The internet has a downside in making information available very selectively, as in google searches, which only look for what you ask. It is a rifle shot as opposed to a shotgun blast, which goes all over the place with information you didn’t ask for but are better off having been exposed to. Books are shotguns, the internet a rifle.
It used to be that the main benefit of a college education was that you learned how to use the library. I wonder if that’s still true.
I recognize the benefit of the Internet - I agree with all the benefits that Carr also recognizes and mentions in the book.
But I also think that the Internet is making actually sitting down in quiet, undistracted contemplation of ideas, or attending to concentration on a long text, impossible for a lot of young people. And educators seem to be generally dealing with this by going with the flow, instead of being more demanding that the old standards/skills also be inculcated and required.
A vacation from the Internet, spent in a good library, might be useful for many. (But I wonder how long we will even have libraries...and it’s very frightening to think that in the future, everything we can read will come from digitized materials that have been vulnerable to censorship.)