manatdesk1

Here’s the set up question for tomorrow’s blog:

Do you feel using the internet, being on the world wide web, is fracturing your focus?

Two years ago in The Atlantic technology writer Nicholas Carr had a seminal piece brilliantly titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

His follow up was published in Wired late last month, “The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains.”

His new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains* is making airwaves in the U.S.

Among the problems, according to Carr, are the little distractions like this linking. He writes:

“Even if you don’t click on a link, your eyes notice it, and your frontal cortex has to fire up a bunch of neurons to decide whether to click or not. You may not notice the little extra cognitive load placed on your brain, but it’s there and it matters.”

Plenty of people disagree, but … on the briefest consideration, I think I have to say, to quote the Stones, yes, I’m in tatters. Kinda, sorta shattered. You?

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*Resubtitled in Australia as How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember