Nicholas Carr's new book "is the best read so far about the significance of the shift to cloud computing," says the Financial Times. The Independent says it's "lucid and mind-boggling." Order now from Amazon.com.

Note: Comments are temporarily closed.