“‘Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?’ So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey,” Nicholas Carr writes for The Atlantic. “Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial brain. ‘Dave, my mind is going,’ HAL says, forlornly. ‘I can feel it. I can feel it.'”
“I can feel it, too,” Carr writes. “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”
“I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link,” Carr writes.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Samuel K.” for the heads up.]
Not Apple-related per se, however, we do post items from time to time that we feel might be of interest to a majority of our readers.
It is reflective of most teenagers today…ADD for everyone.
I would have written more in my FIRST post but I got distracted
Gosh, and I thought my problems were because of cataracts in my eyes making it difficult to read. Not to mention having two children going through adolescence 8 years apart, making it difficult to have any personal time to read, anyhow.
I haven’t read the full article, but I’d agree with the opinion that computer/internet use, like most forms of digital entertainment, tends to make the human mind spoiled/lazy. Or to put it another way, as humans we tend to be spoiled and lazy any time life is easy and we are catered to, and the digital age just adds to the effect.
I’d say he’s onto something…
The Internet and other technologies could be causing/contributing to ADD. We’re becoming conditioned to almost-instantaneous information and are brains want to jump onto the next thing rather than focus on the current item.
He might just need to have his vision checked.
I had the same problem and the same theory. While I was being treated for an eye inflammation, the ophthalmologist discovered that my eyeglass prescription was wrong. The optometrist hadn’t made the proper correction for the astigmatism in my left eye. My glasses had been wrong for two years! The ophthalmologist re-examined my vision and gave me a better eyeglass prescription.
Now things are settling back to normal—I can read! I can read!—and it is no more optometrists for me!
It’ll give you the Steve Ballmer egghead!!!
I look forward to the day when our children complain no one takes time to slow down and READ the internet anymore.
We dooed it to ourselves again!
I thought it was just me being lazy. Glad to know it’s not my fault!
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I was going to say something derogatory about Apple, but now I forgot what it was I was going to say.
I can’t be bothered to read the article, but I say to this guy as Arnold would say, “You lack discipline!”
“Daisy, Daisy how does your garden grow?”
A decade ago there were complaints that television was causing us to “Amuse Ourselves to Death” and now the trend had continued online. All media is guilty of shortening the attention span. Try sitting through a classic 3+ hour movie. It takes a lot of effort. Same with a novel.
It’s funny he should bring up 2001 because I just watched that movie recently for the first time (hey, I’m 25), and thought it was one of the most boring and excruciatingly slow-paced movies I’ve ever seen. Compared to the pace of modern movies, it’s somnambulistic.
Be that as it may, this guy’s right. I can sometimes feel my brain getting sucked into the “Web” zone where I’m just skimming through everything at 90 MPH and not really benefiting my soul in any way. That’s why I try to take time to pray and meditate regularly throughout the week free of distractions — it can make my life better in a way three hours of blasting away bad guys on the PS3 never will.
But blasting guys is so much more fun.
BTW, I’m 50 and 2001 is a pretentious, boring movie.
@ Arnold – Qoute: I can’t be bothered to read the article…
@ Military Police – Qoute: I haven’t read the full article, but I’d agree…
Well! You guys just proved the authors point! If you can´t read through the entire article you are brain damaged all ready…
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Jump! Jump! Seek new and fast info… Jump! Jump! Seek new and fast info… Jump! Jump! Seek…..
I didn’t read the whole article, was it interesting?
Okay, I’m losing interest…
Getting old sucks. But the alternative is even worse.
This is a serious issue, and one I find affecting my own reading habits (another Lit major who has to force himself to slow down and read an entire article). The New Yorker had a great article on the subject recently that suggests there are political implications to the trend (it’s online here). I wonder what the “instant gratification” view of information is doing to our educational system, and our view of the value of an in-depth education and critical thinking skills. It seems like a massive extension of the (dumb) argument that no one needs math anymore because nearly everyone has access to a calculator.
The (mw) moral of the story is, “slow down and read, and think.”
Plain ol’ BS. After reading GOBS of fiction, or detailed technical articles everything from filesystems to the cisc-risc debate, or tactical warfare, or (blah blah blah), you skim because you’ve heard it already.
So, Tim Berners-Lee is responsible for all the ADD in high school. Class-action lawsuit!
‘While I was being treated for an eye inflammation, the ophthalmologist discovered that my eyeglass prescription was wrong. The optometrist hadn’t made the proper correction for the astigmatism in my left eye.’
LOL
I had the opposite problem. The ophthalmologist, a cranky old SOB, even older than I am, missed the astigmatism in my right eye 3 times over 6 years. His analog equipment came over on the Mayflower.
I went to a hot, twenty something optometrist and she found it first try using todays virtually foolproof digital technology.
Did I mention she was hot as well?
LOL MW is position
I do think the internet has had an impact on our behaviorial processes, but more as part of the current society than a single influence. We are much more of a demanding, instant gratification culture now. I noticed this in myself when I realized I was always impatient with the microwave oven, lol. But seriously, every new means of information delivery changes our perspective, and nearly all have been hailed as potential ruinators of our minds and future. The printing press, televison, and now the internet, all have their good and bad attributes.
My Cures for the Internet-Addled Brain, (which I’ve used on myself)
1. Listen to the Esbjorn Svensson Trio or any type of music where it challenges you to follow the development of the motif (RIP Esbjorn)
2. Go attend live theatre, or spoken word performances.
3. Go for a run for a least half an hour.
4. Keep reading a multipage article from one of your favourite literary or political periodical 3 times a week.(ie. Utne, Geez, The Atlantic, The Walrus, National Review, etc.) For some of us, we may have to force ourselves to do this for six weeks. They say it takes six weeks to form a new habit.
5. Try to memorize a piece of literature or text that’s longer than say, 5 sentences.
I don’t look at reading and internet browsing as opposing forces. Just internet surfing is candy. I’m just developing different skills for different needs without losing the two.
MW: forms – as in, the choices you make to take in media, forms the way your brain operates.
@Wil
6. Drink a fifth of scotch
7. Chase women
8. Drink another fifth of scotch
9. Chase more women
10. Pass out
This will prevent the internet from addling your brain