What the Internet is doing to our brains (2008)

I think we retain knowledge when we put it to use it regularly. With Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, etc. you can quickly access information, but the retention part is still all on us.

Pre-Internet when I had a question, I'm wondering if the fact that we have accessed more information through Google but our total capacity for retention has stayed the same makes us feel like we're dumber. If we can retain 200 things a year, before we'd retain 10% of all information accessed because we weren't bombarded with as much, but now we retain about 1% or less because we're getting hot with so much info whenever we want. But the quantity of retained information is still constant (or maybe increasing), it just feels like more information is skipping through the cracks because of the volume.

It's definitely giving a voice to milquetoast, unqualified and unexamining journalism.

Unplugging makes a big difference. I think what the author is going through is the brains ability to adjust to it's environment.

It's not dissimilar to being in an active social setting for a period. The brain reworks itself for better smalltalk, extroversion, glib remarks... when you find yourself suddenly alone, there are pangs of loneliness until you accept the downtime. Longer & deeper thoughts are possible after the adjustment.

This even happens more quickly to us nightowls. You essentially rent out your brain during the day (for social reasons, empathy, etc) but when night arrives (and you're alone), the brain is free for your own thoughts.

Funny thing about the easy access to information making us dumber. I see parallels here to the handheld calculator. When I was in school, decades ago... I refused to use a handheld calculator even though they were allowed for math calculations. Not really sure if it made any difference in the middle to longterm...

Thanks for posting this. I experience the same problem as the author. Heck, I didn’t even finish the article! :)

The reason I often don't finish articles is because there's too much fluff and "story telling". Just go straight to the point and give me the facts with the context so I can understand the information. I don't need to be told a grand story.

Funny. Ten years later, and I recognized it was an older article I’d read before within a sentence or two. That said, without re-reading it, I have no recollection of its conclusion.