How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think?

[midcan5]

What do you think?

"This year's Question is "How is the Internet changing the way YOU think?" Not "How is the Internet changing the way WE think?" We spent a lot of time going back on forth on "YOU" vs. "WE" and came to the conclusion to go with "YOU", the reason being that Edge is a conversation. "WE" responses tend to come across like expert papers, public pronouncements, or talks delivered from stage.

We wanted people to think about the "Internet", which includes, but is a much bigger subject than the Web, an application on the Internet, or search, browsing, etc., which are apps on the Web. Back in 1996, computer scientist and visionary Danny Hillis pointed out that when it comes to the Internet, "Many people sense this, but don't want to think about it because the change is too profound. Today, on the Internet the main event is the Web. A lot of people think that the Web is the Internet, and they're missing something. The Internet is a brand-new fertile ground where things can grow, and the Web is the first thing that grew there. But the stuff growing there is in a very primitive form. The Web is the old media incorporated into the new medium. It both adds something to the Internet and takes something away.""

The World Question Center 2010


My response later.

 

[midcan5]

The one thing it has done to me is I used to be an avid reader who could spend long periods with just book and thoughts. Now I find myself reading, raising some question, and then going to the computer to look something up. From there I may get lost in links and whatnot, and my reading time goes out the window. This is especially true with non fiction.

I also find myself checking, googling that is, to figure out whether I am alone in the universe or others think the same about some issue, and lo and behold.

"I can feel it, too. 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."

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic (July/August 2008)

 

[Zoom-boing]

The one thing it has done to me is I used to be an avid reader who could spend long periods with just book and thoughts. Now I find myself reading, raising some question, and then going to the computer to look something up. From there I may get lost in links and whatnot, and my reading time goes out the window. This is especially true with non fiction.

I also find myself checking, googling that is, to figure out whether I am alone in the universe or others think the same about some issue, and lo and behold.

"I can feel it, too. 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."

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic (July/August 2008)

^ Glad to know that it's not just me who is experiencing this. The computer, specifically the internet, is the biggest distraction for me. We thought getting a laptop was a good idea . . . .

I thought 'internet' and 'world wide 'web' were interchangeable??

 

[chanel]

This interests me for a number of different reasons, but mostly as an educator. Tech savvy teens can no longer attend for extended periods of time. Teachers now have to change up activities every 10 - 15 mins to keep kids engaged.

 

[Zoom-boing]

This interests me for a number of different reasons, but mostly as an educator. Tech savvy teens can no longer attend for extended periods of time. Teachers now have to change up activities every 10 - 15 mins to keep kids engaged.

We live in a soundbite world which is a problem, imo. People rarely take the time to mull things over, to sleep on it overnight . . . . everything is instantaneous today.

I read somewhere that when President Roosevelt (I think it was him) was asked a question that required a bit of thought, he used to removed his glasses and clean them because it gave him a few moments to consider his response. I think it would do everyone good if they 'removed their glasses' before responding (generally speaking).

 

[Old Rocks]

I still read a lot, both magazines and books. Just finished Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat, and Crowded". However, the net provides access to many things that I could not get normally.

Many scientific societies are putting up the lectures at their conventions on the net. Many schools put notes for classes on the net, also. So, as a layman, one can stay reasonably conversant with what is going on in science.

Like all the rest of the media, the net has less than 1% real content, and 99%+ crap.

One thing that surprised me it the general willfull ignorance of my fellow Americans. I did not realize how prevelant it is in all classes.

 

[Dr Gregg]

Internet is great for all the information withiin our grasps, but also horrible in that people will find what they already believe, regardless of whether its fact, and they remain ignorant. So much disinformation out there.

 

[Anguille]

For the most part the internet has had a positive impact on my life but not on my back. I spend more time slouched over my laptop than is good for me.

 

[dilloduck]

Internet is great for all the information withiin our grasps, but also horrible in that people will find what they already believe, regardless of whether its fact, and they remain ignorant. So much disinformation out there.

Ignorance is bliss-----stupidity is what sucks

 

[SwingVoter]

I can't sit through commercials on TV anymore, feels like a complete waste of time, so all the political video I watch is now on YouTube or RealClearPol.

 

[SwingVoter]

Tech savvy teens can no longer attend for extended periods of time. Teachers now have to change up activities every 10 - 15 mins to keep kids engaged.

which is good, most public schools are setup to train 1950s organization men, they need to change

 

[chanel]

Oh I agree. I even bore myself after 15 minutes of talking. lol The problem is that they have to sit for three hours for testing. And colleges expect them to listen to lectures for hours. And read difficult texts. They need to be able to do that too.

 

[midcan5]

For the most part the internet has had a positive impact on my life but not on my back. I spend more time slouched over my laptop than is good for me.

So true, when work changed to a desk and several computers I was glad I road a bicycle to work. Today I use an exercise ball as a seat.


Another POV from a net head.

"As near as I can make it out, Lanier's view is that the Web began as a digital Eden. We built homepages by hand, played around in virtual worlds, wrote beautiful little programs for the fun of it, and generally made our humanity present online. The standards had not been set. The big money and the big companies had not yet arrived. Now Google has linked search to advertising. The Internet's long tail helps only the Amazons of the world, not the little guys and gals making songs, videos, and books. Wikipedia, a mediocre product of group writing, has become the intellectual backbone of the Web. And, most depressingly, all of us have been lumped into a "hive mind" that every entrepreneur with a dollar and a dream is trying to parse for profit."

Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget. - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6986720.ece



"A new barbarism, illiteracy and impoverishment of language, new kinds of poverty, merciless remodeling of opinion by media, immiseration of the mind, obsolescence of the soul. Massified, standardizing modes, in every area of life, relentlessly re-enact the actual control program of modernity. Capitalism did not create our world; the machine did." Jean-François Lyotard

 

[Dr Gregg]

I wonder how anything got done. prior to the internet and email

Just in science there are databases to search for publications and find topic you are interested, and you print them out. Used to have to go to the library and photocopy it, what a pain in the ass. You can find the sequence to anything you want, as well as loads and loads of information available about any topic you want. Plus trying to schedule meetings with people without email would be a bitch

 

[midcan5]

I wonder how anything got done. prior to the internet and email...

Yes, and without cell phones, which I personally hate but is attached to my wife like skin. Now she pings me during the day and I often Pavlovian curse! When I started work - over 40 yrs ago - we had to drive into work if any critical machine failed. To this day if I hear a phone ring late in the evening, internally I still react.

But darn I wish we had word processors when I was in college. Typing on a beat up typewriter was pure torture for those of us who never learned to properly type. Remember typing was for the craft oriented people and not for us great scholars in those days.


"Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet." Lewis Mumford

Lewis would need to edit that quote today.

 

[Old Rocks]

I wonder how anything got done. prior to the internet and email...

Yes, and without cell phones, which I personally hate but is attached to my wife like skin. Now she pings me during the day and I often Pavlovian curse! When I started work - over 40 yrs ago - we had to drive into work if any critical machine failed. To this day if I hear a phone ring late in the evening, internally I still react.

But darn I wish we had word processors when I was in college. Typing on a beat up typewriter was pure torture for those of us who never learned to properly type. Remember typing was for the craft oriented people and not for us great scholars in those days.


"Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet." Lewis Mumford

Lewis would need to edit that quote today.

OK, I have to ask, what do you do?

I am a senior millwright in a steel mill, and know exactly what you mean concerning the ring of a phone in the middle of what would normally be my period of sleep.

When I started college, in my late twenties, I was considered a whiz kid because I could do trig on a slide rule, fast.

And a year later, the first scientific calculators were introduced. Instantly, my very expensive sliderule was an antique.

I wrote many reports on an old typewriter I picked up at a second hand store, interesting looking reports, as I had to straighten some peices in order to get the typewriter to work. That resulted in a line of type that was not very level