Nicholas Carr

Nicholas Carr is an award-winning American author and tech-commentator known for writing about the impact of technology on the everyday lives of individuals. His books The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us are well-known titles that have established him as a preeminent author on the topic of technology.

Carr’s background is in business and economics. He received an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Chicago and a Master’s of Business Administration degree from Harvard. He has written for a number of publications, including Wired, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as his own blog, Rough Type. His most popular book to date is The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. The book was a New York Times bestseller and earned Carr a Pulitzer Prize finalist for non-fiction.

In The Shallows, Carr shares his position that the internet and its technology are changing our brains, how we think, how we remember and how we experience our emotions. The book examines the notion of “decontextualization”—or the idea that we are not as engaged in the world as when we read physical texts in the analog world. He argues that the short attention spans consuming our culture are a direct result of being exposed to the speed and volume of technology.

The Shallows has become a go-to source for intellectual debate on the cognitive effects of digital media. Its thesis has been widely accepted, with some contentions, such as the idea that we are losing our ability to focus, being generally acknowleged. Critics have said the book offers a solidified understanding of the immense complexity that shapes our interaction with technology.

Carr’s second book, The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us, further explores the intersection between technology and humanity. The book examines how our computing tools—phones, computers, and the Internet—shape our lives, our behavior and even our emotions. In particular, it examines the rise of automation and how this shift has had an effect on how work is done and how we interact with the world. The book was a New York Times bestseller and earned Carr the Holberg Prize for Creative Scholarship.

In recent years, Carr has started making online courses and teaching classes at various universities. His courses on the impact of technology and the consequences of automation have been highly popular and well-received, helping to further his reputation as a thought-leader in the technology space.

Given Carr’s background and the diverse topics he has chosen to examine, it is no surprise that he has emerged so prominently in the digital and technology discourse. His books The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us have long told us about the profound ways that technology is changing our lives, and his online courses and lectures continue to serve as a source of thought-provoking discussions about the future of humanity and technology.