How Internet is Changing Us

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

One author approaches information overload by comparing it to over-consumption of food, or “information over-consumption” which he says leads to the phenomenon of “Information Obesity”.

“The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption”
by Clay Johnson.

"The modern human animal spends upwards of 11 hours out of every 24 in a state of constant consumption. Not eating, but gorging on information ceaselessly spewed from the screens and speakers we hold dear. Just as we have grown morbidly obese on sugar, fat, and flour—so, too, have we become gluttons for texts, instant messages, emails, RSS feeds, downloads, videos, status updates, and tweets.

We’re all battling a storm of distractions, buffeted with notifications and tempted by tasty tidbits of information. And just as too much junk food can lead to obesity, too much junk information can lead to cluelessness."
goodreads.com/book/show/1279 … ation-diet

Introduction to his idea:
youtube.com/watch?v=lNFNOSzik14

youtube.com/watch?v=KVJ_TowMFGE

This is a good documentary on how we are becoming dependent/addicted on digital media and how it’s changing the way we live. It’s more broad and covers many aspects but it includes some interesting finding on how the use of digital media (especially multi-tasking) affects or brains and our thinking.

It doesn’t really make a conclusion one way or another (whether it’s for better or worse) but leaves it open-ended for others to decide.

Frontline. Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier
pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/

Digital Nation Trailer:
youtube.com/watch?v=9CFCv9TLoI8

Can you sum this up for me?

Machines are programming people: without anyone noticing it, you are following the “programs”, the “instructions” the machines (but really indirectly what the corporations and their designers (unsure who decides what or who influences who within corporations and such, who’s “will power” dominates, but it is probably intractable just like everything else)) want you to follow, you are executing the behaviors the machines impose on you (in essence you are the computer and the programs are executing you, you are executing the programs the computers decide you must execute and such), but really society and the social construct imposes on everyone, as in all your friends are on facebook and talk through facebook, you must too otherwise you are “cut off”, you are “isolated” and so forth. And corporations want their workers to be always connected, always on, always “reachable” always in “Information Processing Mode”, always in “Communication Mode”, you are not allowed to be “isolated”, an “island”, “an individual” in essence, everyone must know what is on everyone’s elses “mind” and such. A kind of thought control.

It is all a subtle change in the behaviors of Civilization, a gradual change from being yourself to being an extension of Information Machines, without anyone noticing or deciding, but simply playing along.

TV is much better, it is actually much more social and more relaxing, more passive, at least you are not forced to execute a program, you can just passively watch, TV is a much more superior Information Machine, it is actually non intrusive, TV is closer to meditation, to oblivion, to non social than anything else, TV will set you free, Computers will imprison you…

8 man

Thank you for exectuing the above text in your mind, you have once again been called to execute a program on behalf of the machines, you loaded the contents of the text in your memory and parsed it and the process triggered other thoughts, we are all programmers of texts now, all Machine Brain hybrids interacting and programming each other and transmitting Information and “Communicating” a never ending array of texts, ideas, concepts, logic chunks, segments of logic paths intersecting and interacting and colliding with other segemnts of logic (and in the background denoting will powers and fights between ideas and hence people and such)…

That was from:

kunstler.com/blog/2013/01/commit … tions.html

and

instantsingularity1.blogspot.it

I think this is an important topic. It’s so true about the mindless pressing of levers. I haven’t followed any of the links, so I’m not sure if it’s discussed, but I also believe that when you get into that mode of mindlessly pressing levers, you become a nastier person, since you lose contact with your groundedness as a naturally (if cultivated) good person. A whole, physical person at ease in his or her surroundings. There is no body language on the internet. Emoticons don’t count. And you can’t just quietly be with a person - you can’t just accept them. I wonder what Martin Buber would have thought of the internet? And I don’t think these are minor points.

I also wonder though, if crime is down because so many youth are connected with umbilical cords to their video games, Facebook, etc.

The internet is changing us like this…

Chinese Spammer

You can see that I am not the Chinese Spammer by his use of the Resource Box: this is a kit of items and entities Matter - Energy - Existence uses to manipulate itself, to feel itself, to come alive and acquire self consciousness of its structure and such. It is a box of concepts and structures any substrate composed of Information Potentially uses to self create and instantiate logical, symbol and connection structures, logics. Symbol Constructions, Matter to Existence Converters…

But reality uses an Observer type of delimitation to express, manipulate and interact with what is imagined outside of an Observer type: nay, Information and logic segments are used continuously to saturate all points in space time, to give them a justification, since without logic and cause and effect and reasons, all Entities and Matter would appear to a Man Brain type of entity non existent, non decodable and such. But Matter must escape its own logic, must escape the logic it imposes upon itself as logics and logic segments are only inventions, arbitrary inventions, many other kinds of systems are possible; you cannot saturate all with logic and connect all with causes and effects and logic segments, everything escapes such points, just like all of the debates and ideas and and conflicts and controversies over the “Economy” and other things try to find out, figure out a way to overcome the only real reason and basis of everything and namely: the fight, the conflict between contrasting will powers, the conflict between two entities fighting for themselves, A against B, A wins and B loses, end of story, but all of the debates try to figure out a “way out”, try to find a logical segment that could solve “this problem” once and for all without understanding that the problem is structural, will always be because all things are fighting all others, all differences are wars between items, the fight creates existence and there is no way to figure out a way out.

Hence the debates and theories and ideas, the “Politics”, the “Fights” will go on forever, ever more logic segments and ideas and attempts to figure out how to finally solve the conflicts will be created, when the conflict is the essence of all from the outset no matter what, conflict, fight, difference between any two items (and difference always means war and fight, although sometimes they accumulate and merge into one item only to fight another item that accumulates other differences that then decide to become one and the same and so forth, but always fighting and comparing itself to something else) is the elementary particle upon which all entities, all the ideas are made out of and no matter how many logic segments are instantiated, no matter how many ever longer and complex blocks of text, conversations, debates, no matter how much information you throw at the problems, you will never get anywhere, you will always stand still and in fact the Internet with all of its constantly increasing information tries desperately to change the nature of things and solve problems (mostly just people judging things, people love to judge, love to play the part of GOD, as all people think they are GOD and can judge when in all truth all judgments are wrong from the outset, all of what the Man Brain does is wrong by definition since wrong and right and better and worse doesn’t even exist), but it is all in vain and the more in vain it is the more information, debates, ideas, conflicts, controversies, politics and so forth will be thrown at it.

Symbol Generators, Infinite Abstraction Recursions, Infinite Machines ever more complex, symbols and concepts and time…

THE EIGHT

That was from :

kunstler.com/blog/2013/01/commit … tions.html

Meh. Those who would be shallow thinkers are still shallow thinkers with more information or misinformation to be shallow about. The rest of us will continue as it would be. I don’t see this as an effect of the internet, but the outcome of who people are and typically have been, as a majority, in their intelligence. People are, after all, mostly average.

instantsingularity1.blogspot.it

Not really.

People can be shallow thinkers because they’re stooping down to everyone else’s level. They’re afraid of overanalyzing everything, and when information is so readily available, that means deep thinkers can’t compete with shallow thinkers. A shallow thinker can come up with a marginal thought and broadcast it right away. A deep thinker needs prolonged peace of mind and a reliable platform to broadcast along.

It’s not about being intelligent. It’s about being charismatic. Only the most charismatic will be able to broadcast deep thoughts into the future, and even the development of charisma will be difficult to do since people won’t live in noiseless domains.

Honestly though,

The most fundamental aspect of the internet is information overload. I believe this will raise overall human intelligence, but slowly. However, the smartest humans are becoming exponentially smarter. This overload of information is producing new forms and practices of human intelligence.

It is a form of Darwinism. Those who become lost in the sea of information, will not evolve intellectually. The internet will produce supra-intelligent humans.

These is also the “mysterious rise of autism”, what is autism? People have mistaken perceptions about autism, misdiagnosing it. Autism means the ability to focus, to stay concentrated, on what you need, what you’re looking for, how to get your information, in this sea of information. Most people, morons, average humans, are too distracted. It’s too easy to manipulate them. This is due to the overflow of information. Morons are more easily distracted, and therefore become lost, than people with extraordinary concentration and patience.

There will be many more pathological “diseases” correlating with the exponential, continuing rise of the internet. The sea of information on the internet is not slowing down. It’s not linear. It’s exponential. And those who can’t keep up. Those who don’t have access to the internet. Are going to fall so far behind, that they may miss a giant leap in human evolution that is about to take place.

Something very…new…is happening.

Some of the things that were brought up is how distractions may affect people’s empathy, attention-span, (long-term) working memory, and inability to process long-complex thoughts. The worst and most visible cases (the ones that are actually grabbing people’s attention) involve severe cases of internet addiction, such as the one in Korea where a young woman let her baby die of starvation while she was playing video game online (in which she was raising a virtual baby). Psychologists point to the blurring of the line between real/virtual.

There is a concern regarding a new generation of children who are growing up on the internet these days. I don’t know how early children are exposed to internet now, 3 years old? 4yr old? But in any case, whatever effect internet has on adults will be even greater on children whose brains are still forming. There was a mention (by Nicholas Carr) that constant internet use (specifically, distraction) re-inforces certain brain pathways and atrophies others. And in Korea, one of the treatments for internet (gaming) addiction in their rehab centers focuses in stimulating the neglected parts of the brain.
In young children, who are still forming neurologically, this brain re-structuring may be more permanent.

There is an argument that deep, contemplative thinking will not be essential in the future (for most people).
The emphasis is placed on the (short-term) efficiency.

Just as well, the internet seems pretty permanent.

Gaming on the other hand, is a different story. I didn’t know that is part of this discussion. I’m entirely on the subject of knowledge here.

It wasn’t my original intention to include video gaming, but it often comes up as a related issue.

Attached to Technology and Paying the Price
nytimes.com/2010/06/07/techn … echnology&

An interesting and engaging article, though, if you notice, it’s also full of (intentional?!) ‘traps’ in form of distractions: the article is 5 pages long and full of hyperlinks, it has 2 interactive tests where you can test for your distractedness and focus, it has side links to 2 related articles, a link to other readers’ comments, not to mention that the whole article itself is surrounded by animated ads and other unrelated material. I feel like an Odysseus surrounded by Sirens.

Continuing on from the last point,

In the post-modern world, most older adults (baby boomers) are easily lost in the sea of information the global internet culture provides for everybody. They don’t know the hardware, the software, the programs, the apps, the social media, the culture. They didn’t grow up with it, as Generation Y did. Generation Y is the first “Globalist” culture. The internet makes this possible, connecting everybody with everybody. There are no ethnic and racial borders. There are only internet speed borders. You have blazing fast cable access to the internet. You have slow snail speed access to the internet. Or you have nothing, complete darkness.

You are out of the loop. You have no access to the “Sea of Information” (globalist internet culture).

There is something worth mentioning about the spread of the internet, from Europeans and Americans first, from our invention and practice of the internet, outward. Geeks and nerds created this network. Predominantly anti-social white nerds created the greatest globalist society the world has ever seen. This has become popularized by Facebook and the White Ashkenazi Jewish Nerd Mark Zuckerberger. But, the actual programmers are one generation behind. They were, and are, hidden by history. History has already surpassed them. We have already moved beyond them.

The days of the dial-up modem are fading fast in the New World. Only the poorest nations around the world struggle to get a dial-up modem, anything, to access this global network of information.

The internet must be seen as a mine, a strip mine full of gold, diamonds, and precious gems, or a forest to be clearcut by lumberjacks, a vast reservoir of untapped resources. Since Western Civilization is the author and inventor of the internet, with it came an unprecedented mandate of Free Speech across the world. All have Free Speech, suddenly, with or without the u.s. constitution backing it. Everybody had a voice. All pasts were erased. Everybody was given anonymity across the world. Political dissension becomes easier than ever before.

But what has the internet done??? What have people done, how have people used the internet, since its first inception???