The Intellectual Ethic of Screens
“We seem to have arrived at an important moment of transition between two very different modes of thinking.” - Nicholas Carr
There is technology, and then there is TECHNOLOGY.
There are some technologies that are impactful enough to cause us to say something like, “wow, life is going to get a lot more convenient from now on.” This is like when Amazon introduced two-day shipping. That was pretty cool. The way I shop has changed. But it would be silly to say that who I am or that the way I think has changed. The ability to change the identity or thinking patterns of their users is a capacity reserved for the most significant inventions in history.
In his book, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” author Nicholas Carr argues that there have been “Four Classifications of Technology” in the great inventions of history.