I'm Something of an AI, Myself...

September 20, 2026

I'm finishing up Nicholas Carr's The Shallows, from which I've gathered many examples of inventions and experiments that illustrate how the human mind is extensively molded by the technology it relies on. "The medium is the message," as communication theorist McLuhan put it, often changing/punning "message" with "mass-age." McLahen's theory it proves true through the last five centuries of rapid technological advancement. The technology of the alphabet changed how the brain accessed memory, books further altered how humans deploy attention and retrieve memories; further advances in technology such as the printing press, Nietzsche's mechanical typing sphere, the e-reader, hyperlinks, and search engines also imprint their schematics of information-gathering onto the minds that utilize them.

The book is captivating to read because Carr is armed to the teeth with studies and experiments to demonstrate his points. Each paragraph offers a new example or insight demonstrating how malleable the human brain is to external stimuli, none more pervasive than the Internet. The Shallows was written before AI was considered within arms' reach. In one chapter, he considers the different methods by which an artifical intelligence could by created by engineers but dismisses them all by saying that such an artifical mind was beyond our reach. He penned (typed) these thoughts in 2010. A decade and a half later, Carr's careful consideration of what the internet is doing to our brains rings all the more true in our modern, AI-augmented reality.