The Daily Telegraph quoted Nicholas Carr, former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review and the author of The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, as saying that email exploits a basic human instinct to search for new information, causing people to become addicted to “mindlessly pressing levers in the hope of receiving a pellet of social or intellectual nourishment”.
His concern is shared by Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, who stated that “instantaneous devices” and the abundance of information people are exposed to through e-mail and other technology-based sources could be having an impact on the thought process, obstructing deep thinking, understanding, impedes the formation of memories and makes learning more difficult.
This condition of “cognitive overload” results in diminished information retaining ability and failing to connect remembrances to experiences stored in the long-term memory, leaving thoughts “thin and scattered”. This is also manifest in the education process.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_overload
“The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”,
by Nicholas Carr
(book summary)
"Is Google making us stupid?
When Nicholas Carr posed that question in a celebrated Atlantic essay, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?
Now Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind” — from the alphabet, to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer — Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.
Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic — a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is the ethic of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption — and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection."
theshallowsbook.com/nicholas … llows.html
Nicholas Carr explains his book (50mins):
youtube.com/watch?v=lt_NwowMTcg
[ I like his idea of a ‘quiet internet’. However, I’m afraid that it, too, may go of the way of Kindle’s evolution-toward multiplying features and ever increasing distractions - towards cluttering ]
The above is a good discussion of his book, but if you don’t want to spend an hour listening to him, here’s an abridged version, from a TV interview (17mins):
youtube.com/watch?v=5tqRMbg7MPc