Career
Nicholas Carr originally came to prominence with the 2003 Harvard Business Review article "IT Doesn't Matter" and the 2004 book Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business School Press). In these widely discussed works, he argued that the strategic importance of information technology in business has diminished as IT has become more commonplace, standardized and cheaper. His ideas roiled the information technology industry, [2] spurring heated outcries from executives of Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and other leading technology companies, although the ideas got mixed responses from other commentators. [3] [4] [5] In 2005, Carr published the controversial article "The End of Corporate Computing" in the MIT Sloan Management Review, in which he argued that in the future companies will purchase information technology as a utility service from outside suppliers. [6]
Carr's second book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, was published in January 2008 by W. W. Norton. It examines the economic and social consequences of the rise of Internet-based cloud computing, comparing the consequences to those that occurred with the rise of electric utilities in the early 20th century. [7]
In the summer of 2008, The Atlantic published Carr's article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" as the cover story of its annual Ideas issue. [8] Highly critical of the Internet's effect on cognition, the article has been read and debated widely in both the media and the blogosphere. Carr's main argument is that the Internet may have detrimental effects on cognition that diminish the capacity for concentration and contemplation. [9]
Carr's 2010 book, The Shallows , develops this argument further. Discussing various examples ranging from Nietzsche's typewriter to London cab drivers' GPS navigators, Carr shows how newly introduced technologies change the way people think, act and live. [10] The book focuses on the detrimental influence of the Internet—although it does recognize its beneficial aspects—by investigating how hypertext has contributed to the fragmentation of knowledge. When users search the Web, for instance, the context of information can be easily ignored. "We don't see the trees," Carr writes. "We see twigs and leaves." [11] One of Carr's major points is that the change caused by the Internet involves the physical restructuring of the human brain, which he explains using the notion of "neuroplasticity." In addition to being a Pulitzer Prize nominee, the book appeared on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list [12] and has been translated into 17 languages. [13]
In 2014, Carr published his fourth book, The Glass Cage: Automation and Us , which presents a critical examination of the role of computer automation in contemporary life. Spanning historical, technical, economic, and philosophical viewpoints, the book has been widely acclaimed by reviewers, with the New York Times Sunday Book Review terming it "essential." [14]
In 2016, Carr published Utopia Is Creepy: and Other Provocations , a collection of blog posts, essays, and reviews from 2005 to 2016. The book provides a critique of modern American techno-utopianism, [15] which TIME magazine said "punches a hole in Silicon Valley cultural hubris." [16]
In 2019, Carr was the Richmond Visiting Professor of Sociology at Williams College.
Earlier in his career, Carr was executive editor of the Harvard Business Review . He has also served as a member of the editorial board of advisors of Encyclopædia Britannica . [17]
An encyclopedia or encyclopædia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries that are arranged alphabetically by article name or by thematic categories, or else are hyperlinked and searchable. Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most dictionaries. Generally speaking, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information concerning the subject named in the article's title; this is unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information about words, such as their etymology, meaning, pronunciation, use, and grammatical forms.
The Encyclopædia Britannica is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The encyclopaedia is maintained by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia.
Bruce Schneier is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society as of November, 2013. He is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now, and The Tor Project; and an advisory board member of Electronic Privacy Information Center and VerifiedVoting.org. He is the author of several books on general security topics, computer security and cryptography and is a squid enthusiast.
Jonathan L. Zittrain is an American professor of Internet law and the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School. He is also a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, a professor of computer science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and co-founder and director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Previously, Zittrain was Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute of the University of Oxford and visiting professor at the New York University School of Law and Stanford Law School. He is the author of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It as well as co-editor of the books, Access Denied, Access Controlled, and Access Contested.
Yochai Benkler is an Israeli-American author and the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is also a faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. In academia he is best known for coining the term commons-based peer production and his widely cited 2006 book The Wealth of Networks.
Ethan Zuckerman is an American media scholar, blogger, and Internet activist. He was the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, and Associate Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT until May 2020, and the author of the 2013 book Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, which won the Zócalo Book Prize. In 2020, he became an associate professor of public policy, communication and information at the University of Massachusetts.
The reliability of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition, has been questioned and tested. Wikipedia is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process. The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual unreliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has been improved; it has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Jorge Aguilar Cauz is an American businessman of Mexican descent and the former President and current CEO of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., the publisher of the Encyclopædia Britannica, a position that he was appointed to on May 11, 2021.
Shane Greenstein is an American economist. He is the Martin Marshall Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He is the author of two books and the co-editor of three. He has published research about Wikipedia.
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture is a 2007 book written by entrepreneur and Internet critic Andrew Keen. Published by Currency, Keen's first book is a critique of the enthusiasm surrounding user-generated content, peer production, and other Web 2.0–related phenomena.
Andrew Keen is a British-American entrepreneur and author. He is particularly known for his view that the current Internet culture and the Web 2.0 trend may be debasing culture, an opinion he shares with Jaron Lanier and Nicholas G. Carr among others. Keen is especially concerned about the way that the current Internet culture undermines the authority of learned experts and the work of professionals.
Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives is a book by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser exploring the consequences of the wide availability of internet connectivity to the first generation of people born to it, whom Palfrey and Gasser refer to as "digital natives". Issues addressed include shifts in the concept of identity, privacy, content creation, activism, and music piracy.
Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains! is a magazine article by technology writer Nicholas G. Carr, and is highly critical of the Internet's effect on cognition. It was published in the July/August 2008 edition of The Atlantic magazine as a six-page cover story. Carr's main argument is that the Internet might have detrimental effects on cognition that diminish the capacity for concentration and contemplation. Despite the title, the article is not specifically targeted at Google, but more at the cognitive impact of the Internet and World Wide Web. Carr expanded his argument in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, a book published by W. W. Norton in June 2010.
Screen reading is the act of reading a text on a computer screen, smartphone, e-book reader,
Various researchers have undertaken efforts to examine the psychological effects of Internet use. Some research employs studying brain functions in Internet users. Some studies assert that these changes are harmful, while others argue that asserted changes are beneficial.
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is a US project aimed at providing public access to digital holdings in order to create a large-scale public digital library. It officially launched on April 18, 2013, after two-and-a-half years of development.
Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. is an American academic and writer focused on digital technology and culture, including Wikipedia, online comments, geek feminism, and life hacking. He is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University. He was an early member of the World Wide Web Consortium, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1998 and 2010 he was a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, published in the United Kingdom as The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember, is a 2010 book by the American journalist Nicholas G. Carr. Published by W. W. Norton & Company, the book expands on the themes first raised in "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", Carr's 2008 essay in The Atlantic, and explores the effects of the Internet on the brain. The book claims research shows "online reading" yields lower comprehension than reading a printed page. The Shallows was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.
Dariusz Jemielniak is a professor of management at Kozminski University, faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and vice-president of Polish Academy of Sciences.
Jamais Cascio is a San Francisco Bay Area–based author and futurist.
