What the Internet is doing to our brains

[The2ndWheel]

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

[ramapo]

1. Yes

I've noticed the same effects that the author notes. A loss of focus, a jumpy mind, an inability to concentrate. Not only that, I'd say that I am addicted to information. And news. Up-to-the-second news. I'm constantly checking DU, Huffingtonpost, CNN, etc. for the latest. Not just once a day but once an hour, or more.

The computer is always on, always beckoning. Come sit, just for a moment. Before breakfast, after dinner, before bed. Can't sleep? The computer will keep you company.

I've always thought how terrible it is that most of us waste a large percentage of our lives sitting in front of the TV. At least the computer is interactive has been my excuse. I'm gaining information. But I believe it is true that there is an effect on our minds, and not a good one.

Many days I think back to how it was before computers, or at least before the 24x7 broadband access. I'm tempted, almost daily, to go cold turkey. No more internet. But how would I survive? OK, maybe just use the internet on a strictly limited basis, to perform a specific task that would enable some other part of my life.

I think I have what might be termed a brain fog. So many little bits of info streaming in, much of it disjointed. Would kicking the computer habit clear it all out after awhile?

I'm curious as to the effect on younger generations who know no other way of living.

[seaj11]

9. agree

Well, I am of the younger generations and I do remember immersing myself in a good book. I used to be a total bookworm. It's hard to concentrate for me too. And I have suffered from Internet addiction, and have even gone cold turkey...but never for more than a couple of days. I'm much better about my Internet usage now; it used to be impossible for me to NOT be hooked in.

[Mojorabbit]

2. Great article

I had this discussion with someone several years ago. Both of us were having trouble concentrating when reading books and we were wondering if the net had affected our attention spans.

[ironrooster]

3. maybe the writer has ADD?

I use the internet quite alot for research.

I haven't noticed a problem with attention. I will say that there have been reports that watching TV before going to bed disrupts the sleep cycle - these studies deal primarily with children. Probably this is a related phenomena. I would recommend turning the CPU off and going for a stroll - or reading an actual paper book that doesn't flash at 60 - 80 Hz and then go to bed. That would prolly solve mister Atlantic writer's problem.

Also, googling DOES NOT require the mental effort of searching through a real book or journal. It's more like picking nuts off the ground.

Also, most of the material suitable for say, a master's thesis or a well researched novel can't be found for free on the internet - you have to go to the journal sites. They charge about $15 - $25 depending on the journal/year etc. This goes for specialties such as diverse as molecular cell biology to world history.

Often, I'll purchase a journal article, print if off and read it at my leasure.

The writer referenced in the OP above sounds like he has problems unrelated to Google. I wish him well.

[bemildred]

4. I spend lots of time on the net, and I don't have any trouble reading, even hard books.

But then I never watch TV.

[ironrooster]

5. it may have to do with the refresh rate of the monitor -

There are dcocumented affects on the brain from various refresh rates. What I'm getting at here is it doesn't have to be a tV.

[bemildred]

6. I spent 21 years as a Computer programmer, writer, network manager, etc.

It's the TV, the watching, the .5-1.0 second images they cut in front of you one after the other. It is true that a bad refresh rate can give you a headache, etc.

[Mechatanketra]

7. Sure. Whatever.

Please, let me be first in line to dismiss this charge as Luddist nostalgism. Not that our hyperactive minds are going to produce a golden age of wisdom any time soon; the thing about the Internet is, it primarily amplifies what was already there. By way of comparison, the Internet's anonymity doesn't magically (or even scientifically) transform people into jerks, but it does lull people to reveal the jerk they always were. The shallowness of new media is less a virus destroying the capacity for "deep reading" than a market powered by making information accessibile to people who never were "deep readers".

I think Flowers for Algernon would be a better reference than 2001. The immediacy of the Internet doesn't make a person stupid, it makes one aware of how "stupid" (or rather, ignorant i.e. uninformed) they always were now that they've had the ability to immediately correct it. My only worry about the Net is what it may do to my eyes (because we have an order or two of resolution improvement to go before it's comfort-competitive with dead trees). And, of course in the author's case, there's the fact that they're ten years older. My concentration's improved a little since the Net came around -- but when I started, I was a fitful teenager...

In any case, I really do suspect that when anaesthesia was invented, someone was very worried that its use would signify the loss of something deeply significant — almost spiritual! — in the practice of surgery.

[seaj11]

10. not sure if it's Luddite...

The shallowness of new media is less a virus destroying the capacity for "deep reading" than a market powered by making information accessibile to people who never were "deep readers".

Certainly the Internet's easier for people who were never deep readers, but why would people who have in their lives been both deep readers and shallow readers notice a change in their reading habits and attention capacity related to Internet use? I know I've seen change within a week by cutting my Internet time.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Possibly, the Internet increases critical thinking which also has an adverse effect on reading's

fundamental requirement of self-hypnosis. To be absorbed by the text or story without reservation. In this regard, I believe to some degree television and reading have something in common, a suspension of belief, the ever going questioning and interactive Internet keeps you on your toes.

[Karenina]

8. Returning after a major crash on May 1st...

I'd had a book my 10 year old girlfriend loaned me 6 months ago and finally read it. It was a kiddie book a la Harry Potter,"Tintenherz" by Cornelia Funke, a real page turner. Hurt myself in the process, sitting for HOURS with my dictionary, looking up and writing down new vocabulary. Got up after 5 hours one night (could NOT put it down till I looked at the clock) and my butt said, "You ain't 14 anymore."

Read like a fiend all month, anything I could get my hands on. Checked in several times on friends' computers and realized my "addiction" to info is a sham. Information and knowledge are VERY different things...

[AmyDeLune]

12. You had a 10 year old girlfriend?!?

:hide:


Sorry, couldn't resist!

[Prophet 451]

13. Easy way of countering it though

The only time I've noticed this being a problem is when we don't partake of reading for a lengthy period, just netsurfing. The trick to countering it is to avoid the break. Just read books often (I go through books like packets of chips) or, if you're wedded to the net, surf Wiki for a few hours at a time. History articles are usually the best.