The Loom and the Internet

Meagan Cox

    In the final chapter of The Shallows Carr pretty much just sums up all of his feelings on the internet. He seems to go through a quick look back into time, describing all of the new elements that he considers "technology" that changed the world in one way or another. From machines that made making clothes easier to the internet, each new "tool" created change in one some way, and he connects these historical changes with the changes the introduction of the internet has brought about. Carr seems to try to say that with each of these tools, not only were things made easier in some aspects, but they also took away some things. For example, even though the creation of a loom helped speed up the process of making clothes, it also meant that less and less people began to hand make clothes, so it seemed as though the generations after the loom had lost the ability, talent and knowledge to make the clothes by hand because they were so reliant on using a machine, just like the internet (in Carr's point of view) is seemingly storing a lot of facts for us, which means that we have to do less remembering and memorizing. In chapter ten, Nicholas Carr seems to hint around the fact that the internet is "taking away our memory."

    The example about the power loom leading to less and less completely handmade clothes was actually a good one in my opinion. Though people probably thought it was such a great invention at the time, and that it was only a help to those who previously spent long hours hand making clothes, it did take away something, too. Because of the power loom, people sort of stopped hand making clothing and other cloth objects as a whole. Though almost everyone knew how to thread clothes before, the invention of the power loom sort of stopped that, and left almost everyone reliant on the new invention. This idea definitely made me think that though we may not realize it now, the internet may be taking away a lot of things, just as it is enabling us to do a lot more.

        Though I think that comparing the internet to the power loom was a good idea by Carr in order to prove his point, I somewhat disagree with his seemingly exaggerated conclusion of the idea. Like most of his arguments in this book, Carr seems to overstate this idea. It is quite obvious that people definitely do not hand make things as much as they used to, but some people still know how to do it, and the talent is not completely gone. Similarly, although the internet has obviously made it so that people can pretty much “forget” things, without the worry of having to go through a long process to find the answer again, people still memorize, or remember what they have to. If a person really tries to remember a fact that they could just as easily look up on Google, they could. Our memories are not fading; we are just using the new technologies to our advantages.