Alvin and Heidi Toffler—authors of such bestsellers as Future Shock, The Third Wave, and (my favorite) Creating a New Civilization—posit that human civilization has gone through several distinct stages, each culturally earthshaking. Humans started as hunter-gatherers, then settled as farmers, eventually underwent industrialization, and are now experiencing an information revolution.

The cover for the July 2008 edition of The Atlantic asks provocatively, “Is Google making us Stoopid?” In his article within, Nicholas Carr laments that his Internet addiction has shortened his attention span, scattered his focus, made his thinking shallower, and left him less capable of slogging through War and Peace.