In “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” author Nicholas Carr takes us on a brief tour of the history of technology and tool use, particularly writing, and discusses its effect on the brain. “We create our tools and then they create us,” is an essential point made throughout the book. I was braced for an alarmist, Luddite exposition which we are all tired off – “people are distracted by their cell phones and this does not auger well for everything from driving to dinner conversation.” We know this. What I discovered though was a rather thorough investigation into the precise effects which our deeply internet based world is having upon our brains. In sum: it’s troubling. In everything from memory scores to problem solving, from cognitive load to working memory, from attention spans to the quality of academic research papers, the internet is truly rewiring our brain circuitry and not for the better. It’s a thought provoking book, a fast read which may be a catalyst of change for the highly wired individual like myself.
The most poignant passage in the book was a quote from the playwright Richard Foreman. “I come from a tradition of Western culture in which the ideal was the complex, dense and ‘cathedral-like’ structure of the highly educated and articulate personality – a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. But now I see within us all the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self – evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly available.’ As we are drained of our inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance we risk turning into pancake people – spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”
Any time one considers the present in the light of the past one risks the shouts of nostalgia! as though the mere mention of how things once were is akin to a hypocritical jaunt down a younger years lane. But consider your own situation. Are your relationships becoming deeper and more meaningful as the years go by (as is natural), or are they becoming ever more superficial, and your interactions with others more disconnected? Do you power down your cell phone for a movie but leave it on during dinner with real people? Are you ever more easily distracted? Can you sit still in a room by yourself with no external distractions for more than a few minutes or do you start feeling anxious? As you mature, are you building an ever deeper inner life or do you feel alienated from yourself? In short, are you becoming a cathedral or a pancake?
Dawn of the Pancake People
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010In “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” author Nicholas Carr takes us on a brief tour of the history of technology and tool use, particularly writing, and discusses its effect on the brain. “We create our tools and then they create us,” is an essential point made throughout the book. I was braced for an alarmist, Luddite exposition which we are all tired off – “people are distracted by their cell phones and this does not auger well for everything from driving to dinner conversation.” We know this. What I discovered though was a rather thorough investigation into the precise effects which our deeply internet based world is having upon our brains. In sum: it’s troubling. In everything from memory scores to problem solving, from cognitive load to working memory, from attention spans to the quality of academic research papers, the internet is truly rewiring our brain circuitry and not for the better. It’s a thought provoking book, a fast read which may be a catalyst of change for the highly wired individual like myself.
The most poignant passage in the book was a quote from the playwright Richard Foreman. “I come from a tradition of Western culture in which the ideal was the complex, dense and ‘cathedral-like’ structure of the highly educated and articulate personality – a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. But now I see within us all the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self – evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly available.’ As we are drained of our inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance we risk turning into pancake people – spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”
Any time one considers the present in the light of the past one risks the shouts of nostalgia! as though the mere mention of how things once were is akin to a hypocritical jaunt down a younger years lane. But consider your own situation. Are your relationships becoming deeper and more meaningful as the years go by (as is natural), or are they becoming ever more superficial, and your interactions with others more disconnected? Do you power down your cell phone for a movie but leave it on during dinner with real people? Are you ever more easily distracted? Can you sit still in a room by yourself with no external distractions for more than a few minutes or do you start feeling anxious? As you mature, are you building an ever deeper inner life or do you feel alienated from yourself? In short, are you becoming a cathedral or a pancake?
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