Splicetoday

Digital
Aug 13, 2009, 06:17AM

This is your brain on the internet

Or, is Google making us stupid?

What does the ubiquitous availability of digital text mean for the human brain as it processes ever-increasingly amounts of information? When Nicholas Carr published his essay, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in The Atlantic magazine last summer, I was deeply intrigued, as well as empathetic to Carr’s plight.

Carr postulated that reading online is a more shallow experience, in terms of the reader’s comprehension, than traditional reading in print. The more we become accustomed to clicking on links, following snippets of text, and quickly deciphering the presumed meaning behind ambiguous messages merely a few words in length (I’m looking at you, Twitter), the less information many of us retain.

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