Amusing Ourselves To Death Watch

Writer urges Internet junkies to 'switch off' and think: "Like tens of millions of others, US technology writer Nicholas Carr found the lure of the worldwide web hard to resist -- until he noticed it was getting harder and harder to concentrate.
He set out his concerns in a celebrated essay headlined 'Is Google making us stupid?'

And his latest book 'The Shallows' explores in depth what he fears the Internet is doing to our brains.

'The seductions of technology are hard to resist,' Carr acknowledges in that book, which has sold an estimated 50,000 hardback copies in the United States alone. But he thinks it's time to start trying.

In a speech at last week's Seoul Digital Forum and an interview with AFP, Carr restated his concerns that IT is affecting the way people think and feel and even the physical make-up of their brains.

Every new technology in history -- like the map and the clock -- changed the way people think but Carr sees special dangers in the Internet."

This has already been covered with a TV focus by Neil Postman. That's where the title comes from. And it remains true for both media.