Book review of: N. Carr (2025). Superbloom. How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, W. W. Norton & Company, 272 pages.
The question of whether the world has become a better place since the arrival of ‘technologies of connection’, as Nicholas Carr calls them, is a complex one. These technologies, which include all forms of hardware and software designed to facilitate connectivity between individuals, such as phones, computers, tablets, internet browsers, social media platforms, and large language models, have become an integral part of our lives. However, the potential implications of these technologies for democracy, as well as the dissemination of misinformation, hallucinations, and deepfakes that threaten societal norms and values, ethical considerations, and democratic plurality, appear to contradict the naïve idealism expressed in Silicon Valley’s manipulative marketing. However, the advent of GPS has facilitated global navigation, enabling individuals to communicate with others, even in remote locations, and to access and stream a vast array of audio and video content. It is a mixed bag, with many advantages for the individual and a lot of disadvantages for society. [i]
Nicholas Carr has published extensively about business, information technology and culture, and has expressed highly critical views on the effects of these on individual users and society at large. His book The Shallows. What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. In this provocative book, Carr advanced the argument that Google and the internet are ‘making us stupid.’ It established Carr as a leading commentator on the Internet and its societal consequences. In my review of the book (in Dutch), I stated the following:
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