en-US Sun, 18 May 2025 07:57:56 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review7578908542 Sun, 18 May 2025 07:57:56 -0700 /review/show/7578908542 Philip gave 4 stars to Generals Die In Bed: A Story from the Trenches (Paperback) by Charles Yale Harrison
A grim account of the first world war. As a modern reader (who unfortunately has yet to read "Heart of Darkness") I felt shades of "Apocalypse Now" while reading. Just a situation going from bad to worse to psychotic; with soldiers on both sides becoming less and less willing to follow orders turning towards substance abuse while their governments come up with whatever stories necessary to get them to charge the frontlines. Despite all that, Harrison makes it clear that on the bleeding edge of the front you're essentially on your own and anything can happen. The hypocrisy becomes clear when he makes it back home during leave, with people in the non-combat or support arms unwilling to recognize the horrors they were sending their men into and more importantly taking the glory for themselves. In a touching vignette Harrison highlights the importance humble sex workers have in ensuring "their boys" can forget about the conflict which most of them were sure to never return from. A great read for those just starting to have an interest in ww1; with punchy writing coming in just shy of 200 pages it's a hard not to finish the book in one sitting. ]]> Review2805478255 Wed, 14 May 2025 13:05:58 -0700 /review/show/2805478255 Philip gave 4 stars to Storm of Steel (Paperback) by Ernst Jünger
Jünger must have been the luckiest guy on earth considering all the times he was wounded or barely escaped getting killed. The difference between him and other ww1 works I've read, whether they be fiction or non-fiction, is that he never lets himself fall into the grimdark-esque tropes that mark the genre. He somehow retains a sense of poetry about the whole thing, as if the entire war happened to someone else, and he chooses to relate his experience and everyone involved to you in the best light possible. He makes a point to refer to his fellow soldiers as "warriors" and takes every opportunity to highlight their courage. He also doesn't shy away from doing the same to enemy combatants and even mentions sharing communications with veterans from the opposing side of the battlefield (I'm assuming fans of his work) later on in his life. It's very telling that he chooses to end the novel with his winning an order of bravery, "Pour le Mérite", rather than the ultimate defeat of Imperial Germany only a few months afterwards. ]]> Review7568836487 Wed, 14 May 2025 10:11:50 -0700 /review/show/7568836487 Philip gave 3 stars to The Edward Bernays Reader: From Propaganda to the Engineering of Consent (Paperback) by Edward L. Bernays
A collection of essays by Edward L. Bernays written between 1923 and 1979, this collection suffers from the two main drawbacks of amassing such a volume of work. The first, that Bernays invariable repeats himself as every essay/article was addressed to different audiences/sources, meaning he has to repeatedly introduce and define key ideas; The second, the fact that everything written before ww2 just feels horribly dated by today's standards. You can almost feel how tired Bernays is in his written work from 1979, an 88 year old man basically offering a cliff-notes version of all his ideas, a far cry from the youthful idealism and energy you can feel in his work from the 1920s, when the idea of Public Relations was still a brand new concept, or the nationalistic optimism for the future of the United States and "Democracy!" Bernays wrote with in his ww2 era work. Both of these attitudes feel naïve at best to modern readers who are now surrounded by propaganda and advertising material almost 24/7, both for the things they need and don't, and whose faith in the government (no matter where you fall on the political spectrum) has seemed to hit an all time low. Bernays repeatedly states that public relations is like a science applied to an art (or vice versa) and so he struggles to give you any hard advice on how to properly even do public relations work. Despite reading the book the whole thing still feels like arcane knowledge to me, one that you have to "feel" or at least go to a fancy school to learn about. It would have been a tremendous help if he had provided specific case examples to highlight his points, but in lieu of that, the whole book feels vague with just a constant iteration of basic principles and broad ideas. I personally would only recommend this book to those working in the field of public relations or marketing who simply want a historical reference to the beginnings of the industry.

Some quotes I liked:

Primarily, however, the engineer of consent must create news. News is not an inanimate thing. It is the overt act that makes news, and news in turn shapes the attitudes and actions of people. A good criterion as to whether something is or is not news is whether the event juts out of the pattern of routine. The developing of events and circumstances that are not routine is one of the basic functions of the engineer of consent. Events so planned can be projected over the communication systems to infinitely more people than those actually participating, and such events vividly dramatize ideas for those who do not witness the events. The imaginatively managed event can compete successfully with other events for attention. Newsworthy events, involving people, usually do not happen by accident. They are planned deliberately to accomplish a purpose, to influence our ideas and actions. (Pg. 50)

Here, then, is a first element in molding public opinion. How can the propagandist reach these groups who make up the large public? He can reach them through their leaders, for the individual looks for leadership to the leaders of the groups to which he belongs. He may be dominated by the leaders of many groups, for these group cleavages of society are numerous and diversified. They play a vital part in molding public opinion, and they offer the propagandist a means of reaching vast numbers of individuals; for with so many confusing and conflicting ideas competing for the individual's attention, he is forced to look to others for authority and leadership. No man, in today's complicated world, can base his judgments and acts entirely on his own examination and weighing of the evidence. A credence in leaders is a sound short-cut (when leaders are sound).
Thus the group leader becomes a key figure in the molding of public opinion, and his acceptance of a given idea carries with it the acceptance of many of his followers-through many channels. If group leaders accept our ideas, the groups they dominate will respond. The importance of these key leaders as a medium for reaching large groups of the population is a factor of primary importance, and must never be neglected. Nor must we forget that not only do they convey ideas to the public, but they also interpret and articulate to the propagandist, for his guidance, the particular groups they represent. In their entirety, they represent the whole public. (Pg. 57)

Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man's rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all received identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine.
I am aware that the word propaganda carries to many minds an unpleasant connotation. Yet whether, in any instance, propaganda is good or bad depends upon the merit of the cause urged, and the correctness of the information published. (Pg. 85)

As civilization, morality, and ethics developed in the course of history, men drew up rules of the game which tend to make us behave more like human beings. But modern competitive society is still so relatively new that these rules are not as well defined as they ought to be, and we do not adhere to them as much as we might. The pecuniary values of competitive society make us punish adultery, which affects the happiness of three people, far more harshly than adulteration, which may affect the health of millions. (Pg. 108)

But for words by themselves make little impact unless they reflect acceptable action or are associated with concepts that give them strength. Social scientists have found that people accept only what they a priori are willing to accept. Unless words reflect factual evidence, authority, reason, tradition, or carry strong emotion they lose their impact on individuals who a priori do not believe what they convey.
It must also be remembered that in our society the meaning of words is as fragile as a soap bubble or lace. If we want to gain acceptance for our words, they must reflect acceptable concepts and be reinforced in their meaning by associating them with the elements of acceptance just referred to. (Pg. 136)

A hairnet manufacturer, Venda, asked us to increase the wearing of hairnets, then hampered by the short hair fashion introduced by dancer Irene Castle. We explored the uses of hairnets as a safety measure for women working with machinery, and as a result of public visibility of the idea, several states passed laws making it obligatory for women to wear hairnets under certain working conditions. The segmental approach was developed by stressing the sanitary aspect of hairnets for cooks and waitresses. (Pg. 198)

A book published in the late twenties, Propaganda Technique in the World War, by Harold Lasswell, attempted to isolate the factors of marketing....:
1. Fasten the war guilt on the enemy; 2. Claim unity and victory, in the names of history and deity; 3. State war aims. In the last war, the Germans failed to do this successfully. The Allies made successful counter-propaganda out of it. Security, peace, a better social order, international laws, are given as war aims; 4. Strengthen the belief of the people that the enemy is responsible for the war, with examples of the enemy's depravity; 5. Make the public believe that unfavorable news is really enemy lies. This will prevent disunity and defeatism; 6. Follow this with horror stories. The story of the Turk who sits before a tubful of his captives' eyes was first told during the Crusades. Horror stories, says the author, should be made to sound authoritative. (Pg. 216)

Heorge C. Bruntz's book, Allied Propaganda and the Collpase of the German Empire in 1918, may help us in dealing with the question. he deals with the foreign angle, but his classification of psychological techniques is applicable to the domestic situation:
1. Propaganda of enlightenment: Get true facts to the people and army of the enemy country, negating the false information they are fed by their own country.
2. Propaganda of despair: Attempt to break down the morale of the enemy by showing that death, disaster and defeat face him.
3.Propaganda of hope: Present to the enemy civilians and army a picture of a promised land, if they will only lay down their arms . President Wilson gave the Fourteen Points as America's war aims.
4. Particularist propaganda: This is aimed at factions in the opposing country and army, seeks to divide them into antagonistic groups-Catholic against Protestant, the people of Alsace-Lorraine against the Prussians in the last war.
5. Revolutionary propaganda: This is aimed at breaking down the government of the enemy from within. The propaganda by the Allies in the last war aimed at stirring up the German people against the Hohenzollerns. (Pg. 217)
Note: It's interesting to see in the modern conflicts going on today, especially in Eastern Europe, you can see both sides of the conflict attempting to use all these strategies against each other on various social media platforms.
]]> Review7501384007 Sat, 19 Apr 2025 10:58:42 -0700 /review/show/7501384007 Philip gave 4 stars to Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #1) by Matt Dinniman
Really funny and my first time reading a western approach to the isekai/power-fantasy tropes that manga and anime love to play with. Excited to continue the series and see what happens next. ]]> Review7501377006 Sat, 19 Apr 2025 10:55:14 -0700 /review/show/7501377006 Philip gave 3 stars to Starter Villain (Hardcover) by John Scalzi
Pretty funny but the 'fish out of water' schtick gets old about halfway through. ]]> Review7501328267 Sat, 19 Apr 2025 10:31:27 -0700 /review/show/7501328267 Philip gave 3 stars to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Paperback) by Quentin Tarantino
Enjoyable light fiction, I'm sure movie buffs will love all the references to films and actors of the era. I ended up re-watching the movie after reading the book and it's a bit of a strange cliché in this case to say that I think the book was actually better than the movie (outside of the final major action scene and one memorable scene where DiCaprio rants about "8 fucking whisky sours"). All of the characters are way more fleshed out in the book and the movie felt like a series of disconnected scenes without the connective tissue the book provides; Knowing the internal monologue going through the characters heads actually makes even the more lackluster scenes in the film better. If someone asked me to recommend either the film or the book, I don't think I would be able to decide, as the one feels incomplete without the other. However, I'd only recommend seeing the film if you've read the book and the only people who will be interested in reading the book are probably those who've seen the film first. That means we're now left with a chicken and egg problem when it comes to how people should approach this work, which is more than enough to dissuade people from tackling it and moving on. So, unless you happen to be a fan of Tarantino's work, I wouldn't recommend the book or the film to you. ]]> Review7427498845 Sun, 23 Mar 2025 07:37:37 -0700 /review/show/7427498845 Philip gave 3 stars to Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behavior (Paperback) by Kate Fox
Being Canadian and from youth having a consistent stream of British media and television I assumed that I had a general understanding of British culture. Honestly, after finishing this book I have to concede that I knew almost nothing. Covering over 550 pages, if you had asked me to write a 5 page essay on British culture or even of my own culture, I don't think I'd be able to do it. We take so much of our cultural understanding for granted that we need an anthropologist to reveal how little we do know or the things we only 'know' subconsciously. Having read Armies of Sand which had a small section on Arabic culture, I'm reminded of a passage whereas Oxford trained psychologists, who were ethnically Arab, showing up in Iraq and realizing that the ideas of Freud of Nietzsche were completely alien to the people they were sent in to help. I know it seems obvious to say that different cultures are different but I think, especially in intellectual circles, we fool ourselves into thinking that the end of history really did happen and that we are all essentially the same. The fact that in the case above the psychologists were Arabic also highlights the assimilating affect of culture; Growing up in a place really does change your personality irrespective of your skin color. By highlighting the uniqueness of British culture, Fox allows foreign readers, particularly from English speaking countries, to ask themselves how different their own countries are to their neighbors.

As a reader and as someone who, in general, enjoys cultural works (films, shows, music) from foreign countries, a part of me always assumed that I was broadening my understanding of a different part of the world. After reading Fox's work I'm realizing that there were dimensions to British media that completely went over my head and I'm left wondering that if I missed themes in British media, of which the Canadian experience is an offshoot and which is also in a language I can understand, exactly how much am I missing in the more foreign forms of media I consume. Like I can tell myself I can understand a Japanese book, I can figure it's translated so I'll know what's going on and Japanese people live a lifestyle comparable to my own, but how much of the sub-context am I missing because I have no real knowledge of Japanese culture; I don't even know what I don't know. In this case I'm wondering if one really must read an anthropological study on a foreign culture, and maybe even visit it a few times, before diving into the enjoyment of their cultural works, otherwise you're really only understanding 50% of what's going on. Honestly, I'm starting to feel that the aspiration to being more 'cultured' by the exploration of foreign media is really just a distant fantasy.

An easy example to describe what I'm talking about is the discussion of the British Class system. Now this is something I have no real knowledge on outside of the basic distinction between the rich and the poor. However, according to Fox, class is a thing that both exists outside of how much money you make, as you are almost born into your class, and is something that inundates every aspect of British life. Again, for myself I associate 'class' with just how much money you have in your bank account, but class in Britain dictates things like: how you talk, how you decorate your house, what car you buy and how you clean it, what plants you plant in your garden, what breed of dog you buy, whether you call your afternoon meal lunch, dinner or tea, etc. This isn't really a discussion of things you buy, but your behavior around them, and apparently British people are hyper aware of this and rigidly maintain these class distinctions amongst themselves. Fox highlights an example where one woman was written up about in the paper because she dared to use the words 'pardon' and 'toilet' in conversation with the Queen and upper-class gents just don't do that (and nobody knows why). I remember watching and enjoying the British film Secrets and Lies and thought one theme of the film was the basic conflict between rich and poor, but now I'm realizing that one character was actually upper-middle class and another was lower-middle class, with the only identifier of this difference being how one decorated her house and called her vegetable salad the French 'crudités', which I guess real upper-class people wouldn't do. I now actually think one of the best things about Canadian and American culture, which are offshoots of varying degrees to British Culture, is that we basically did away with this whole idea of class. As surprising at it sounds, I think having distinctions of class being something associated with material wealth is actually an improvement of it being something associated with which family you were born in or married into.

Another great example of what I'm talking about is British humor rules. Brits have always been famous for their sense of humor, but I don't think I fully 'got' it until I read Fox's book. A great example of this is a recent film called We Live in Time starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh (WARNING: mild spoiler warning for the film) [spoilers removed] Another aspect of British culture this film highlighted was, as Fox pointed out, their social dis-ease. Fox was a bit more harsh in her observations saying this innate British awkwardness almost bordered on autism or agoraphobia, but in the case of this particular and very modern romantic-comedy, it was again shocking how awkward both of the two leads were. Only after multiple 'sorry's' and wry jokes did they become a couple and even during the penultimate moment where they finally hook-up, the whole moment had to be undercut with a joke. Whether it be in matters of life or death it felt like these characters, as an analogue of the British culture that created them, simply could not take anything seriously. For a more real-life example of this cultural trait, Fox points out that during the 2005 London terrorist bombings the gut reaction of the English public was to start making jokes about the event, and even well-meaning foreigners who publicly announced their sympathy were usually mocked for being overly earnest.

Overall, an eye-opening book that has made me rethink my approach towards both my own and foreign media. More importantly, I think my standards for believing anyone who says they understand they're own culture, let alone a foreign one, have become far stricter.

Some quotes I liked:

A few personality psychologists have wasted a lot of time 'proving' that national character stereotypes are 'untrue' on the grounds that they do not correlate with aggregate scores on five personality factors. The supposedly 'reserved' English, for example. score high on 'extraversion' in personality questionnaires. While it is clear that so-called 'English reserve' is far more complex, contingent and contextual than the crude stereotype would suggest (as is its equally famous opposite, 'English hooliganism', a rowdy, 'extravert' stereotype that these researchers conveniently ignore) it is also part of a cultural 'grammar' of rules, norms, customs and behavior codes that has nothing to do with individual personality traits. In real-life social situations, most people unconsciously obey the rules and norms of their culture, whatever their individual personalities. The term 'national character' is a metaphor, which should not be taken literally. A culture is not a person writ large, and cannot be understood or defined by adding up individual personality scores. (Pg. 30)

It is impossible to overstate the importance of privacy in English culture. Jeremy Paxman points our that 'The importance of privacy informs the entire organization of the country, from the assumptions on which laws are based, to the buildings in which the English live.' George Orwell observes that 'The most hateful of all names in an English ear is Nosy Parker.' I would add that a disproportionate number of our most influential social rules and maxims are concerned with the maintenance of privacy: we are taught to mind our own business, not to pry, to keep ourselves to ourselves, not to make a scene or a fuss or draw attention to ourselves, and to never wash our dirty linen in public. It is worth noting again here that 'How are you?' is only a treated as a 'real' question among very close personal friends or family; everywhere else, the automatic, ritual response is 'Fine, thanks', 'OK, thanks', 'Oh, mustn't grumble', 'Not bad, thanks' or some equivalent, whatever your physical or mental state. If you are terminally ill, it is acceptable to say, 'Not bad, considering.' (Pg. 57)

At the most basic level, an underlying rule in all English conversation is the proscription of 'earnestness'. Although we may not have a monopoly on humor, or even on irony, the English are probably more acutely sensitive than any other nation to the distinction between 'serious' and 'solemn', between 'sincerity' and 'earnestness'. This distinction is crucial to any kind of understanding of Englishness. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: if you are not able to grasp these subtle but vital differences, you will never understand the English - and even if you speak the language fluently, you will never feel or appear entirely at home in conversation with the English. Your English may be impeccable, but your behavioral 'grammar' will be full of glaring errors. (Pg. 79)

Just one little caveat. When we are not being chronically underwhelmed, tepid or indifferent, we often engage in active criticism and moaning about the monarchy and the royals. But if you are not English, you would be wise to resist the temptation to join in. Remember: the English will happily moan about anything and everything, including things we are actually rather proud and fond of. We whinge endlessly about our weather, for example, but foreigners are not allowed to belittle it - just as one may criticize members of one's family but one is indignant if anyone else dares to do so. The same 'family' principle applies to our 'Auntie Beeb': there is a kind of tradition of grumpy affection and respect for the BBC, even among those who use the term 'BBC' as a metaphor for 'snooty middle class', and grumble about having to pay the annual license fee. Our attitude towards the monarchy is essentially the same typically English contradictory cluster - much cynicism and moaning, but some grudging affection and pride, and twitchy indignation if outsiders dare to criticize. (Pg. 87)

But our much-maligned reserve and our much-admired courtesy are, it seems to me, two sides of the same coin. In fact, at one level, our reserve is a form of courtesy - the kind of courtesy that the sociolinguists Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson call 'negative politeness', meaning that it is concerned with other people's need not to be intruded or imposed upon, as opposed to 'positive politeness', which is concerned with their need for inclusion and social approval. The restraint, cautiousness and contact-avoidance of English public-transport passengers - the standoffishness that foreigners complain about - are all characteristic features of negative politeness. What looks like unfriendliness is really a kind of consideration: we judge others by ourselves, and assume that everyone shares our obsessive need for privacy - so we mind our own business and politely ignore them.
All cultures practice both forms of politeness, but most incline somewhat more towards one than the other. The English are a predominantly negative-politeness culture, while the Americans, for example, tend to favor the warmer, more inclusive positive-politeness mode. Although these are crude distinctions, and there are class, regional and other subcultural variations in both types of culture, it seems probably that visitors from positive-politeness cultures are more likely to misunderstand and be offended by the 'polite' aloofness of the English than those from cultures that are similar to our own in this respect (according to Brown and Levinson, these negative-politeness cultures also include Japan, certain sections of Indian society and Madagascar.) (Pg. 235)

Another 'universal': the effects of alcohol on behavior are determined by social and cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol. There is enormous cross-cultural variation in the way people behave when they drink alcohol. In some societies (such as the UK, the US, Australia and parts of Scandinavia - about one-fifth of all cultures worldwide), drinking is associated with aggression, violence and anti-social behavior, while in others (such as Latin/Mediterranean cultures in particular, but in fact the vast majority of all cultures) drinking is not associated with these undesirable behaviors. This variation cannot be attributed to different levels of consumption or genetic difference, but is clearly related to different cultural beliefs about alcohol and different social norms regarding drunken compartment.
This basic fact has been proved time and again, not just in qualitative cross-cultural research but also in carefully controlled proper scientific experiments - double-blind, placebos and all. To put it simply, the experiments show that when people think they are drinking alcohol, they behave according to their cultural beliefs about the behavioral effects of alcohol. The English believe that alcohol is a disinhibitor, and specifically that it makes people amorous or aggressive, so when they are given what they think are alcoholic drinks - but are in fact non-alcoholic 'placebos' - they shed their inhibitions: they become more flirtatious, and some (young males in particular) may become aggressive.
Which brings me to the third method the English use to deal with their chronic, incurable social dis-ease: the 'become loud and aggressive and obnoxious' method. I am certainly not the first to have noticed this dark and unpleasant side to the English character. Both English observers and foreign visitors have been commenting on it for centuries, and our habit of national self-flagellation ensures that not a week goes by without some mention of it in our own newspapers. (Pg. 179)

Our beliefs about the behavioral effects of alcohol are certainly at least partly to blame, as they act as self-fulfilling prophecies. If you firmly believe and expect that alcohol will make you aggressive, then it will do exactly that. But this still leaves the question of why we should hold such strange beliefs. The notion that alcohol is a dangerous disinhibitor is not peculiar to the English: it is shared by a number of other cultures, known to the anthropologists and other social scientists who take an interest in such matters as 'ambivalent', 'dry', 'Nordic' or 'temperance' cultures - cultures with an ambivalent, morally charged, love/hate , forbidden-fruit relationship with alcohol, usually associated with a history of temperance movements. These are contrasted with 'integrated', 'wet', 'Mediterranean' or 'non-temperance' cultures - those for whom alcohol is simply a normal, integral, taken-for-granted, morally neutral part of everyday life; generally cultures that have been fortunate enough to escape the attentions of temperance campaigners. 'Integrated' drinking-cultures, despite usually having much higher levels of per-capita alcohol consumption, experience few of the 'alcohol-related' social problems that afflict 'ambivalent' cultures. (Pg. 380)

Apart from the obvious need for warmth in cold climates, and for protection from the elements, dress, in all cultures, is essentially about three things: sex differentiation, status signals and affiliation signals. Sex differentiation is usually the most obvious: even if a society shows very little variation in dress or personal adornment, there will always be at least some minor differences between male and female attire - differences that are often emphasized to make each sex more attractive to the other. By 'status' I mean social status or position in the broadest sense, and I am including age-differentiation in this category. Affiliation, to a tribe, clan, subculture, social or 'lifestyle' group, covers pretty much everything else.
I'm sorry if this offends some fashion editors of glossy magazines, or their readers, who believe that dress is all about individual 'self-expression' or some such guff. What modern, Western post-industrial cultures like to see as 'style' or 'self-expression' - or fashion itself, for that matter-is really just a glorified combination of sex-differentiation, status signals and affiliation signals. I have probably also offended those in these societies who insist that they have no interest in fashion, that their clothes do not make any social statements and that they dress purely for comfort, economy and practicality. Some people may indeed have no conscious interest in fashion, but even they cannot help choosing one cheap, comfortable and practical garment over another, so they are making sartorial social statements whether they like it or not. (And, besides, claiming to be above such trivialities as dress in in itself a socially significant proclamation, usually a rather loud one.) (Pg. 385) ]]> Review7427483264 Sun, 23 Mar 2025 07:30:58 -0700 /review/show/7427483264 Philip gave 5 stars to On the Yard (Paperback) by Malcolm Braly
Difficult to put down once you've started, an amazing read. ]]> Review7368455289 Sun, 02 Mar 2025 07:32:23 -0800 /review/show/7368455289 Philip gave 3 stars to The Enormous Room (Paperback) by E.E. Cummings
One of many scathing indictments of the French aristocratic bureaucracy during the first world war in all it's pigheadedness. One of the interesting things about reading works like these, from people who experienced the great war firsthand, is how recognizable their voices were. It's crazy to think about how at the time when I was born there could have been very few of these people still walking around, people who were amazed at hearing about the existence of submarines now living in a completely digital world. Despite some aspects of their personality being familiar, there is ultimately still something so alien about them and their culture. Nationalism is at an extreme, people within the prison our author finds himself in usually self-segregate to their country of origin; each having their own unique language, hairstyles, fashions, etc. Our author, an American, applies a broad brush to every nationality and their proclivities, cultural stereotypes abound and I think for some reason he had a especial dislike of Dutch people. It's odd considering that this is a book written during the first world war as it could be considered something like the first European union centered book. While the elites of Europe do their best to kill each other the normal humans they boss around have no issues living in relative harmony within a giant prison cell. They can make themselves understood by each other, either through the use of broken French or hand signs, police their own behavior, and ultimately form friendships that go past the boundaries of nationalism and race. Cummings lauds the ability of the 'uneducated' to see past the superficial differences of class and country to see other people for what they really are. Though, of course, there was one other thing that united all these disparate Europeans, the complete and utter hatred of the prison, it's guards, and the French bureaucracy that empowered them. ]]> Review7323109071 Sat, 15 Feb 2025 08:56:56 -0800 /review/show/7323109071 Philip gave 3 stars to The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (Hardcover) by Nicholas Carr
The course of the book that Carr has written is generally sprawling, covering diverse topics such as the history of information technology, going from the scroll to the wax tablet to the printing press; the general science behind the formation of memory, in particular long-term memory; and the modern reaction towards our current information technology du jour, the internet. In construction this does leave a 'watery' feeling to the book, and maybe this was done on purpose, as you're left with a relatively shallow understanding of the subjects Carr is tackling. Having read Barbara Oakley's "A Mind for Numbers" I understand that you could write an entire book on long-term memory formation alone, and Carr's discussion of it here felt more like a summary of what I had read in Oakley's work. Carr himself provides a list of recommended books at the end of this one which would provide more insight to the topics he's discussing, and so we almost purposefully fall into the trap that makes up the premise of this book, that we've basically come to a point where we are accessing summaries and cliff notes of information. These summaries themselves almost have an ADHD-type editing aimed at maintaining our attention for as long as possible by flitting from one topic to another rather than focusing deeply on one particular subject. Carr even included short "digressions" between every few chapters which reminded me of personal moments, when reading bad literature (not this book), where I would take a break and 'brainrot" myself with a few youtube shorts. Obviously this book is much more coherent than I make it sound but after reading I was definitely left feeling somewhat dissatisfied.

'Brainrot' is an interesting term to bring up in relation to this book as it is a phrase that has now entered the modern lexicon. Even in commercials and tv shoes younger characters will joke that watching too many tiktoks or an excess of social media scrolling is rotting their brains, and I know that once a 'phrase' or 'trend' appears on a television commercial than the public by and large has already fully adopted it ages previously. Carr provides the science backing up the claim that the public has already accepted, the tools we use do have an effect on our brain. That people with different jobs, maybe a London cabbie who has to memorize a map of London, will have a totally different brain architecture than normal people, and most importantly, once you give that cabbie a GPS map, the architecture will respond to the new technology. In extreme cases people who receive a bodily injury, either to their brain or nervous system, can have their brain mapped out as it rearranges itself to compensate for it's damaged functions. The point being that the common parlance that your brain is fixed either at birth or after the age of 25 isn't entirely true.

Ultimately this doesn't need to be something necessarily negative. The advent of written records did make it more difficult (or at least discouraged normal people) to remember things like our ancient Greek orators did but the common use of them meant that we could now store vast amounts of information outside our brains, and thus could focus a greater amount of our limited working memory solving present-day problems. In effect we created an intellectual tool we could use to expand a limited biological function and afterwards, we couldn't imagine a world where we had to go back to the way things were before. The internet does have the ability to do the same things, in regards to our ability to spread information as far and as quickly as possible. But the argument here is between "How much are we using the tool?" versus "How much is the tool using us?" Carr points out that in the history of Google, as a search engine, their founders had invented an amazing tool for finding information, but had no way to monetize it. This changed when they found a way to serve targeted advertisements towards it's users, and the "search engine" tool slowly becomes less about extending a limited biological capability and more about mining a resource, how can they serve the maximum amount of advertisement to the maximum amount of users. Internet users have become savvy to this and now more and more of our limited mental resources are spent filtering out ads, pop-ups, AI generated content, SEO trash, chatbots, etc. As a test one can look up a simple Hamburger recipe, we all know the recipe would take up one index card at most, but a site I chose at random had seemingly 5 pages of fluff surrounding a recipe, asking you to click away and spend more time on their site (and thus viewing more ads). Scrolling through and parsing out this junk over and over again is what creates the brainrot epidemic.

Carr points out that intellectuals of their time have posited that the inclusion of things like hyperlinks and other audiovisual cues would only improve the acquisition of information and the user experience. But testing between people who have had to peruse simple block text verses the same text with hyperlinks (meant to provide more in-depth or related information) or even bundling the same text with a multimedia presentation does the opposite. Even taking a news broadcast and removing the news scroller at the bottom and any other information blocks on the screen leads to increased focus and retention of actual information. However, if the goal is to simply maintain your attention for as long as possible rather then deepen it, you can understand why so many of those little add-ons have been included on our screens. Information itself then becomes more cut-up and more punchy and we now have the modern 30 second tiktoks that somehow take up so much of our time. Carr makes the point that the idea of deep reading, where one immerses themselves in a book or solitary thought for long periods of time is in itself a biological anomaly, a cultural mode of being probably introduced by the usage of the book itself. We are much more biologically prone to constantly scattering our thoughts, on the constant lookout for potential opportunities or threats.

Like other intellectual tools that can be used to magnify our biological functions, whether it be the book, the compass or the map, Carr points out that the thinkers of their days loved to apply this intellectual insight onto everything. Greeks thought our minds functioned like a series of pumps, the industrialist thinkers instead used the symbolism of the gears of a watch or the workings of a factory, and now our modern thinkers use the analogies of the microchip or computer to describe our brain and it's functions. The use of technology to describe a biological process is, in part, what led to ideas that our brain architecture is fixed in place. A biological process is constantly changing and reacting to stimuli, and like in the process of a brain injury, one cannot predict how it will react. I think this is why we can see intellectual coping in regards to people disparaging their addictions to social media or other web based stimulations. If they can believe that the brain or mind is predetermined or fixed in place, than nothing bad is happening to it by constantly exposing it to brainrot media. One other thing Carr points out in the intellectual sphere is that as we use more web-based tools to gather and parse out information, our scope actually ends up getting narrower than broader. Ultimately we're relying on an algorithm to determine what's important or not, and even then when it gives us a piece of information, web based reading usually tends to skimming rather than deep-reading. This makes the end result much less broader in it's influences and also homogenizes the style, as the information we receive becomes shorter and shorter and more ADHD oriented, the information we put out likewise has the same traits. It's odd that in a web-based world when one writes something of a scholarly nature we are still told to make it as short and concise as possible, as if the words will actually be printed en masse somewhere, and we all know that the chances of someone actually reading them, in a web based world were so many other things are trying to grab our attention, will be vanishingly low no matter how short it is.

Overall, an interesting book for those wanting a taster of the topics Carr talks about.

Some quotes I liked:

That doesn't mean that traditional forms of media have disappeared. We still buy books and subscribe to magazines. We still go to the movies and listen to the radio. Some of us still buy music on CDs and movies on DVDs. A few of us will even pick up a newspaper now and then....But the old technologies lose their economic and cultural force. They become progress's dead ends. It's the new technologies that govern production and consumption, that guide people's behavior and shape their perceptions. That's why the future of knowledge and culture no longer lies in books or newspapers or TV shows or radio programs or records or CDs. It lies in digital files shot through our universal medium at the speed of light. (pg. 89)

Nielsen's analysis backed up the conclusions of the German researches themselves. They had reported that most Web pages are viewed for ten seconds or less. Fewer than one in ten page views extend beyond two minutes, and a significant portion of those seem to involve "unattended browser windows...left open in the background of the desktop." The researchers observed that "even new pages with plentiful information and many links are regularly viewed only for a brief period." The results, they said, "confirm that browsing is a rapidly interactive activity." The results also reinforce something that Nielsen wrote in 1997 after his first study of online reading. "How do users read on the web?" he asked then. His succinct answer: "They don't." (pg. 135) ]]>