Is this computer rotting my brain?
I have noticed something since I left college. I used to spend my days quietly, in the back of the library or in my dorm room with a book contemplating history methodology, a play by Sartre, or writing a paper on European integration as realized through film. All useful skills, but I find that I now pass the hours lashed to my computer, flitting between Dreamweaver, putting a vote in our congress tracking system, posting on the blog, and skimming the New York Times, my email, and the handful of blogs I follow besides ours.
What is the effect of this shift in my behavior? According to an article in this month's Atlantic, my change in behavior is not only altering the way I acquire knowledge, but also the manner in which I think about it. That's right. My brain is transforming to adapt to hyperlinks and multiple windows. And I don't know how I feel about it. Nicholas Carr does a beautiful job of describing this change, as well as its benefits and drawbacks, so I won't reiterate his argument here. Just go read it yourself. As a parting nugget, though, give an old-fashioned internet skim to this passage, which elucidates what we lose in the act of skimming:
"Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. Then again, the Net isn't the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author's words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking."
What is the effect of this shift in my behavior? According to an article in this month's Atlantic, my change in behavior is not only altering the way I acquire knowledge, but also the manner in which I think about it. That's right. My brain is transforming to adapt to hyperlinks and multiple windows. And I don't know how I feel about it. Nicholas Carr does a beautiful job of describing this change, as well as its benefits and drawbacks, so I won't reiterate his argument here. Just go read it yourself. As a parting nugget, though, give an old-fashioned internet skim to this passage, which elucidates what we lose in the act of skimming:
"Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. Then again, the Net isn't the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author's words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking."
posted by Caroline at
1:34 PM
1 Comments:
This is definitely true. Two years ago, I was emailed this great site (www.dailylit.com) that will email you a chapter or segment of a book a day. I thought this would be a wonderful way to gradually read some of the classics. However, within a week, I realized I was doing just what you and the Atlantic article talked about. I was skimming. I was forgetting what I'd read. I was easily distracted by other sites (oh! a new email!). And now I'm left with 20-odd chapters of Robinson Crusoe sorted in a special folder in my inbox. Still unread.
Sigh.
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