Are We Getting Stupid?
Could be, could be...
Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr
A quote:
"Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet."
Pardon me while I (try to) avoid the computer and my cellphone for this entire weekend, to focus on the actual while staying away from the virtual for a while...
via The Grin Without A Cat
Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr
A quote:
"Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet."
Pardon me while I (try to) avoid the computer and my cellphone for this entire weekend, to focus on the actual while staying away from the virtual for a while...
via The Grin Without A Cat
posted by pgenrestories at 1:01 PM
2 Comments:
I don't think it's Google inherently. The whole of the internet is one reason more likely, because we've gotten used to getting information quickly, with bandwidth and computer speeds getting faster every year. The availability of cable TV and all those channels is one thing to blame. I also feel that impatience with long material, that comes with being familiar with 30-minute material chopped into 10-minute intervals.
EK 8 )
Hi, EK. I know what you mean. After work ended, I turned my brain to mush reading up on all the sports articles on the Game 4 comeback of the Celtics vs Lakers earlier today. It's the greatest comeback in NBA finals history, so there are so many articles, and I can't help but feel compelled to read them all. Also, I can't resist a good sports story. :)
But tomorrow, I promise to rest. Just a half-hour in the morning, another half-hour in the afternoon for surfing and emails. If I'll be on the computer longer than that, it'll be for more focused activities, like reading PGS submissions or online stories. And if I'm not online, and I get work done early somehow, I'll do what I usually do at night and read a book!
Post a Comment
<< Home