When’s the last time you thought about how you think?
Unless you’re a professional philosopher or have time to unplug from the cacophony of life for a few moments a day, the answer is probably never. But that could be a tremendous oversight.
In human history, there are numerous instances of technologies emerging and changing the way the human mind functions. With the advent of the written word, our ancestors lamented the loss of the oral culture—which was once cherished for being colorful and romantic. People slowly lost the ability to tell long tales in front of the hearth, instead opting to write them down and share on papyrus and paper.
Socrates believed that as people became reliant on writing and reading, they would become less dependent on their own memories. He was right. But the benefits of the written word—rapid, widespread transmission of information that can outlive the writer—outweighed the loss of those values, and the oral culture was lost to the print culture.
Mirroring that transition, digital networks and the Internet are removing books, and the written word, from their once dominant position as the technology most used to spread information. Newspaper circulation is down 8.7 percent from last year, e-book sales are up (30 percent of Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest” sold in the U.S. in 2010 were digital), and U.S. Internet usage increased over 3 percent, meaning a whopping 77.3 percent of the nation is online.
And you better believe our minds are shifting and mutating with every click of the mouse.
Many people believe that the Internet has had nothing but a positive effect on the human condition. The Pew Research Center polled 370 Internet experts and found that 81 percent of them believed that Internet use has enhanced human intelligence.
But the effects might be subtler. A study released by the Proceedings of Royal Society B: Biological Sciences last week showed found a direct link between the amount of Facebook friends a person has and the size of certain areas of his or her brain—specifically the parts linked to social interaction, memory and autism.
In his book, “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” Nicholas Carr writes about how, after over a decade of daily Web surfing, he can no longer immerse himself in a book. He finds his mind wandering after a page or two. He “missed [his] old brain,” he said. Carr writes about how the Internet has made life easy—we can pay our bills, check out bank statements, find almost any information we want without having to search through stacks of books—but these benefits come at a cost.
He cited a study of 6,000 kids who grew up using the Web. They read differently than older generations, the study found. Instead of reading from left to right and top to bottom, they scan the page for interesting information. The study didn’t determine if this was a good or a bad thing—that wouldn’t be scientific—but for those who value good old-fashioned reading, the message seems dire.
Most of us wouldn’t know the difference, however, since we grew up using the Internet. When AOL hit its peak subscriber rate in the early 2000s, most freshmen were less than 10 years old. We couldn’t tell you if the Internet has personally changed the way we think, because we can’t remember a time when we didn’t have it in our living rooms, bedrooms and home offices. All we can do is know that a change has occurred, and we are the first generation not to feel it.
Has the Internet changed society for the better? For the worse? Nobody knows yet, and they might never find out. Perhaps we’ll become so reliant on our use of it that we will effectively become cyborgs, living in symbiosis with mechanical devices.
Whether that’s a bad thing or not, we’ll leave up to the philosophers.
