Efficiency, Speed, and Relevance Theme Analysis

A pervasive element of The Shallows is the role of efficiency in shaping and guiding the development of technology. To some extent all technologies––“intellectual” and otherwise––came into being because we wanted to make our lives easier, and thus more efficient. Primitive man’s use of tools stemmed from an innate desire to ease the work expended by the user and relocate effort onto the tool used. However, modern striving for efficiency in computer development, Carr warns, has spiraled out of control, with unintended results.

With computational speed no longer an impediment, the Internet has become a mechanism for the rapid-fire delivery of bite-sized content. The computer can now digitize, “slice and dice,” and update information at an unthinkable pace. Modern day devices are updated in near real-time with increasingly user-friendly interfaces, search engines like Google strive with religious zeal to catalogue the entirety of human information, and citizens of all ages check their social media feeds many times per minute. No longer hindered by computational speed limits, technology originally designed to make our lives easier—and thus free up our time––now preoccupies every waking moment.

Further, Carr argues, the majority of Net users are trapped by the Internet’s culture of relevance. The Internet now measures efficiency by content “freshness,” instilling in both publishers and users a preoccupation with staying up-to-date. The winning news feed or social media platform will be the one that delivers notifications that much faster. Carr points to a feedback loop between web publisher and user. We are sharing more, clicking more, and getting notified more because the websites and apps are increasingly effortless to use. At the same time, the resulting flood of instantaneous information forces users to stay constantly aware – to constantly scan their digital horizons – or else they will end up less up-to-date and knowledgeable than the people around them. Put another way, websites and apps can use the social pressure to stay relevant to keep their users constantly engaged – a vicious circle of constant distraction that is to the website and app’s own benefit, but leads to constant distraction and anxiety for the user. Carr therefore urges us to re-evaluate the true efficiency of tools and programs that claim to provide efficiency, but which do so not to make our lives easier but rather to survive in the brutally competitive arena of the net.