In response to Jason's insightful post, you may want to check out this book by Nicholas Carr: The Shallows - What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.
Blurb:
Is Google making us stupid? When Nicholas Carr posed that question in a celebrated Atlantic essay, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?
Now Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind” — from the alphabet, to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer — Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.
Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic — a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is the ethic of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption — and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.
Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes — Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive — even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.
9 comments:
When the robots take over, we won't even need brains.
That said, I worry more about the kiddies and the internet these days than I worry about us (and our brains). We were like, "the last ones out alive."
Ha, good point.
There was an article in the New Yorker (?) recently that talked about that very technology and how they've tested Epileptic (?) patients' brains by wiring it to a video game to see if they could operate the game without the use of their hands... just by thinking.
Do you think the percentage of people who become disenfranchised with the technology will grow, stay the same, or fall?
The technology gap between rich and poor is pretty unbelievable from what I've read. Disfranchised is a very interesting word here. In other words, the more everyone becomes reliant on expensive technologies to run the world, the more those without access to the technology will be left behind. Though, I do think that being constantly plugged into the world of technology is an intellectual, emotional, and psychological detriment to us as individuals and to our society. After all, why do we ever need to learn things if I can just Google it on my phone. I think technology is making us all lazy critical thinkers and lazy problem solvers.
Also, the Facebook phenomenon is a completely different subject altogether. It appeals to our most self-centered, egotistical, and solipsistic natures. And,yes, the irony is not lost on me as I sit here and post my ramblings. HEY EVERYBODY, LOOK AT WHAT I JUST POSTED ONLINE ON THIS BLOG THING!
Yeah, probably similar to the points the vignettes in the book try to make, the progression of technology is unstoppable. I'm sure people have been freaking out about said progression since the advent of the abocus. Nickelodeons are melting our brains! This typewriter is going to forever ruin handwriting!
I would say cell phones are more intrusive in daily life than anything on the internet. With facebook and google, you can always choose to just not participate. And even if you do decide to particpate, there's nothing shackling there - share what you want and log off and moveon(.org).
i sense quite an oversight in confirming the relative relationship with technology and class, especially when referring to the "we" and the way "we" live. like the agnostic, i find the active non-participant to be one of the most rapidly developing minority (if that) in our present culture. "we" are led to believe that those to which the technology is available are simultaneously immersed in the phenomenon the technology persists. do these technologies make "you" dumber? do you identify with the "we" to which these arguments utterly depend? i don't think an intellectual approach can find any ground in a conversation determining who's "here," what's happening "here," and who's being left behind from "here." once you develop existential thought beyond the individual perspective you lose what is necessary in developing the more dynamic understanding "we" might seek.
answering j's questions: i think those disenfranchised will grow, stay the same, AND fall — just as those immersed. stupid media is stupid does, i guess. what do bestseller lists say for Reading Is Smart? what exactly of a phone makes us lazy? or why does the memorization of directions constitute the very threshold of critical thinking? those who programmed that phone solved a problem that might have superseded the evolution of Human! just as the press the tea party receives exaggerates the strength and population the tea party actually has, i find these cultural "conclusions" self-serving even in ways of which their deliberators and submissive contributors might not be aware. they wedge a reality that critical thinking will always contradict. dumb and lazy is both a choice and popular — the body responsible for manifesting our popular culture are an even more acute minority then those they refer to the "outside." don't let the (seeming) lack of options fool you.
i came across this passage the other day, expressing a similar balance. from The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller (1945) on his return and study of the American Culture.
"I suppose their is no region in America like the old South for good conversation. Here men talk rather than argue and dispute. Here there are more eccentric characters, I imagine, than in any other part of the United States. The South breeds character, not sterile intellectualism. With certain individuals the fact that they are shut off from the world tends to bring about a forced bloom; they radiate power and magnetism, their talk is scintillating and stimulating. They live a rich, quiet life of their own, in harmony with their environment and free of the petty ambitions and rivalries of the Man of the world. Usually they did not settle down without a struggle, for most of them possess talents and energies unsuspected by the curious invader. The real Southerner, in my opinion, is more gifted by nature, more far-seeing, more dynamic, more inventive and without a doubt more filled with the zest for life than the man of the North or West. When he elects to retire from the world it is not because of defeatism but because, as with the French and the Chinese, his very love of life instills him with a wisdom which expresses itself in renunciation."
"A gentlemen is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't"
-Mark Twain
I don't think the argument can be made that today's technology is proportionally making people "worse" (than other technologies have in the past). The problem that intrigues me has to do with the gap between the adoption of manufacturers/users and the ease at living a life that one chooses. I don't think class has really anything to do with it (though there are numbers that can be applied to them).
As we discussed Nat, I'm completely unfamiliar with this growing minority of non-participators. This would mean more people are choosing not to use a technology than people who are being exposed to it for the first time. The saturation is too great for that idea (and it will seemingly increase over time). I think people who participate, and then choose to stop participating, that minority will grow.
You're asking many personal questions that are good questions, but all of this argument is speculative (ie even worth it?). I am very familiar with my own non participation. I don't think there's anything wrong with intellectualizing your fellow mankind's choices because as I alluded above, the more people adopt technology may increase the for others the inherent possibility of continuing to not use a technology. This is based on the archaic economy we live in that is based on the supply and demand of goods and services. When enough people are using the NY MTA Subway App to determine their routes and communtes, they'll stop printing the map hardcopy.
If I think critically, I think... sometimes humans are quick to innovate, and yet impossibly ignorant to tend.
My aim is this sort of discussion is to keep the kindles burning for "us".
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