1450

“I think the last one was probably the introduction of the printed book with Gutenberg’s press in 1450. It changed the prevailing mode of thinking in society. For the first time—speaking for society—you had a technology that encouraged people to be attentive, and shielded them from distraction.”

Quotes like that are why people still need to go to graduate school. Nicholas Carr seems pretty certain that every single pre-1450 human technology encouraged people to be distracted, but that’s because he never spent time actually thinking about whether or not that’s true. It’s also because he doesn’t care whether or not that’s actually true. His argument works just fine (he thinks) with Internet Vs. Book.

But he actually doesn’t know anything about what anything was like before 1450. Did the Ancient Egyptians have trouble paying attention to the construction of the pyramids? Did most people even have access to enough media to be distracted from one thing by another?

I know this is just the kind of junk that you get w/ pop historical analysis books, but I figure it’s always nice to be reminded that it’s a good idea to actually know what you’re talking about. I’m sure Carr was very careful to not go on Twitter or Facebook while he was attentively writing his book, and yet somehow his thinking still turned out shallow. So maybe there’s something else that he’s missing.

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