I finally finished the book “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” by Nicholas Carr.
Do you feel like the internet has made it harder for you to concentrate? Do you multitask *all* the time? When was the last time you sat down and read a book? Do you just skim reading material? How is your reading comprehension?
I admit it, I am not the reader I once was. Oh, I read online all the time, but it takes a lot more effort for me to read a book these days. If you look at my reading list on linkedin, you’ll see multiple books that I am reading all at the same time. I get bored, or I have a library deadline to meet and I put down the book I own and pick up one that has to go back. I definitely get distracted more easily and I find it harder to really get lost in the pages like I used to. I always assumed it was just my middle-aged brain getting older. Now, I can blame something else. The internet! SWEET!! My brain’s neuroplasticity coupled with the internet’s addictive qualities means that I am rewiring my brain to multitask rather than think deeply. Really?
When books first became commonplace, similar arguments were made. There was too much information available, it was stressing people out. Books definitely changed the oral history that humans used to amass. Memorization became less necessary. There was a fear that because of books people would no longer have to remember anything.
This reminds me of a saying I’ve heard recently – “I don’t bother remembering anything that I can look up”. Heck, the cell phone has had as much of an impact on me here as the internet. When was the last time you actually entered a phone number from memory? Seriously. If I didn’t have my contacts list on my cell phone I could only call 2 people, my husband and my dad. Is this bad? I’m not sure. It’s kind of nice to free up that memory space.
The one thing that really hit me is that using the internet tends to mostly use your short-term working memory. If you over tax that, it is much harder to make long-term memories. Is it a problem that I don’t remember all the stuff I read? Tweets? Blogs? Facebook statuses? The breadcrumb trail of hyperlinks? Junk e-mails? Probably not. How do you make long-term memories? Repetition. Reliving the memory over and over again. That’s why people remember the most important good and bad things that happen in their lives. They replay them. I know I do.
I think the author is a bit of a fatalist when it comes to this topic. Yes, the internet will change (I think it already has) our society and our brains dramatically. So did the book. So did the map. So did the clock. Are things better or worse today because of these items? I would venture to say better. Read this book and make up your own mind.
