Nicholas Carr\u2019s book <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat the Internet is Doing to Our Brains: The Shallows\u201d has had a deep impact on my thinking about disturbing trends in our society that I had already noticed. Carr demonstrates, with reference to scientific research and philosophical insights, how the computer and the resulting internet (and related market-driven stimulations) are remapping our brains and creating a social and intellectual wasteland in the midst of an unprecedented wealth of information. I have selected a few critical quotes from Carr\u2019s book and will refer to him in an upcoming article. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is truly \u201cinformation everywhere but\nnot a drop to contemplate.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nicholas Carr<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the news is not all good. Although\nneuroplasticity provides an escape from genetic determinism, a loophole for\nfree thought and free will, it also imposes its own form of determinism on our\nbehavior. As particular circuits in our brain strengthen through the repetition\nof a physical or mental activity, they begin to transform that activity into a\nhabit. The paradox of neuroplasticity, observes Norman Doidge,\nis that, for all the mental flexibility that it grants up, it can end up\nlocking us into \u201crigid behaviors.\u201d The chemically triggered synapses that link\nour neurons program us, in effect, to want to keep exercising the circuits\nthey\u2019ve formed. Once we\u2019ve wired the new circuitry in our brain, Doidge writes,\n\u201cwe long to keep it activated.\u201d That is the way the brain fine-tunes its\noperations. Routine activities are carried out even more quickly and\nefficiently, while unused circuits are pruned away. (page 34) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The potential for unwelcome neuroplastic\nadaptations also exists in the everyday, normal functioning of our minds. Experiments\nshow that just as the brain can build new or stronger circuits through physical\nor mental practice, those circuits can weaken or dissolve with neglect. \u201cIf we\nstop exercising our mental skills,\u201d writes Norman Doidge, \u201cwe do not just\nforget them: the brain map space for those skills is turned over to the skills\nwe practice instead.\u201d Jeffrey Schwartz, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA\u2019s\nmedical school, terms this process \u201csurvival of the busiest.\u201d The mental skills\nwe sacrifice may be as valuable, or more valuable, than the ones we gain. When it\ncomes to the quality of our thought, our neurons and synapses are entirely\nindifferent. The possibility of intellectual decay is inherent in the\nmalleability of our brains. (page 35) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA new medium is never an addition to an\nold one,\u201d wrote McLuhan in Understanding\nMedia<\/em>, \u201cnor does it leave the old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress\nthe older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them.\u201d His\nobservation rings particularly true today. Traditional media, even electronic\nones, are being refashioned and repositioned as they go through the shift to\nonline distribution. When the Net absorbs a medium, it re-creates that medium in\nits own image. It not only dissolves the medium\u2019s physical form; it injects the\nmedium\u2019s content with hyperlinks, breaks up the content into searchable chunks,\nand surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has\nabsorbed. All these changes in the form of the content also change the way we\nuse, experience, and even understand the content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (page 89)<\/p>\n\n\n\n What can science tell us about the\nactual effects that Internet use is having on the way our minds work? No doubt,\nthis question will be the subject of a great deal of research in the years\nahead. Already, though, there is much we know or can surmise. The news is even\nmore disturbing that I had expected. Dozens of studies by psychologists,\nneurobiologists, educators and Web designers point to the same conclusion: when\nwe go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried\nand distracted thinking, and superficial learning. It\u2019s possible to think\ndeeply while surfing the Net, just as it is possible to think shallowly while\nreading a book, but that\u2019s not the type of thinking the technology encourages\nand rewards. (page 115) <\/p>\n\n\n\n One thing is very clear: if, knowing\nwhat we know today about the brain\u2019s plasticity, you were to set out to invent\na medium that would rewire our mental circuits as quickly and thoroughly as\npossible, you would probably end up designing something that looks and works a\nlot like the Internet. It\u2019s not just that we tend to use the Net regularly,\neven obsessively. It\u2019s that the Net delivers precisely the kind of sensory and\ncognitive stimuli\u2014repetitive, intensive, interactive, addictive\u2014that have been\nshown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and\nfunctions. With the exception of alphabets and number systems, the Net may well\nbe the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general\nuse. At the very least, it\u2019s the most powerful that has come along since the\nbook. (page 116) <\/p>\n\n\n\n As we go through these motions, the Net\ndelivers a steady stream of inputs to our visual, somatosensory, and auditory\ncortices. There are sensations that come through our hands and fingers as we\nclick and scroll, type and touch. There are the many audio signals delivered\nthrough our ears, such as the chime that announces the arrival of a new e-mail\nor instant message and the various ringtones that our mobile phones use to alter\nus to different events. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The net also provides a high-speed\nsystem for delivering responses and rewards\u2014\u201cpositive reinforcements,\u201d in\npsychological terms\u2014which encourage the repetition of both physical and mental\nactions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n (omitted) <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Net commands our attention with a\nfar greater insistency than our television or radio or morning newspaper ever\ndid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n (page 117) <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is particularly true for the young\nwho tend to be compulsive in using their phones and computers for texting and\ninstant messaging. Today\u2019s teenagers typically send or receive a message every\nfew minutes throughout their waking hours. As the psychotherapist Michael\nHausauer notes, teens and other young adults have a \u201cterrific interest in\nknowing what\u2019s going on in the lives of their peers, coupled with a terrific\nanxiety about being out of the loop.\u201d If they stop sending messages, they risk\nbecoming invisible. (page 118) <\/p>\n\n\n\n The constant distractedness that the Net\nencourages\u2014the state of being, to borrow another phrase from T.S. Eliot\u2019s Four\nQuartets, \u201cdistracted from distraction by distraction\u201d \u2013is very different from\nthe kind of temporary, purposeful diversion of our mind that refreshes our\nthinking when we\u2019re weighing a decision. The Net\u2019s cacophony of stimuli\nshort-circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds\nfrom thinking either deeply or creatively. Our brains turn into simple\nsignal-processing units, quickly shepherding information into consciousness and\nthen back out again. (page 119)<\/p>\n\n\n\n What we\u2019re not doing when we\u2019re online\nalso has neurological consequences. Just as neurons that fire together wire\ntogether, neurons that don\u2019t fire together don\u2019t wire together. As the time we\nspend scanning web pages crowds out the time we spend reading books, as the\ntime we spend exchanging bite-sized text messages crowds out the time we spend\ncomposing sentences and paragraphs, as the time we spend hopping across links\ncrowds out the time we devote to quite reflection and contemplation, the\ncircuits the support those old intellectual functions and pursuits weaken and\nbegin to break apart. The brain recycles the disused neurons and synapses for\nother, more pressing work. We gain new skills and perspectives but lose old\nones. (page 120)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But brain scientists have come to\nrealize that long-term memory is actually the seat of understanding. It stores\nnot just facts but complex concepts, or \u201cschemas.\u201d By organizing scattered bits\nof information into patterns of knowledge, schemas give depth and richness to\nour thinking. \u201cOur intellectual prowess is derived largely from the schemas we\nhave acquired over long periods of time,\u201d says John Sweller. \u201cWe are able to\nunderstand concepts in our areas of expertise because we have schemas associated\nwith those concepts.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n (page 124) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagine filling a bathtub with a\nthimble; that\u2019s the challenge involved in transferring information from working\nmemory into long-term memory. By regulating the velocity and intensity of\ninformation flow, media exert a strong influence on this process. When we read\na book, the information faucet provides a steady drip, which we can control by\nthe pace of our reading. Through our single-minded concentration on the text,\nwe can transfer all or most of the information, thimbleful by thimbleful, into\nlong-term memory and forge the rich associations essential to the creation of\nschemas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With the Net, we face many information\nfaucets, all going full blast. Our little thimble overflows as we rush from one\nfaucet to the next. We\u2019re able to transfer only a small portion of the information\nto long-term memory, and what we do transfer is a jumble of drops from\ndifferent faucets, not a continuous, coherent stream from one source. (page\n124) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, [Google\u2019s] easy assumption that we\u2019d all \u201cbe better off\u201d if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by artificial intelligence is as unsettling as it is revealing. It underscores the firmness and the certainty with which Google holds to its Taylorist belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. \u201cHuman beings are ashamed to have been born instead of made,\u201d the twentieth-century philosopher Gunther Anders once observed, and in the pronouncement of Google\u2019s founders, we can sense that shame as well as the ambition it engenders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nicholas Carr\u2019s book \u201cWhat the Internet is Doing to Our Brains: The Shallows\u201d has had a deep impact on my thinking about disturbing trends in our society that I had already noticed. Carr demonstrates, with reference to scientific research and philosophical insights, how the computer and the resulting internet (and related market-driven stimulations) are remapping … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9296425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9296425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}