Nourish
your brain or consume junk?
What Is the Internet Doing to Our Brains? Nicholas G. Carr, in his best seller ‘The
Shallows,’ tells us.
“Acquiring knowledge is like having sex; it releases
dopamine into the pleasure centers of the brain.” The possibility of addiction seems
eminent. The compulsion to always be
playing with our electronic devices becomes an obsession. I know by experience that is true, because
whenever I say, “I wonder…,” it is off to my desk top computer to check it
out. As of yet I am pretty much clueless
to the blackberry, lap top, I-Pod, etc.
After listening to the video and reading the other content on this link
I am in no rush to acquire these electronics.
As an aside: My sisters won’t communicate with me because I don’t text. I absolutely love my land line because it is
cheap and I like to hear a human being on the other end without having to worry
about my minutes. I do carry a cell phone which is off most of the time.
In our primitive history, Carr comments, we needed knowledge
for survival. We have used that
knowledge to build upon and be creative and advance civilization. Here we are, racing to the finish line. Now
it is time to slow down because as Carr points out, our brains cannot process
information with the intensity it is flowing because the short term working
memory cannot process more than two to four pieces of information at a time.
Any more info flowing in causes “cognitive overload.”
As a result, the flow of information into our long term
memories where we use it to associate new learning to past experience and
knowledge, is stunted. Do you suppose
this is why Carr named the book “The Shallows,” because people become
intellectually shallow when they can’t associate? Carr says the richness and depth which is
lost leads to the inability to determine what is useful information and that
which is trivia.
It is very reasonable to assume there is a loss of
productivity if one is on the job and having to succumb to “switching cost”
when at one moment they might be texting and another checking something out
online, and then actually performing on the job. The brain has to readjust for each change in
focus.
Carr also comments on the loss of deep creativity most
likely as a result of the constant lack of long term focus.
Some of the quotes that Carr used on the link were also
revealing. The New Republic, Aug. 4,
2011, Past Tense Pop, implies our present music culture has been wounded
by technology. Our youth are apolitical
and music is mundane as a result. It has
lost its subversive energies that help with change. “None of it matters
much. It just streaks by.” Maybe the “Occupy” movement will stimulate
some excitement in that venue.
Marshall McLuhan has written on the media effects on the
brain. I would like to read more of his
opinions and writings. This is from, The Atlantic, July-August 2008, Is Google
Making Us Stupid? “As the
media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just
passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they
also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is
chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now
expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly
moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I
zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." What a great metaphor. You can feel the depth versus the
shallowness.
From The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google,
January 7, 2008. Here the plight of the
99% is equated with the loss of jobs due to technology. “The erosion of the
middle class may well accelerate, as the divide widens between a relatively
small group of extraordinarily wealthy people - the digital elite - and a very
large set of people who face eroding fortunes and a persistent struggle to make
ends meet. In the YouTube economy, everyone is free to play, but only a few
reap the rewards." The “digital
elite” is an apt description.
From The Guardian, November 22, 2007, Genotyping Goes Mainstream, This quote about Google’s
“23 and Me,” actually gave me the chills.
Combining genetic profiling of “23 and Me” with tracking, now that is
one terrifying thought! The implications
of this could be devastating to our personal liberties. I was very surprised to hear Google promotes
this app or whatever it is called.
We are
missing out on a real community of real caring.
I thought it was because we had become so over populated but now I think
it is because we have distanced ourselves by putting technology between us and
others as a bed-board. Without touching our fellowman emotionally and
intellectually we will or have become Avatar’s; we can make ourselves up as we
go along. Such lack of structure would
lead to a weakening of self efficacy resulting from the loss of deep creative
thought. From Harvard Business
Review, 5/1999 "Being Virtual: Character and the New Economy," “But every time we reinvent ourselves, we
erase the meaning that our past experiences granted us. In place of an ethical
sense of ourselves as people with clear attachments, we are left with an ironic
sense of ourselves as fabrications. We become unreal, virtual."
One can
over eat, or indulge in too much fat or sugar and not enough fiber. The internet can provide us with the tools to
educate and communicate needed information as a social reform tool, nourishing
our psyches and society. It is a choice
to nourish your brain or consume junk. It
is all in how you use the tool – brain – internet.
