We tend to think of the mind as separated from the world; we imagine information trickling into our senses and reaching our isolated minds, which then turn that information into a detailed picture of reality. The Internet and iPhones seem to be crashing the gate of the mind, taking over its natural work and leaving it to wither away to a mental stump. As plausible as this picture may seem, it does a bad job of explaining a lot of recent scientific research. In fact, the mind appears to be adapted for reaching out from our heads and making the world, including our machines, an extension of itself.
Or are we becoming a distracted, alien nation, as Tom Vanderbilt writes in Bookforum?
As long as I am within my browser, bulging with its tabs, I may as well respond to an invitation to join someone’s network on LinkedIn, a service that “strengthens and extends your existing network of trusted contacts.” I signed up in a moment of panic—the fear of being rendered obscure and obsolete—when I noticed friends of mine were already there, and despite acquiring many contacts, the bulk of whom are those “weak ties” I never actually see (and some of whom I don’t really trust), I have yet to gain any productive use from the service, beyond getting to see how many people I know know the other people I know. And so many other tasks await, under a surfeit of screen names and across a global complex of server farms: managing my dwindling investment portfolio, participating in “reputation management” on eBay, scanning a Twitter feed, checking a few blogs (as well as scrolling over to see whether my latest blog entry has occasioned pseudonymous comments on any other blogs), reviewing the ranking of my book on Amazon, monitoring the downloading progress of a BitTorrented television show, choosing not to answer a Skype call, etc. Before I forget, perhaps I’ll even visit Jott, a service that, as excitedly extolled by a friend the night before, allows the user to call in voice messages and have them sent back as text messages or e-mails. (I was too afraid to ask whether this transcription is done by computers or by humans.)
Zimmer argues that if we view technology as an extension of the mind, we're becoming smarter, not dumber. And maybe the constant exposure to the written word has a beneficial effect. For example spellcheckers may appear to make the ability to spell obsolete, but all of us are reading and writing more with our iPhones, Twitter feeds, and Facebook walls - and the sheer, constant exposure to text may in the end, result in better spelling, according to some of the research Zimmer cites.
So, maybe we're not getting dumber. The problem may be that cell phones, laptops, and PDAs are blurring the boundaries between home and the office - if you have your device, you always could be working, so why aren't you? Tom Vanderbilt notes that
a study has found that higher-income women, even when they work the same number of hours as those earning less, report feeling more pressed for time. As Conley notes, “when you can earn more per hour, the opportunity cost of not working feels greater and the pressure is all the more intense."
This sounds somewhat obvious, although it's certainly worth stating explicitly. Just as our mothers used to tell us to switch off the tube and get out into the sunshine, we need to tell ourselves today to close the laptop and turn off the phone.
Perhaps we can use technology as an extension of our will power: my wife suggested that one feature browsers lack is something like a chess clock - a timer that keeps track of how much total time you've spent online during the course of the day. You could make it like an alarm (with a snooze button of course) - after X hours online, the only way to stop the brain-fracturing screech emanating from your computer is to hit command-Q.
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