Since we came out of the caves, every new technology has been greeted with alarm and disdain.
When we invented fire, people moaned that we'd forget the art of making salads. When we invented the wheel, people moaned that we'd forget how to walk. And when we invented the internet, people moaned that we'd forget how to think.
The difference is, the internet moaners might be right. The 2008 report Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, commissioned by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee, found clear evidence of the negative effects of internet use.
"Deep log studies show that, from undergraduates to professors, people exhibit a strong tendency towards shallow, horizontal, 'flicking' behaviour in digital libraries. Society is dumbing down."
If that's true, things are only going to get worse. The endless amusements of the internet are no longer limited to desktop PCs. Thanks to smartphones, we're online whenever we're out and about, too – and convergence means we'll soon be tweeting from our TVs. So what is browsing doing to our brains?
Pavlov's blogs
For all our fancy shoes and flat-screen iMacs, it turns out that we're not that different from Pavlov's dogs: we race from link to link because our brains have been conditioned to associate novelty with pleasure.
The more we do, the faster we think; the faster we think, the better we feel about ourselves and about the world around us.
In a series of experiments conducted at Harvard and Princeton universities, people were asked to think as quickly as possible by brainstorming ideas, speed-reading things on computer screens or watching video clips on fast-forward.
As Scientific American reports, "Results suggested that thinking fast made participants feel more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful. Activities that promote fast thinking, then, such as whipping through an easy crossword puzzle or brainstorming quickly about an idea, can boost energy and mood," says psychologist Emily Pronin, the study's lead author.
Pronin and her colleagues suggest that we may associate fast thinking with being in a good mood, and that "thinking quickly may unleash the brain's novelty-loving dopamine system, which is involved in sensations of pleasure and reward".
MMMM... DOPAMINE: Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that makes you feel good
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that's released whenever we do anything pleasurable such as enjoy food, have sex or take drugs. It's long been implicated in various forms of addiction and may explain why some people are so keen on risky behaviour such as extreme sports or high-stakes business decisions. It could be the reason why we're constantly distracted.
Dr Gary Small is a professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Semel Institute, directs the Memory and Aging Research Center and the UCLA Center on Aging and is the author of iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. As he explains, what many of us do on our PCs isn't multitasking. It's something rather different, which he calls Partial Continuous Attention.
GARY SMALL: Dr Gary Small, UCLA, says searching online is a form of brain exercise
"With Partial Continuous Attention or PCA you're scanning the environment, looking for new bits of information that might tweak your dopamine reward system and be more exciting [than what you're doing]," he says.
Your comments (10) Click to add a new comment
psy43
March 7th
10. "25% of people are making it to page 2... ;)"
Brilliant! That, and the fact that I'm not going to search for the original paper from the British library to deepen my understanding rather prove the point.
This is definitely the most poinant passage:
"The speed of young people's internet searching indicates that little time is spent in evaluating information, either for relevance, accuracy or authority."
Thankfully, while the majority of society stays in an open-source media stupor, the minority will continue to delve into the depths of knowledge (after they've checked their twitter and facebook status updates and read all their bookmarked opinion pieces, naturally!).
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obliquewordsmith
March 7th
9. As an English teacher, I'll vouch for the problems in getting students to evaluate the reliability of material, and the problems in getting them to consider reading beyond the first paragraph of text. Google / Wikipedia tends to equate to "research".
Personally, I find the internet hugely frustrating as a research tool; yes I can find prices, locations, synopses easily, but if I want, as I do, to get into the complexity and depth of a literature or philosophical issue, you still can't beat a book. Amazon does make it infinitely easier to find that book though.
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nicolasmerritt
March 7th
8. @ pete_l
25% of people are making it to page 2... ;)
Nick,
Editor in Chief
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vrox4eva
March 7th
7. Human beings are by nature the most laziest creatures. We invent new things so that the work done by us is reduced. The clay tablets were made because people felt it was difficult remembering things, the calculator because its tiresome to the a 10digit multiplication. Now I dont need the search the 3 floor library for one book I am searching, for that matter I dont need the book!! I have google, and guess what its in my pocket. Hopefully man doesnt become lazy to think one day.... !!
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oddstray
March 7th
6. Plus ca change (pardon the lack of language-appropriate accents).
Will the *electronic calculator* make us stupid?!?!? We will forget how to memorize endless multiplication tables!!!
Will the *printing press* make us stupid? We will forget how to memorize essentially valuable prose!!!
Will *clay tablets* make us stupid? We will forget how to memorize valuable information!!!
The answer now and always has been, YES!!! And NO!!! As long as ...
... someone remembers the basic knowledge well enough to restart from it.
Because the 'apocalypse' has happened over and over again - regionally - during the time that humans have lived on this earth (fall of the Roman Empire; fall of the Han dynasty; fall of the Inca/Aztec; etc.) And other regions on this earth have (somewhat) rescued the knowledge.
Trouble is, 'regionally' is expanding. Please, could we amass a compendium of knowledge of the earth and store it somewhere 'out there'? Yeah, it sounds sci-fi now. But to our grandchildren ... ????
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markoturso
March 7th
5. @vgkarthik88
You are wrong. Maybe 80-90% of people would rather read latest gossips, than something "deep". And this is the crucial problem with internet because user is left to chose information by himself and in that case we got "linear thinking and interest", not with everyone, but with majority. Compare internet with school, what is better: school or playing in the backyard? So, even if we have all civilization knowledge on internet, there is no use of it, no one wants to read it, just like in school: every "deep thing" is just boring. But f**k it, let's see the latest paparazzi pics of Britney Spears. Go, ask profesors in high school about nowadays kids, are they seem to be dumber and dumber, they'll say it's true. How come when we have internet, all this knowledge on tip of our fingers? This is the internet paradox and we don't see consequnces yet, maybe for about 15-20 years.
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