I am reading an article thanks to @design_RG !
And in this article, it talks about how technology has impacted our brain functions.
And this is not only technology as we know it.
The use of clock for example has influenced us in ways that changed how we relate to our own rythm and action.
I'm leaving here a small part of this great article extracted from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/ and send to me by @design_RG :
>In Technics and Civilization, the historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford described how the clock “disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.” The “abstract framework of divided time” became “the point of reference for both action and thought.”
>The clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. But it also took something away. As the late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, the conception of the world that emerged from the widespread use of timekeeping instruments “remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality.” In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.
@globcoco Glad you liked the article -- I felt much better after knowing I wasn't the only one having more difficulty concentrating on reading books, something I have always loved.
But, affected we are!
Pass the word, share the link, it's a good reference.
@design_RG
The Shallows is a book about this, how even former book lovers are having a hard time sitting down and reading like they used to. I was gifted the book years ago. Didn't finish it....
I did read The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction recently, which is short and an encouraging read on largely the same topic.
Daniel Pink has a book called When, if I recall the title correctly, all about his humans interact with time, which is fascination. I did finish that book too. ( He's just making other people's work easier for public consumption, he's not the source of the data.)
@globcoco
Ah, thank you, that's nice to see other authors are seeing and referencing this. we need to think it over and find a way to cope the best we can.
@globcoco
@design_RG
I have a love /hate relationship with technology... That phrasing may be too strong. I think that with every technology, it's a trade off. With watches we progressed, but lost things as was mentioned earlier. Everything is like that, isn't it? I'm tapping this out on my smart phone, with which I'm never alone, always tethered, rarely have solitude.
I'm a software developer, I have no microwave. I have a robot vacuum and a reel mower for my yard. I try to be aware and make conscious efforts to think about what the trade off is with technology and make a choice.
@globcoco
That was a nice post, and interesting window into your mind. The contrasts between the extremes are quite interesting - from the robot vacuum to the hand pushed reel mower.
I use an electric one, and like not to have the sink of gasoline and oil around me as I do the chores of cutting the lawn.
@design_RG
Finally finished The Shallows just now. It's a great read, and is somewhat haunting of what the internet is doing to our brains. I highly recommend the book.
@SecondJon @globcoco Thanks Jon, that sounds very good! Will have to look for it here. TY!
Hi there,
I don't know why but i wasn't aware of the whole conversations here.
It seems that I don't receive anymore notifications...
Anyway, I haven't read the book you mention @SecondJon.
I'll try to get it (outside of amazon though).
I feel internet in only 20 years has really made us slow and without much energy.
That's how I feel anyway.
And the worst is that even if one wanted to put the web aside for a while, that would be impossible as all our services (bank, tax, health...) passes through it... in only 20 years!
Scary!
At the same time, I marvel as well at the possibility to speak, chat or watch someone from people who are far from where I live...
@globcoco
Hello, bon jour Coralie!
>> I don't know why but i wasn't aware of the whole conversations here.
>> It seems that I don't receive anymore notifications...
This was a thread that started 3 weeks ago, and I can see all of the posts above, they include your attribution too (as they are all responses to your OP).
Thread had been dormant for a while, and you had spent sometime off the fediverse, so that might be the reason for notifications going un-noticed.
Stopping unwanted ones (by muting a topic) seems to be the hard part, as I keep finding out.
It is indeed wonderful to be able to find and converse with people from all over the world, plus the essential services like finances becoming so much easier.
I remember having to go out of the house, mid winter and during a snow fall, to pay some utility bills at a banking machine some blocks away. Now all done easily as soon as they arrive, with the payment date selected as close to their expected dates -- so much easier.
The problem is not the internet per se, but some uses of it which are making so much noise and distraction that even people who are interested readers like us end up feeling our attention span is being affected. And that is quite alarming.
Searched for the book Jon mentioned and can get it from our library, there are other books by the same author with similar topics -- the Amazon page has some suggestions.
Hey there,
True, I am a bit off the fediverse...
I'll definitely look at this book.
That seems an important one.
I wonder if the author gives advices and tips on how to use it with care.
Long post, long quote included.
I am looking at the buyer reviews on the Amazon link Jon provided, and they are quite good. The NY Times book review is also quoted briefly, and seems nice too.
A long review quote from John W. Cowan's post :
"The development of that magnificent resource for the mind, the Internet, has put us at a turning point in human history. The development of all the tools of the mind has provided turning points and in making his case Nicholas Carr takes us through what happened to us when we went from clay to papyrus to paper and from tablets to scrolls to books. With every one of these changes the world shifted some. Not as much as now though.
At the same time that the Internet is changing the world, bringing us closer together around masses of information, it is changing our ability to think and it is changing our brains in dangerous ways. The issue is not the content of the Internet, but its process.
The human adapts to its tools and its tasks. Give a man a hammer for a lifetime’s work and his body shapes to effectively drive nails. Take away his pen and give him a typewriter with a ball and his prose turns from fluid to staccato. (That happened to Nietzsche in the late nineteenth century.) In that process of adaption the brain, since it is not a machine but an organ, changes. These changes can be seen with instruments and their results observed in human behavior. This is the world of Nicholas Carr.
I will describe a tiny fraction of what the Internet is doing to our brains.
1) The brain, confronted with a glowing screen and the ability to hypertext its way from one interruption to another across the universe of knowledge from what its buddy in Australia thinks of rutabagas, to the spelling of rutabagas to the history of rutabagas to dishes that can be prepared from rutabagas leaves the brain sliding from one fact of surface interest to another fact even less useful, until it occurs to the brain to pursue the prompt on the pop-up menu and check the weather and get off of this slide onto the weather channel where a five minute video on playful seals on San Francisco Bay can be watched for free which does remind the brain that it could slide over to Facebook and find out if anyone “liked” the picture of the family cat posted an hour ago. And many do. Twenty-three “likes,” praise the Lord.
Just as the carpenter’s arm grew it muscles to deal effectively with the hammer the brain changes to succeed in a slippy slidey world of itty bitty bits of knowledge intended to interest momentarily and then disappear.
So what will happen when it confronts a life choice? Will this passive instrument skidding from meaningless bit to another meaningless bit see itself suddenly as an agent? A “decider?” Or will it in panic seek the next button to push, even if that button bears the label “Self Destruct?”
According to Time magazine this is happening now in the Silicon Valley high schools; kids depressed and without a sense of agency pushed around by the ripples on the surface of the Internet are choosing to leave life. Rutabagas have lost their interest. Having your cat liked did not fill the hole intended for having yourself loved. And this child is not accustomed to doing things about things. This child does not do. This child is done to. With the same alacrity that he or she pursued the prompt to watch the seals he or she may “decide” it is time to end this."
Seems like a good reading for us!
Long post, long quote included.
Gosh, you actually describe what I kinda live right now.
I can add that the sense of purpose is lost...
Yes there is a lot of depression that may be caused by this tool.
That's it, In 5 min I'm going out!
Oh that sounds VERY yummy.
Yes people seem to go out and about without a care in the world.
Just carrying masks...
I have to force my self to go away from the computer...
I really think it has become like an addiction and that is no good...
@globcoco
>> That's it, In 5 min I'm going out!
Lol, a good thing! Do it. I just came back, went grocery shopping and found some interesting things. Plus the Bananas which are my essential breakfast food and missing this morning.
Just made a plate and had one, smashed, with oats and a drizzle of maple syrup on top. Yummy.
Another hot day here, and I think I will be inside for the peak warmth hours. Was on a road trip yesterday and it was hard on the afternoon, returning leg -- hot and sweaty, thankfully we didn't get much traffic which would have made it much harder to endure.
People were out on the roads like if it was normal times -- trucks, trailers, boats, canoes, dogs, kids and everything else.
@SecondJon