Is technology affecting our ability to think?

Nicholas Carr, one of the sharpest minds on application and the impact of technologythe author of the bestselling books, Does IT Matter? and The Big Switchhas published his third book, The Shallows: What Internet is Doing to Our Brains, which asks this big question: while we do get many benefits of the internet, are we sacrificing our ability to think? In other words, is Google making us stupid? Carrs book is not just an armchair intellectual exercise. He has taken into account recent discoveries in neuroscience and has nicely interwoven them to conclude that human brain changes in response to our experience. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways. His book is based on this hypothesis, examining how the internet is changing our brains.

Carrs book is not a technologists bit contributed to the bigger debate; it is about the debate itself. When McLuhan declared medium is the message, he was putting forward one aspect of the same big debate. If the printed book made us focus our attention, internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection, he says. In other words, the ethics of speed and efficiencythe characteristics of commerce and industry is replacing the ethics of thinking and reflection, the characteristics of liberal arts.

Now, there is an even bigger debate that can be there on this. And that is if what Carr is saying is trueand most of us, through our experience would fear that it is truewhat impact it would have on the evolution of the human race. And the reason I chose to write on this topic in a magazine like Dataquestcatering largely to IT fraternityis to remind ourselves that as active players in this game, we have a responsibility. Like it or not, that will not end with dismissing every opinion that seems uncomfortable as anti-progressive.

Coming back to the original debate, I guess while Carrs book will be taken seriously as it has come from someone who is considered to be an insider, not isolated from the IT scene, there are many important questions that have been asked by other academicians that are as important and relevant. One of the questionsprobably a little simpler than Carrs questionis what philosopher and author, Prof A C Grayling,asked a few years back. He did not get into how the brain is affected because of this but how the learning could get lop-sided and even incorrect because of the way we learn on the internet. He suggested a rating system. And the champions of the internet thought that was blasphemy; it was a backdoor way of trying to regulate the Net and so on. When I sat down with Prof Grayling in the sidelines of this years Jaipur Literature Festivalwhere he was a speakerI asked the question to him again. Like a true philosopher, he answered while the fundamental question that he had raised is still valid, maybe what he had suggested as a solution was not the bestthough I doubt, if a fiercely competitive mind of the commercial world can ever appreciate this liberal thinking.

Like the body, the mind needs challenges to exercise itself. Both our intellect and memory need constant exercise to be able to develop. That is the reason why in the traditional method of teaching in India, students were asked to memorize verses, and only when they were ready with their memory exercise, were allowed to get into philosophy. That is the reason why our school teachers asked us to memorize multiplication tables. That is the reason why in the laerning of Indian cassical music, teachers insist on learning on the tanpura and not the harmonium. In the Indian classical music, getting to the note is as important as the note itself. A harmonium would ensure that you get to the note easily, thus impacting the learning.

That is valid for all learning. It is important that we, the tech fraternity, reflect on it.