Out and about

Just finished "The Shallows" and was particularly amused by your chapter digression on 'Writing this book' and 'backsliding'. All I can say now that I've read the entire book is "Only the Shallow knows!" mooohahaha. ;-)

About you new book, it hasn't been released here in Brazil yet, but I've already wrote a review - maybe the first one in Portuguese. I hope you like it: http://rodolfo.typepad.com/no_posso_evitar/2010/10/the-shallows-a-superficialidade-da-inteligencia.html

Best regards, Rodolfo.

Thank Christ for the Internet! If it wasn't for the Internet I'd probably still believe Israel was defending itself. Cuba is a big gulag. The US State Dept gives a damn about freedom and democracy...ad infinitum.

I love The Shallows.
I'm a Ph.D. in Philosophy, a naturalist at heart, born and educated in Europe (well, we still admire "the linear thinking" over there). I was asked in my old country to give a lecture at the seminar "New media and philosophy". Inspired by your book I've decided to hinge my talk on problems really relevant to modern philosophy of the mind ergo: neuroplasticity of the brain, memory creation process and new technologies. I currently live in NYC, and would like to know if your expose at New York Academy of Science will be based (solely) on the book, or maybe you will talk some new stuff :)))
Please let me know.
best regards
Milena

Ok, Nick. Are you going to tell your readers how to become Deep again? Or is it the right time for the Shallows and being not shallow enough will immediately put yourself above the hiring range?

Just finished reading The Shallows. Fascinating ... Thank you Mr. Carr.

In following the various footnotes and the citations therein, I read Ari Schulman’s New Atlantis article about why the brain is not like a computer. And while at their site, I bumped into another, totally unrelated article about death and dying. Well, perhaps NOT so un-related after all. Within the article are descriptions of “the whole organism” as the author tries to trace societal definitions of death. He asks, for example, “what precisely is an organism?” He answers by tracing the etymology of the words “whole” and “health,” which it turns out are derived from The Old English word, HAL (which meant that an organism could only be considered whole if it had health; and healthy only if it was whole).

Now we know why HAL was so upset at the end of the movie: his wholeness was being destroyed. HAL was being taken from HAL. :-)

Perhaps Kubrick knew of Olde English, and perhaps he did not. But HAL certainly could have.

Joe

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