More about how the Web is changing our brains
The question of how much the Web (often exemplified by Google) is changing our thought processes is being discussed more and more. I previously posted about the article in the Atlantic by Nicholas Carr that asked the question, Is Google Making Us Stupid?. Now, Andrew Sullivan has written in the Sunday Times (of Britain), Google is giving us pond-skater minds. He asks:
Are we fast losing the capacity to think deeply, calmly and seriously? Have we all succumbed to internet attention-deficit disorder? Or, to put it more directly: if you’re looking at a monitor right now, are you still reading this, or are you about to click on another link?
He goes on to say:
I don’t want to be fatalistic here. As Carr points out, previous innovations – writing itself, printing, radio, television – have all shifted the tone of our civilisation without destroying it. And the capacity of the web to retrieve the old and ancient and make them new and accessible again is a small miracle.
Right now, we may be maximally overwhelmed by all this accessible information – but the time may come when our mastery of the new world allows us to gain more perspective on it.
Here’s hoping. Shallowness, after all, does not necessarily preclude depth. We just have to find a new equilibrium between the two. We need to be both pond-skaters and scuba divers. We need to master the ability to access facts while reserving time and space to do something meaningful with them.
What do you think? Is the Internet making us dumber?
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