Carr's Cautionary Tale?

The second half of Carr’s “The Big Switch” is shockingly cautionary, given his mostly unbridled enthusiasm concerning utility computing in the first half of the book. I have to admit that coming away from the book, I was a bit confused about what Carr wanted his message to be. Taken together, one might describe his attitude as cautious enthusiasm, but I didn’t feel like Carr made much of an effort to draw together the theme of each section. The second half of the book, while still focusing some on utility computing, seemed to be making its strongest points with respect to general internet use and the potential dangers of a fragmented society where privacy becomes more and more limited.

 

Carr makes interesting points about the potential dangers of an increasingly interconnected world. The fact that like-minded people tend to flock together online, and that concentration of a singular viewpoint tends to skew that viewpoint in more extreme ways, is certainly a problem. However, I wonder if Carr overstates the case for this flocking-and-skewing. While certainly some people will fall prey to the phenomena, there are also many people who are accessing information that they never would have without the development of the internet.

 

Also, while I recognize the internet’s utility, I wonder if Carr paints an overly morose picture of an internet-age society. While the internet may certainly isolate some, on the whole, I think that there is a point at which the internet cannot isolate any further because of a real human need for something other than virtual companionship. As long as we still have schools, churches, and civic centers, I think people can only become isolated so much. I wonder, too, whether certain types of isolation are really as bad as Carr believed. Is something really lost when one orders their groceries online, as opposed to going to a grocery store? Perhaps when the grocery store was a truly local, individually-owned institution Carr could make this point, but with the proliferation of large company-owned grocery stores, I wonder if “isolation” from grocery clerks really has a substantial effect on the quality of human interactions.

 

A much stronger point, in my opinion, is the one Carr makes about the potential for privacy invasions in a world where the internet is relied on more and more. Certainly, his description of the release of “anonymous” data which allowed researchers to pinpoint Thelma Arnold is quite chilling. The question of whether the internet is a public or private entity is an important one, and it certainly seems like no matter how private an individual might assume the internet to be, in reality, all of their information is at least theoretically, if not actually, available.

 

Plugging one’s brain in to Google, something that the founders of the company envision as one of the potential future developments, would exacerbate this privacy issue even further. It was unclear from the book exactly how this development would work (unsurprising, given that it’s still in its nascent stage), but one has to imagine that in order to have a level of responsiveness from Google such that your phone could whisper an answer to you when you think a question would require some serious invasions of the human thought process. Essentially, what Google envisions is every person connected to every other person and eventually, possibly, the ability to access data not just from the internet at large but from the minds of other plugged in to Google.

 

It sounds fantastical and more than a little sci-fi-y, but it is clear that there are individuals and companies out there who think that this idea is not only workable, but desirable. It is here that I diverge most strongly from these individuals, and I think Carr and I take a similar view of the harmful potential of such a network. First, in this kind of mind-network, no one’s thoughts are their own, and at a certain point, it is unlikely that people will be able to distinguish their own thoughts from Google-thoughts. Second, Carr provides a number of quotes demonstrating that some of those who embrace the idea of this mind-network see such a network as beneficial because humankind is just so pathetic compared to the power of computers. While I agree that computers have their place, and I have no problem with a computer or system of computers that is able to access more information than I ever could, I question whether the exaltation of machine over humankind will ultimately have the beneficial effects that Google’s founders speak of. This is particularly true if mind-access is limited to a single entity, like Google, although I am not really comfortable with the idea even if access is more diffuse. I am more inclined to agree with Richard Foreman, who said, “I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of the complex inner density with a new kind of self– evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of ‘instantly available.’”

 

It is possible, however, that there is really no way to stand in the way of progress in this direction. After all, as Carr points out, many see the development of new technologies as inherently good, and I think in our modern age where we are so comfortable with technology as a whole that we are likely to downplay the potential negative effects of some new technological development. That being said, I think that the idea of a Google mind-meld might seem sufficiently foreign to a majority that progress in that direction is not inevitable. Given what information can be found out about an online user today, how much more would privacy be stripped away by a direct Google link in one’s brain?

 

I think one of the problems with this book is that Carr seems to be trying to weave a cautionary tale in the second half, while in the first half, he seems to suggest that those who stand in the way of utility computing and similar technological advancements are like those people who opposed the spread of electricity because of its allegedly dangerous effects (something we know now to be false). Ultimately, Carr doesn’t sufficiently demarcate between the utility computing he seems to champion, and new technology that we should be wary of.