dom [lighted] up in the human being for a single cosmic moment,” freedom will not be lost. That, in face of the fiercest evil of annihilation, brought about by so many “commanders of nothingness” all over the earth in the course of the 20th century, “...in the very same moment the human being would” not any longer “dissolve away....” And therefore, indeed: “We are here pointing to the abyss of nothingness in human evolution which man must cross when he becomes a free being. It is the working of Michael and the Christ-impulse which makes it possible for him to leap across the gulf.” Though on the much-hoped-for large scale this battle didn’t take place at the end of the 20th century, I wanted
to tell you that it still may become a fruitful and joyful seed of new life in each of our hearts. This was the sole purpose of my sharing tonight, “to make philosophy worthy of this event.” I wanted to inscribe it here in my first working visit to France, Colmar, Alsace: to share with you some of my experiences in the last decades of the last century, in order to encourage you, too, to begin and become beginners of the now beginning, new Michaelic century. This fall and winter, along with a new book The Spiritual Event of the 21st Century, and a new website, Dr. Ben-Aharon will give talks and workshops across North America. Individuals or groups interested in hosting an event can contact the editor (editor@anthroposophy.org).
Rudolf Steiner Library Newsletter Reviews
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains Nicholas Carr, W.W. Norton & Company, 2010, 276 pgs. Review by John Scott Legg In 2008 Nicholas Carr inspired a good deal of discussion with a cover article he wrote for the Atlantic Monthly with the blunt but provocative title “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains is an expansion of that article in both breadth and depth. Written for a popular audience, the book is a careful dissent from the mainstream thinking that prevails today, thinking not commonly inclined to seriously question, beyond the superficial, the true significance of technology in our lives, let alone how it may be affecting the very definition of what it means to be human. Carr does this, and so places himself on a small but important shelf of writers who have attempted to put the technological advances of humanity into a larger, more meaningful, perspective. Reading The Shallows, one comes to realize just how extremely important, and rare, such a perspective is these days. 34 •
being human
Nicholas Carr
Nicholas Carr is not, however, a critic of technology as such. Rather, his book can be seen as an attempt, sprung from the very mainstream thinking just mentioned, to reinsert the human being into our understanding of today’s world. He begins with his own story, the path that led him to write the Atlantic article and then this book. As is the case for many people of a certain age, the story of the growth and development of home computing and later, the internet, is reflected in Carr’s own biography. Hardly a Luddite, Carr briefly outlines the role of computers in his life history with no regrets and a good deal of informed appreciation. As a young man in 1986 he spent most of his and his wife’s savings on an early Macintosh. He recalls how, turning it on for the first time, he immediately found himself “smitten.” He bought a modem in 1990 and was among the first wave online. “When the Web went 2.0 around 2005,” Carr writes, “I went 2.0