Carr asks us to go beyond merely recognizing the effect that the Internet has on the availability of massive amounts of information, and to consider that it affects the information that is available and shapes the way that that information is processed and used. The internet’s mandate for efficiency has indeed produced a treasure trove of easily and instantaneously accessible stores of knowledge. However, Carr believes that too much time is spent in adulation of this positive aspect of the Internet to properly attend to the technology’s full effect on human cognition and consciousness. For him, there’s too much focus on the what of the internet and not the how: how it shapes and limits human intellectual inquiry. He asks his reader to evaluate how the drive toward ever more efficiency flattens and reshapes human cognitive processes and impoverishes the intellectual life as a result.

For Carr, the printed word allows and encourages the reader to spend time in contemplation. It allows the reader to turn ideas over in his or her mind, and to let ideas percolate and announce their connection to other ideas over time and sustained consideration. In his view, the Internet’s proliferation of texts designed to instantly hook the reader and dispense bite-sized bits of information runs contrary to the norms and consequences of the printed word—with impoverishing effects upon human intellectual life.