If you want more than the elite to be free and autonomous, you face the problem that there aren’t enough tutors to explain the meaning of everything. If you want to radically broaden the scope of literacy, the loss of some depth might be part of the price. The question at present, not a new one, is whether loss of depth is preventable or instead is an inevitable consequence of technologies that democratize knowledge.

In academic circles, the attitude taken by Carr and other critics I consider here is called “technological determinism,” and in my opinion it can be as dangerous as a lack of awareness of technology-enabled pitfalls. Humans have agency. The Web wouldn’t have existed without that agency, even given the technical medium of the Internet