“As the media theorist Marshal McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”
— Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic Magazine
I thoroughly enjoy a good read, but maybe those days are numbered as the amount of time I spend researching and working with my computer increases. If you can concentrate long enough to read it, this article by Nicholas Carr is fascinating, as is the brain research currently being done. Our very malleable minds—I think sometimes my grey matter might just actually be Silly Putty—are being shaped and re-shaped by the things we repeatedly do over time. The up side being I may actually learn to play that ukulele I just received for my birthday, but the downside… well, I cannot imagine a life without reading.
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