Multitasking on smartphones, iPads, and the Mobile Web makes some feel smarter and others just more scattered. Is it changing how we think?
I read this article in print yesterday and ended up ordering 2 books on Amazon (pretty cheap) to learn more about some of the aspects of the article content. One is called “Slow Reading” and the other is “Hamlet’s BlackBerry”. I found the article to be very interesting and highly recommend it. As far as myself and the question above, I’m not sure that the Internet makes me smarter: I certainly feel that I have access to any information I may need, and I feel skilled in knowing how to find information although I am not sure how much depth I retain for the long term in anything I read online. At the same time, I actually perceive information I view electronically on a short-term basis, meaning information I want to delve into deeper I find I want to read in print as it is a more enriching experience that seems to stay with me longer.
I definitely feel that multi-tasking with the gadgets of our day and the Internet make me feel more scattered and cause stress. It is harder to settle into a book or to just look at one thing at a time online as I tend to click all over the place as my mind jumps from idea to idea. When we spend so much of our time online it becomes very hard to stop those patterns when we break free into the analog world - it takes awhile to slow back down to the speed of the natural world when we finally do unplug.
It will be interesting to see how all of this will affect us as a civilization in the future. I do fear that way too many people, kids especially, are spending the majority of their lives online and that there are definite issues resulting from not spending enough time outside and away from all the mental noise. There is a disconnect when we read online about bad things that are happening in our natural world and we don’t have the experiences in the natural world to care in the deep ways that we should be caring. That just may be our downfall.
