I recently read an article, originally published in The Atlantic, about the so-called “Googlization” of our brains. The fast-paced wonderland of the web provides us with a wealth of knowledge, easily accessible by a few clicks. But are there repercussions that come with such ease of access? Is the internet letting our brains off the hook? According to Nicholas Carr, our brains are rewiring in response to the way the internet is organized. We are becoming less patient, less capable of deep thought or extensive reading. This ironically lengthy article brought forth some very interesting points, some of which I thought applied nicely to our in-class discussion on intelligence.
As Carr points out, reading is not instinctive like the desire for speech. Children innately begin to speak; the importance of communication is ingrained into our evolutionary history. As our need for communication expanded, written word became increasingly important. The web has taken this aspect of our culture to another level. Nowadays, we expect most of what we read online to be succinct. We tweet, update our statuses, and read abstracts or blogs instead of lying down with a good book. Newspapers and magazines are beginning to mirror this transition as well. Is all of this good for our brains?
It seems as though our access to the internet has made life a heck of a lot easier. It could be argued that we’ve become lazy, and so have our brains. I disagree. Human intelligence should not be defined in the sense that we would define a computer’s capacity. My laptop can store four gigabytes of information, but can it learn from its environment, pulling together stimuli in order to survive and flourish? If we are learning to take advantage of the ease of access found on the web, good for us. We’re evolving; we’re making space in our noggins for other activities. I may depend on Google for facts I could easily remember, and I may be too accustomed to the concise nature of online communication, but I’m proud to be a child of the technological age.
Carr's original article can be found here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/.
The wisest prof I ever had (he was, among other things, my microbial ecology instructor) said "a true scholar doesn't remember facts, he remembers where to find facts."
ReplyDeleteThis was 1977, Sergey and Larry were 3....
Interesting stuff! I have long since theorized (albeit, with no research - just my own rambling bollocks) that there is a link between dwindling attention spans and high-speed internet. The mention of Twitter seems particularly pertinent, as people are now managing their thoughts to fit into a 140-character limit.
ReplyDeleteI like your writing style, by the way. I was pharyngulated here, but I intend on checking back in!
You may be interested in some of the ideas on www.trapped-by-the-box.blogspot.com which, among other things looks at the way we are trapped by the concept of the stored program computer.
ReplyDeleteConventional computer theory is based on the idea that if you have a PREDEFINED algorithm you can write a program to carry out the task - and humanity has been brained-washed by the computer's success to assume that this is the right way to look at information.
In fact many human ended tasks are potentially poorly defined, open ended, or so vast that predefining them satisfactorily is impractical. Forty years ago I suggested a possible approach but it eventually got dropped because the establishment felt that the existing computer was the answer and it was wasting time to look at possible more flexible human friendly alternatives. Now every child at school is brain-washed to think that the first shot at computer technology in 1945, multiplied millions of time in power, is the answer. You might seriously consider looking at whether there could be other ways of representing and processing information that a more compatible to the way humans work.
The iron test is to see how people cope when (forcibly) offlined. Exams (at least here in Germany) are held in an offline environment, and for a good reason!
ReplyDeleteTasks are goal based, people who want to do well in exams have the ability to turn up the knob of attention when they need to. When they are idly browsing the internet the knob is set low because that is probably the best way to browse. Different goals different settings, if a person gets feedback indicating they are failing at a specific goal they pay more attention to it.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I am making up a strawman here, but there are probably people out there who will take these as an excuse to bash on the information age and tell us how awesome it was to grow up without the internet. From my perspective, my job wouldn't even be possible without Internet and there is no way I want to go back to a pre-Internet era. However, I do think that what Nicholas Carr argues is being lost is valuable. But instead of bashing on Internet and Google, we should simply adapt our education programs so that these valuable things get taught in a way that people will recognize their value and strive towards improving these things. All the fast fact-checking that I do on wikipedia and google will never compensate for the long hours I spent reading books on physics, evolution, fiction, etc... Learning to stay focused is an extremely good way of being more efficient than your co-workers nowadays, but I suspect it has always been the case.
ReplyDeleteNice presentation!
ReplyDeleteAs a 52-y-o mother of 3 & avid blogger the past decade, I can honestly say, YES. google has rendered me stupid. Some days I feel like I'm standing in front of a fire hydrant that is open full throttle. It can be most overwhelming. Sometimes when I am outside my "window" talking to REAL people, I find myself wishing I brought my ipad to the party so I could explain what I just said to someone -- very frustrating
'Google Generation' myths
The Web is changing the way everyone finds information, not just kids.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2008/0220/p08s01-comv.html
"Still, the use of search engines such as Google or Yahoo is turning both students and adults online into "bouncers" and "power browsers." They skim the surface for data – titles, tables of contents, short abstracts – but rarely dig deep. That's fine for a quick overview: But scholars also must know how to mine the depths of a subject, its subtleties and nuances, if they are to learn to think for themselves."