Shaped by the real world, not the virtual

April 9, 2009

Dear Julie,

Sometimes it feels to me as if all of us connected to the Internet are like individual cells in an Earth-sized brain afflicted with ADHD. I'm not alone.

In the latest issue of The Sun magazine, a former senior editor of the Harvard Business Review argues that the Internet may be rewiring our brains to function in new ways, not all of them to our advantage. Nicholas Carr says the Internet may be eroding our ability to contemplate.

The mammoth amount of information only a click away is at once wonderful and overwhelming. Think about it. Does your brain on the Internet operate the same way it does when you sit down to read a book? No, your brain on the Internet jumps from one topic to another. Why? In part, Carr says, because Google and other search engines have trained it to.

In a previous Atlantic article titled "Is Google making us stupid?," Carr pointed out that how much money Google makes is based on how many ads we see and click on, sending us to other pages. Google is all about enabling us to gather as much information as possible as speedily as possible. Just like computers. When we slow down to read deeply, to think about it all, Google loses money.

This "tendency toward distraction," Carr believes, is changing how we think. He cites a study that found experienced web surfers had more activity in the decision-making parts of the brain while people who were not had primary activity in the centers of the brain that control memory, language and visual images. A few days on the web quickly altered the brain activity in the latter group.

Part of me says, This plane left the airport decades ago. Although the ultimate destination is unknown, this is where we're going, Another part of me, the part that has spent hours happily staring out at the Pacific Ocean, that has swum in the sea of meditation, wonders if developing minds that work more like computers means we forfeit something too, perhaps wonder itself.

Is the Internet merely a remarkable tool or are we, in ways we don't yet comprehend, being shaped by the medium itself? Marshall McLuhan, whatcha doin'?

Anyone who has learned to play a musical instrument or has acquired any new ability knows that we get whatever we concentrate on. The more we concentrate, the more we get. It seems reasonable that concentrating on moving from one piece of information to another could make it more difficult to concentrate on what those pieces of information mean to us.

If I may have your undivided attention: We must do what we can to keep these regions that make us human from being neglected. Read books, spend more time in the real world and less time in the virtual one.

Earlier this week at a Cape Girardeau pharmacy, a young worker filling orders wore a T-shirt labeling her "Easily Distracted." The elderly customers waiting for prescriptions hid their amusement well.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.