The second red symbol with Nicholas Carr’s new publication is the title:” How technologies of connection break us off”. It’s beyond boring, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. After all, his book The Ocean continues to provide the most in-depth analysis of how the internet has “rewired” our neurons. It’s been 10 years since his last guide. I anticipated that he wouldn’t have anything to say to close the suspension.
Turns out he was driven by a moderate-to-severe circumstance of Trump Derangement Syndrome rather than a dazzling information. Superbloom now feels out of date compared to The Ocean and its follower, The Glass Cage, who both had perceptions and proved prophetic. Its overcooked takes on Trump, politics, and the web are hilariously out-of-touch with reality.
It reads more like Bluesky promotional materials.
Donald Trump,’ Evil Coxcomb ‘
Carr’s various publications were pre-Great Awokening, and his focus was on how an adult’s memory, concentration, and expertise were reshaped by online resources. It was an unbiased, common experience, and numerous found his explanations and warnings persuasive. I definitely did.
Superbloom, nevertheless, is concerned with the political and cultural implications of the computer. It doesn’t take much for Carr’s TDS to render itself known. After 15 websites of” How we got around”, Carr cuts to the heart of the matter:
It all boiled over in 2016. The year began when a heavily armed man, a twenty-nine-year-old father of two, stormed a pizza parlor in Washington, D. C. He was intent on freeing children who, according to rumors circulating online, were imprisoned in the restaurant by a Democratic Party pedophile ring…The year ended with the election to the presidency of the United States of a malevolent coxscomb]sic ] with a tweeting habit. The battle had been marked by the unfold, through Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and other platforms, of thousands of false and often bizarre media stories from made-up publications, all aimed at false or misleading voters.
 , This one phrase has it all.
He begins with Pizzagate, one of many situations in which he plays the role of a pretender that the Left is the group of Truth and Science while the Right is roiled by conspiracists and propaganda. He closes arguing Trump won in 2016 according to that very propaganda. Hillary Clinton supporters and Not Trumpers c. 2016 were comforted by that idea, but they are now repeating it after Trump is deeply re-elected, cappping off the most significant comeback in political history. It comes off as ignorant at best and disrespectful at worst to the British government.
Right in the middle of the article, there’s my beloved line: “malevolent knave with a talking attitude”. Then, I wasn’t comfortable with that design, “malevolent coxcomb”, but I went to the Oxford English Dictionary to make sure there wasn’t anything I was missing.
Cruel, as you probably know, means wishing damage to others or having a detrimental effect. It’s a typical word for Trump in corporate advertising. Coxcomb is more of a ten-dollar expression. Actually, it referred to a court jester whose helmet resembled a” camel’s comb”, and it came to mean a “vain, conceited, or pretentious gentleman, a fop”.
It isn’t really clear in terms of meaning, but it demonstrates the cognitive tension that drives TDS. On the one hand, he’s a knave: a missed business given to incomprehensible rambling, a six-time collapsed fool. On the other hand, he’s cruel: a convicted murderer and grave threat to our politics, worthy of singlehandedly taking down America.
Fumbles in the Device
In Superbloom, Carr explains on a 2021 part for The New Atlantis that argued we need to oversee social media. He explains how authorities actions, including to varying degrees, helped guard us as individuals and customers, and how radio, television, and radio all impacted American society.
For instance, he contrasts the privacy the government demands of package couriers ( the” secrecy-of-correspondence” doctrine ) with Google scanning our emails with impunity. Children can’t get cigars, but they can sign up for Instagram. Pretty regular takes, but Carr does make some interesting references and tidbits along the way.
However, his trust in arguing the web is “broken” is undermined by his repeated Conductivity flare-ups. To describe how our information is become fragmented, he uses Jan. 6. To describe how our knowledge is censored, he cites Elon Musk’s acquisition of X. To explain how our information is manipulated, he points to deepfakes ( and AI hypotheticals ) that Joe Biden suffered on the 2024 campaign trail.
The Twitter Files, the Covid shutdowns, the belittling that was” cheapfakes”: these rarely get mentioned previously. He doesn’t realize that the Left is competent and proficient in putting the Republican in charge of the actual power he fears in their hands. That’s the point about TDS: most people don’t even know they have it.
Although the guide is intended to be a “bracing investigation of how social media has warped our sense of self and society,” it is actually ideal enjoyed as an unexpected work of laughter.
That’s Cringe, Mr. Carr
In The Shallows, Carr was able to explain how the internet was changing him personally, and then place that in the context of a technological and epistemological era. He understood the moment and its implications. He has lost the former, and it’s hard not to laugh at the earnest efforts that result.
A standard discussion of how” the metaphor of contagion” is used to describe social media — a post goes “viral”, etc. — takes a sudden turn for the cringe:” When a real pathogen is on the loose, we discovered, social media turns into an antiviral. It allows people to socialize without being physically present, to work together without being apart. If there was anything fortunate about Covid’s arrival, it was the timing. After social media had already taught us the art of social distancing, the illness first appeared. Our most valuable personal protective equipment was our phones and laptops, which proved to be of the highest caliber.
Yes, the big plus from the lockdowns was that we got to spend all day on TikTok and Zoom.
Elon Musk is no proponent of the First Amendment, he continues to say. In fact, he’s just a “flighty oligarch” who has turned what was our digital town square into his own personal “house party”. Carr closes with a solemn thought experiment:
The bureaucrats at Big Brother’s Ministry of Truth would stuff outdated documents into chutes called memory holes that led to enormous furnaces in the building’s basement whenever the history needed to be updated. Imagine how much more effectively, if the right software had been used, they would have finished their tasks.
He seems totally unaware that “memory-hole” is well-established slang online and a well-established practice for Dems in power. Therefore, what he meant to be damning ends up being incriminating and comes off as absurd.
But hey, that’s TDS for you.
