I never once thought about what the internet has done to my everyday thinking. And I never once thought when I was a kid how much the internet would be such a huge part of my life in the future. I decided to conduct my own little experiment and log how many times I accessed the internet. I was amazed to find out that I get onto my computer the majority of my time during the day. Here’s an example of what I did on my day off last week:
Monday January 17, 2011
8:20 – Wake up and check my email, facebook, news, “stumble upon”, etc.
9:00 – Been on the interent for the past 40 minutes
9:20 – Drafting emails to professors, The PEEL, checking submissions
9:30 – Take a break to make breakfast, leave computer on with music playing
9:40 – Computer is still open to the browser, scroll through it while eating breakfast, watching tv, making a to do list
10 – 3 - Been on the computer the majority of the day, looking at wedding planning ideas, checking my email obsessively, working on graphic design homework, recipes, mostly “stumbling upon” websites
For the rest of the day it was the same. I took time to do some Pilates mat work and cleaned my apartment some, but I was still connected to the internet and technology by sending text messages, playing music and movies on my laptop, checking my emails, etc.
What scares me the most about being on the internet for so long everyday is I not only limit my activities outside in nature, but I’ve become less personal. We all pretend everyday that we’re interacting with our friends and family but in reality, we’re interacting with our computer screens and keyboard. We’ve become a society of the impersonal.
Here is an example of my own experience of living in the impersonal society that we have today. My fiancé and I live together. When we were moving into our apartment we were under the assumption that we would have more time together, but as it turns out the further that we got into our degrees the more time we spent separated from each other and becoming more attached to our computers. It’s still the same even now. We both have degrees that require large amounts of time on the computer, me being in the graphic design program and him getting is graduate degree in computer science. Jugglers Brain states it perfectly, “What you see is a mind consumed with a medium. When we’re online, we’re often oblivious to everything else going on around us. The real world recedes as we process the flood of symbols and stimuli coming through our devices (Juggler 118.)” Every night Sage and I find ourselves pulling away from the computer and soon realizing that 5 hours have just flown by and we haven’t sat down to eat dinner together or have even spoken more than 2 sentences.
Never being someone who enjoyed multi-tasking, I know that if I don’t concentrate on one project it’ll take me more time to complete it. In a recent PBS documentary that I’ve watched it had a statement that is still echoing in my ears, “Multi-tasking could be called ‘dumbing down.’” For me, as soon as I heard that, I stopped going back in forth listening to the video, checking my email, and reading the news. I realized that not only am I not taking in all this information about how the internet has changed us into thinking we are multi-taskers but how it has also limited our attention span. It also affects us thinking deeply and creatively (Juggler 119.)
I can at least say our brains are amazing by being able to adapt and create new pathways for our thoughts. Neuroplasticity is constantly in action according to the article Vital Paths. Through all the experiences that our minds go through and interact with we have developed pathways to create these newly learned experiences easier to understand. We are constantly changing the way we live, changing not only our paradigms according to whatever we interact with but also our though our processes and rationale. Another way neuroplasticity works is not having to interact with something new but thinking about the process of doing it works just the same. In Vital Paths it talks about an experiment that was created by Pascual-Leone. The experiment was to have participants learn a simple melody that he showed them on a piano and one group would practice 2 hours a day practicing on the piano, while the others would sit in front of the piano and imagine how they would play the melody. Pasual-Leone discovered that the participants who imagined playing the song developed the same changes in their brains just like the participants who physically practiced (Vital 33.) Not only can neuroplasticity offer new pathways that can be optimal but that can also be very negative. An example could include OCD and depression (Vital 35.)
Even the New York Times is recognizing what’s happening to our society today with all this easy access to the internet and technology evolving. They followed the Campbell family, the father being a computer programmer of sorts and the wife being a homemaker, bookkeeper, and local school librarian part-time. Everyone in the nuclear family had an “obsession” with technology. Mr. Campbell, being a very busy computer programmer, multi-tasks his everyday. He faces many consequences of accidently missing emails a week or even a month late and spending most of his time on family trips or his second honeymoon on a computer. Mrs. Campbell said she messed up 2 batches of cookies because she was distracted by the telephone and facebook. Her son, also an avid user of the internet, started getting C’s as a result of using the internet instead of focusing on his studies. Here we have a very modern day family realizing the challenges of raising a family in the digital age (NYTIMES.com).
The closer that we get to new technologies and gaming capabilities, the closer we are to creating a society that becomes socially awkward. Its now in my opinion and belief that we are doing a disservice to our intelligence and ourselves. It seems like we must treat ourselves like children by grounding ourselves from the computer and go outside of our comfort zone to live.
Online source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html
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