{"id":2753,"date":"2010-06-29T01:35:44","date_gmt":"2010-06-29T06:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=2753"},"modified":"2010-06-29T01:35:44","modified_gmt":"2010-06-29T06:35:44","slug":"what-are-discourses-about-the-internet-doing-to-our-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2010\/06\/29\/what-are-discourses-about-the-internet-doing-to-our-brains\/","title":{"rendered":"What are Discourses about the Internet Doing to Our Brains?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is currently a great deal of fanfare and criticism in the press over Clay Shirky\u2019s new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age<\/em>, which celebrates the Internet\u2019s achievements. <\/em>The Boston Review <\/em>sums up the book\u2019s intriguing argument:<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as gin helped the British to smooth out the brutal consequences of the Industrial Revolution, the Internet is helping us to deal more constructively with the abundance of free time generated by modern economies. Shirky argues that free time became a problem after the end of WWII, as Western economies grew more automated and more prosperous. Heavy consumption of television provided an initial solution. Gin, that \u2018critical lubricant that eased our transition from one kind of society to another,\u2019 gave way to the sitcom. More recently TV viewing has given way to the Internet. Shirky argues that much of today\u2019s online culture\u2014including videos of toilet-flushing cats and Wikipedia editors wasting 19,000 (!) words on an argument about whether the neologism \u2018malamanteau\u2019 belongs on the site\u2014is much better than television. Better because, while sitcoms give us couch potatoes, the Internet nudges us toward creative work. That said, Cognitive Surplus <\/em>is not a celebration of digital creativity along the lines of Richard Sennett\u2019s The Craftsman<\/em> or Lawrence Lessig\u2019s \u2018remix culture.\u2019 Shirky instead focuses on the sharing aspect of online creation: we are, he asserts, by nature social, so the Internet, unlike television, lets us be who we really are.\u201d (\u201cSharing Liberally,\u201d http:\/\/bostonreview.net\/BR35.4\/morozov.php).<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Times <\/em>contrasts the book with Nicholas Carr\u2019s thesis in The Shallows<\/em>, which argues that<\/p>\n

\u201ceven as we may be developing finer motor skills through constant Internet navigation, we\u2019re losing the ability to focus for the significant periods of time necessary for deep thinking. . . . \u2018[T]he news is even more disturbing than I had suspected,\u2019 he writes. \u2018Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, educators, and Web designers point to the same conclusion: when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning.\u2019 Even more, he continues, \u2018the Net delivers precisely the kind of sensory and cognitive stimuli \u2014 repetitive, intensive, interactive, addictive \u2014that have been shown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions.\u2019 Carr has synthesized a wealth of cognitive research to illustrate how the Internet is changing the way we process information. \u2018The Net is, by design, an interruption system, a machine geared for dividing attention,\u2019 he points out. He is particularly disturbed by the Internet\u2019s effect on our relationship with reading: \u2018[I]n the choices we have made, consciously or not, about how we use our computers,\u2019 he argues, \u2018we have rejected the intellectual tradition of solitary, single-minded concentration, the ethic that the book bestowed on us.\u2019\u201d (\u201cWhat is the Internet Doing to Us?\u201d, http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/print\/2010\/jun\/27\/entertainment\/la-ca-carr-shirky-20100627)<\/p>\n

We have all been thrown into a communications revolution that seems to be advancing faster than we can make sense of it, and only time will tell what the sum of many of our technologies are doing to us while we\u2018re along for the ride. Yet we need to be attentive to communication about these unfolding matters as much as the unfolding matters themselves. Shirky and Carr are representative of the way a lot of discourse about the Internet is getting carved out between these two poles, so I\u2019d like to highlight one idea that seems to be missing on both scores:<\/p>\n

Shirky\u2019s argument lacks a sense of the Internet as an individual activity and, more so, Carr\u2019s argument lacks a sense of books as social activities. <\/em><\/p>\n

This is not to argue that Shirky is wrong about possibilities for sociality on the web, nor to deny Carr the deep and needed solitude that books ought to provide. Rather, I think these debates we\u2019re seeing unfold\u2014and the policies they may entail\u2014would be greatly advanced by examining how the Internet can be an individual activity and reading books can constitute a social activity.<\/p>\n

The very words \u201cInter\u201d and \u201cnet\u201d don\u2019t exactly help us see how the \u201cweb\u201d may foster solitude; the terms assume we are all invariably connected. But solipsistic shopping sprees and Internet addiction camps testify to the medium\u2019s individualizing possibilities (http:\/\/www.pewinternet.org\/Commentary\/2007\/November\/Boot-Camp-for-Internet-Addicts.aspx). We can be clicking around an electronic cave as much as we\u2019re addressing and being addressed by others online. Similarly, books often get cast as \u201csolitary\u201d and \u201csingle-minded,\u201d but can equally been seen in terms of \u201cdeep engagement\u201d and being \u201cother-minded.\u201d In The Company We Keep, <\/em>Wayne Booth set forth an underused but highly heuristic image of the book as a conversational friend, given the medium\u2019s ability to put one in dialogue with the extended and carefully chosen thoughts of another human being.<\/p>\n

In other words, much current talk presumes the Internet necessarily opens discursive space for others while books provide a minimal mode of civic engagement. It strikes me that thinking a bit more about reverse assumptions would help Shirky better theorize the counterintuitive constraints under which creative efforts always operate (see Csikszentmihalyi\u2019s Creativity<\/em>) and help Carr frame his efforts in terms more conducive to where he seems to want to go: rather than focusing on others\u2019 absence\/presence, it may be that one\u2019s way <\/em>of being with others matters most.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is currently a great deal of fanfare and criticism in the press over Clay Shirky\u2019s new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, which celebrates the Internet\u2019s achievements. The Boston Review sums up the book\u2019s intriguing argument: \u201cJust as gin helped the British to smooth out the brutal consequences of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2753"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2761,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753\/revisions\/2761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}