I think if you look back through the intellectual history of human beings you can trace the way that intellectual technologies influence the way we think.

Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

In popular books and articles, information technology writer Carr has worried over the ways that algorithms like those employed by Google are reshaping the ways we think.

What the book does as a technology is shield us from distraction.

The Internet, like all intellectual technologies has a trade off. As we train our brains to use it, as we adapt to the environment of the internet, which is an environment of kind of constant immersion and information and constant distractions, interruptions, juggling lots of messages, lots of bits of information.

Once upon a time there was an island named Blogosphere, and at the very center of that island stood a great castle built of stone, and spreading out from that castle for miles in every direction was a vast settlement of peasants who lived in shacks fashioned of tin and cardboard and straw.

We become, after the arrival of the printing press in general, more attentive more attuned to contemplative ways of thinking.