Author Archives: Karol A.

Karol Alvarado – Notes on Chapter 3 of The Shallows

While reading through the chapter it was shown again and again that the main idea Carr was trying to make was the way technology has shaped the way people think, not only in a psychological level, but in terms of how our brains have in a way rewired themselves to work in  a society with deeply ingrained technology. One very interesting piece of information, that I found very hard hitting, was how maps have made “both anatomical and functional changes in the hippocamus and other brain areas involved in spatial modeling and memory.” This has risen from a high dependency on maps, in other words we, as humans, do not see the need of memorizing spaces so that part of our brain has shrank, however the part of our brain that processes the abstract has increased. I’ve found that people in this day of age are more interested in the abstract than the inner working of certain subjects, something that Carr explains could have been brought up by the introduction of maps.