Dumbing ourselves down by absorbing information?

Last quarter, Suellen Parker gave me some links on things she felt could help me expansively consider the themes I've been shooting.  One was an interesting article prompted by a book written by Nicholas Carr entitled The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to Our Brains.

As someone who considers himself an intellectual and an information spunge, I'm keenly interested in this since, like many other people, I use the internet to gather information.  On the outset, I thought Carr's discussion was going to be about how things like Twitter cause us to dumb down our way of corresponding with others.  Oddly, he pointed to the very process of attaining information as the source of the issue.

The short version is that the internet  — with its wealth of information, literally at your fingertips and absence of individual restriction —  facilitates a state of inattentiveness that runs counter to the human method of "information-attainment-then-reflection-upon-said-info."  With the internet and its endless series of links from one site (and pool of information) to the next, we are discouraged from reflection on the info we gather.  All we do is absorb with an declining compulsion to process.  We can convincingly argue that it is difficult to read lengthy text on a computer screen, but when we do, we go down the rabbit hole of exploring link after link after link.

According to Carr, we're no longer processing the information we've gather.  It may simply merit an amused chuckle if not for the fact that our brain adapt to the way we use it without a judgement upon whether that use utilizes it as a resource in the best manner.  The brains just out for simplicity and efficiency.

One thing that hit home with me was his mention of social media and the manner in which it encourages interruption and disruption.  Constantly checking one's newsfeed, glancing at new tweets, etc, all these things interrupt our day with little bits of information and our brains grow to accept this as "the way."  Not so much a argument in favor of printed media (which does not allow for interactive, interruptive data) as much as a call to use the internet differently and make a concerted effort to just focus.

It's a slightly different way of talking about some of the ideas on which I've been shooting: the barrage of "shared info" invading our space and time.  I considering not posting a link on principle with the hope that people would read about it in printed form, but that's a little unfair.  Here's a link to the transcript:

http://ttbook.org/book/transcript/transcript-nicholas-carr-internet-and-brain-0