The Internet Makes Us All of the Above
There’s an interesting (and I think distracting) conversation going on at the moment about the positives and negatives of the Internet on human individual and societal potential. It’s distracting because people seem to think this is a two sided debate (SMARTER people v DUMBER people) – rather than an interesting conversation about the personal and societal effects of digital information flows.
Rather than offering a synopsis that would take me a full day I provide a chronology:
- On 24 May, Nicholas Carr wrote an article for Wired – The Web Shatters Focus: Rewires Brains
- On 4 June, Clay Shirky wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal – Does the Internet Make you Smarter?
- On 5 June, Nicholas Carr wrote another article for the Wall Street Journal – Does the Internet Make you Dumber?
- On 6 June, The New York Times published – Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price
- On 10 June, Steven Pinker wrote in The New York Times – Mind Over Mass Media
The conversation over that time appears to have been framed as a soccer match between people who see digital media as the Fantastic Four versus those who dwell on the Neolithic past and drag their knuckles on the ground. An example is whether paper books were better or worse – try the word “different”.
Try this: it is a conversation about the balance between positive and negative effects of digital technologies on humans at an individual, group, organisational and societal level.
Each level is unique and adds to the complexity. If you are looking for a green light to say digital is lighting up your brain and making you a megastar then so be it… similarly, you may be after justification that all digital is bad news for humanity. But remember this – the conversation is not about either pole but it is about the continuum that lays between.
Don’t be too prepared to bring your own confirmation bias along for the ride so that you read these articles to justify your own pre-existing opinion for YES or NO.
Simply… yes people now skim more than they read and in general it tends to lead to shallow thinking rather than deep thinking… it takes cognitive load to deal with hyperlinks in text and there is a lot of research about the difference in effect between reading on a screen versus on paper. And yes, people are evolving and our brain is changing for better or worse into new ways of processing information.
Yes we’re addicted to tools but its how we choose to use them – most of us are less productive in part because of IM, Twitter and email but there is a rise in productivity from other computer applications. Multitasking does make you less efficient, by the way, and anyone who has worked in a cubicle office space knows that it takes 15 minutes or more to get back up to speed if you are interrupted. Enter our old friend pathological email checking – don’t deny your demons.
Yes, we are paying a human toll because hyper-stimulation and constantly-on 21st century living creates and maintains stress… and yes this is all an entirely natural brain phenomenon… so be it. We can each choose to live in the country and disengage – you don’t die without Facebook.
Each of these authors is correct from the facet they approach the problem. Where they actually converge is at their central opinion. Don’t take that lightly because opinion is an important part of any conversation.
In some ways the Internet makes us dumber in the sense that we have to deal with a lot more things and therefore we’re spread thinner and have less to invest. However, at the same time it allows us to find out a fantastic amount about any finite number of things – ask yourself how many books a PhD student got access to during their doctorate in 1980? This is why we have huge numbers of specialists now… many self-taught. But the more time you invest in reading about that one interest detracts from your overall ball of attention (ask any technologist’s family).
Unfortunately the trade-off is we seek out the things that agree with our current biases because we’re human and need confirmation.
Which brings me in a circle back to this discussion and how people appear to be responding to it… if you work with digital media it’s the Crusade and if you don’t have an emotional investment then you’ll probably be fighting for the Infidels. My advice to you is don’t. Just stop. Take a lung full of quiet air and think.
Just accept that on those four levels (individual, group, organisational and societal) that digital media have varying degrees of positive and negative effect. It’s neither the Holy Grail of Education nor the Abysmal Swamp of Future Ignorance. And like any set of tools it needs to be wielded wisely with reverence to the contextual consequences…
Don’t get sucked into thinking any of these authors are actually bullshitting you outright.
Just some rational food for thought. Books won’t disappear in a hurry and neither will the Internet – but then change is inevitable, right?
June 13th, 2010 at 10:44 am
NPR Science Friday podcast discusses Does Multitasking Lead to a more Productive Brain?
Clifford Nass, professor of communication, Stanford University, Stanford, California.
Adam Gazzaley, M.D., associate professor, neurology, physiology and psychiatry, director, neuroscience imaging center, University of California, San Francisco.