Nicholas Carr on How Technologies of Communication Tear Us Apart

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great lines meet. I'm Producer Leila Ishmael. In this episode, we dive deep into the hidden costs of digital connection with American journalist and writer Nicolas Carr. Carr is best known for his groundbreaking 2008 essay Is Google Making Us Stupid, which warned us about the effects of the internet on our cognition and laid the foundations for his New York Times best-selling book, The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. Carr is back with a new book titled Superbloom, How Technologies of Connection. Tear us apart. Joining him in conversation to discuss it is writer and researcher Adam McCaulay.

Listen on to hear how the very technologies that promise to bring us closer together are actually driving us further apart. Welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm your host, Adam McCauley. I'm so pleased to welcome Nicholas to Intelligence Squared. Thanks very much, Adam.

So you broke into the public consciousness, I would argue almost too early with the shallows back in 2011. That book offered a prescient warning about the age of the internet and what it would mean for our lives. And you've written a number of wonderful books in between, but I hope you might take us through the questions that have driven your work and sustained your interest. From the shallows. to the present with Super Blue.

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