What the Internet is doing to our brains (2008)
theatlantic.com
What the Internet is doing to our brains (2008)
1–9 of 9 posts
Re: What the Internet is doing to our brains (2008)
#2Thanks for posting this. I experience the same problem as the author. Heck, I didn’t even finish the article! :)
Re: What the Internet is doing to our brains (2008)
#3It's definitely giving a voice to milquetoast, unqualified and unexamining journalism.
Re: What the Internet is doing to our brains (2008)
#4I think we retain knowledge when we put it to use it regularly. With Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, etc. you can quickly access information, but the retention part is still all on us.
Pre-Internet when I had a question, I'm wondering if the fact that we have accessed more information through Google but our total capacity for retention has stayed the same makes us feel like we're dumber. If we can retain 200 things a year, before we'd retain 10% of all information accessed because we weren't bombarded with as much, but now we retain about 1% or less because we're getting hot with so much info whenever we want. But the quantity of retained information is still constant (or maybe increasing), it just feels like more information is skipping through the cracks because of the volume.
Re: What the Internet is doing to our brains (2008)
#5The reason I often don't finish articles is because there's too much fluff and "story telling". Just go straight to the point and give me the facts with the context so I can understand the information. I don't need to be told a grand story.
Re: What the Internet is doing to our brains (2008)
#6I think we retain knowledge when we put it to use it regularly. With Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, etc. you can quickly access information, but the retention part is still all on us. Pre-Internet when I had a question, I'm wondering if the fact that we have accessed more information through Google but our total capacity for retention has stayed the same makes us feel like we're dumber. If we can retain 200 things a yea…
Even a specialist in a small research field gifted with great memory has little chance to know and retain everything except most basics and what they're doing right now.
The usual trick was to know in which book or paper to find what, or at least which author. Search engines have made this part much easier.
Re: What the Internet is doing to our brains (2008)
#7It's definitely giving a voice to milquetoast, unqualified and unexamining journalism.
Autor just got bored of reading and writing same mush every day and cannot focus anymore.
I guess it is time to retire or change the vocation.
Alternatively, they could take the time and reacquaintce with actually good writing.
Re: What the Internet is doing to our brains (2008)
#8Funny. Ten years later, and I recognized it was an older article I’d read before within a sentence or two. That said, without re-reading it, I have no recollection of its conclusion.
Re: What the Internet is doing to our brains (2008)
#9Unplugging makes a big difference. I think what the author is going through is the brains ability to adjust to it's environment.
It's not dissimilar to being in an active social setting for a period. The brain reworks itself for better smalltalk, extroversion, glib remarks... when you find yourself suddenly alone, there are pangs of loneliness until you accept the downtime. Longer & deeper thoughts are possible after the adjustment.
This even happens more quickly to us nightowls. You essentially rent out your brain during the day (for social reasons, empathy, etc) but when night arrives (and you're alone), the brain is free for your own thoughts.
Funny thing about the easy access to information making us dumber. I see parallels here to the handheld calculator. When I was in school, decades ago... I refused to use a handheld calculator even though they were allowed for math calculations. Not really sure if it made any difference in the middle to longterm...