The internet, [Nicholas]
Carr posited, was to blame. "My mind now
expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it."
This argument has become something of a cliche, and Carr was
self-aware enough to point out that this was hardly a new concern.
Marshall McLuhan had said much the same thing about technology in the
1960s. Nietzsche's prose, according to a friend of his, became
"tighter, more telegraphic" after he began using a typewriter. A minor
Venetian humanist lamented that the arrival of Gutenberg's printing
press in the 15th century would make people lazy, weak-minded and
"less studious."
Misoneism is the ur-fear. It's understandable when it emerges as a
response to paradigm-shifting inventions like the typewriter, the
printing press or writing itself.