Interesting review of The Shallow by Nicholas Carr in last Saturday’s Guardian (piece by Steven Poole). Couple of things he’s dead right about. First, too many essays are being turned into books and the expansion isn’t always justified.

The whole point of an essay is “pithy provocation.” A book is something different. He’s also on the money with an overlooked thought that (in his words) “All to rarely do defenders of books (and, for that matter, newspapers) ask themselves the uncomfortable question: might it be that people are reading fewer of the products not because people are becoming more stupid but because many of the products are not actually very good.”

He isn’t fond of The Shallows (I liked it, although I’d agree that the original essay covered most of the bases) but he does say good things about another book that I haven’t read yet –  Born Digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. Basically it boils down to a digital optimistic versus an analogue pessimist.