What's the Internet doing to your brain?

by Loren Paulsson on January 19, 2011

Human brains probably can adapt to the Internet’s constant flow of information, but in his book, The Shallows, Nicholas Carr argues we might lose something in the process.

Carr first reviews research on the brain’s ability to rewire itself. In one British study, Carr reports researchers found London cab drivers’ brains developed a larger posterior hippocampus, the area of the brain the cab drivers use to navigate London’s streets. These findings indicate at least in some situations brains can grow in response to repeated tasks.

Carr then observes how the brain uses a tool, such as a hammer, as an extension of a person’s hand. While holding a hammer, a hand can do things it couldn’t do otherwise, but a hand holding a hammer can’t do other things hands usually do.

This dynamic has greater import with mental tools, such as a map, a clock, or the Internet. Carr argues mental tools not only help people see things, but they also influence the way people think about what they see. Clocks, for example, influenced people to think more in terms of abstraction and measurement—and less in terms of biological rhythms.

Written language had a similar but much more profound effect as it evolved from oral traditions. Carr traces the development of books, the printing press, and the Internet, and he uses the insights he’s already gleaned from neurology to interpret his historical perspective.

As books became more readable, portable, and plentiful, reading became an increasingly private activity. So writers became more rigorous in their arguments, wrote more directly to their readers, and became more willing to address controversial ideas. Books naturally lent themselves to long detailed narrative or carefully refined argument. Thus, the book as a medium helped shape a literary ethic, which allowed for “the delicately nuanced self-knowledge found in Wordsworth’s Prelude and Emerson’s essays and the equally subtle understanding of social and personal relations found in the novels of Austen, Flaubert, and Henry James.”

This literary ethic also provided an intellectual context in which scientists could understand their world and contribute to progress. But the ethic started changing with the rise of radio, television, and the Internet.

Now a constant flow of information has replaced the sustained attention to detail and precision. Carr argues it’s not simply a matter of moving content to a new kind of media. The Internet by definition facilitates “interruption technologies.” So reading a book online—with its hyperlinks, multimedia extras, associated advertising, or even its proximity to your e-mail inbox and social media pages—can’t provide the same experience.

Carr’s primary concern is that our habit of composing bite-sized text messages will make it harder for our minds to develop complete paragraphs; our desire to know the latest news will ultimately distract us from what it means; or worse, we’ll pay so much attention to our smart phones and social media pages that we ignore the aspects of life that don’t fit through an electronic medium.

There’s no question the information available on the Internet has value. And the answer isn’t to recreate a former time. But Carr’s thesis will resonate with anyone who has struggled to finish reading a blog post just because it’s more than 500 words or who has checked e-mail after only 10 minutes of work.

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Comments

That's always the challenge, isn't it.

Posted by Loren Paulsson, 14/07/2011 6:00am (7 months ago)
An interesting, challenging article - thankyou! Now I have to go act on it!

Jessica

Posted by Jessica Letchford, 20/01/2011 2:33pm (1 year ago)

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