What the Internet is doing to our brains

www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

—Quote—

“I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and “cathedral-like” structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available.

As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”

1 Comment

• 
  SeventhSwami August 22, 2008 at 4:06 pm

  2 Comments add a comment

  Aaron
  24 Wed, August 27, 2008 – 4:06 PM
  Hehe, he said internet thicket. What were we talking about again?

  Oh yeah… Where do you find all these great articles man?

  I’ve had similar discussions with teachers at school on this very same subject and like them I think this author’s pain is the way we use the internet, not the internet itself. Is it changing our minds? Of course it is, just like books did, even the author acknowledges this. What he is really up against is the paradigm shift that we are going through right now, the way we process knowledge on the whole is changing (and probably rightfully so).

  On the other hand I’m way past the author in my romanticizing of neoluddite-like thinking. Reading all those descriptions of short term memory loss, attention deficit and poor study habits read like a page out of my own diary. Computer be damned! At this point in my life right now I require focus, from which the internet seems to distract me from. My habits these days are to take a book to the park or something and quietly contemplate its meaning thoroughly, instead of what I usually do with the computer which is read, and read, and read, ’till my eyes burn. Of course I’m not going to extract any deep meaning (and become a pancake person?) from reading three hours worth of Wiki’s.

  My next goal will be to treat the net with respect, like I do the book. At that point I think I will have the proper mindset not retard my own brain in a half assed quest for knowledge.

  virg…
  71 Thu, August 28, 2008 – 12:13 PM
  mmmmm. pancakes.
  i want *maple* syrup people to go with my pancake peeps. lol