The most recent copy of Wired magazine has an article called Chaos Theory. It’s essentially a review of Nicholas Carr’s new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, due on June 7th. Here’s what I learned from reading this article…The Internet is shattering our ability to focus. It’s making us shallower thinkers and dimishing our intelligence.
The author cites a study where experienced internet users were scanned by an MRI along side internet noobs while doing basic internet tasks. The experienced user’s prefrontal cortexes, the part of the brain associated with problem-solving and decision making, were alive with activity while the other group of first time surfers resembled a city in blackout.
The evidence suggested that the brains of the frequent Internet users had developed distinctive neural pathways because of their Internet use. At first glance there was much rejoicing, “Yeehah! The Internet is making us smarter through increased brain activity. We’re all turning into geniuses!” But as scientist began to study the effects of this neural rewiring some disturbing facts began to reveal themselves.
Here’s a excerpt that jumped out to me:
…Already, though, there is much we know or can surmise-and the news is quite disturbing. Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, and educators point to the same conclusion: When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.
What are the implications of this? From what I can tell, if we are to accept Mr. Carr’s hypothesis, we are dumbing ourselves down by muting our ability to develop true intelligence; the ability to store data in our long term memory and recall it at will, when necessary. We are instead relying ever more on the Internet mind as our trusted source for answers instead of storing data on our “local hard drives”. Is this us moving our brains to the cloud?
I’ve reserved a copy of The Shallows. I want to learn more about what the Internet may be doing to my already focus-shattered brain.
