Guest Post by Cindy Romaine, 2010 SLA President-elect
Can you relate to this? The Internet, with all its interconnectivity, instant gratification, and obscure but fascinating information at your fingertips, is actually doing us a huge disservice. As we tap into all the hyperlinks in that great new Wired article we are reading [Oops! Just a sec, I just got an e-mail that I need to reply to] we are losing our ability to concentrate. [Be right back, I have an incoming text message.]
Nicolas Carr’s new book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains [Hey, look! I got a Facebook update] talks about this trend. Carr’s premise is that the way we ingest information over the Internet is fundamentally different than other methods. With all the links and ads demanding our attention, our thinking isn’t getting deeper, it’s getting shallower. In his NPR interview, Carr states that deep, critical thinking – the kind we get from books – is important.
Carr is onto something here. [I think I’ll tweet that.] As it turns out—lucky us—Nicolas Carr will be speaking on just this topic at the closing session of the SLA Conference in New Orleans. The conference opens on Sunday 13 June and runs through Wednesday 16 June, Carr will also do a book signing following his keynote during the closing reception. Tweet me and we can hook up!
I love the way you wrote that... are you in my head? I totally clicked on the Wired link, by the way.
I think Nicholas Carr is right about us losing critical thinking skills. It's like Carr is slapping me in the face and asking me "do you even realize how distracted you are?" The answer to that: No. So currently, I'm trying set up my browser, email, and other alerts are a little less distracting. I'm finding that it helps to just try to be more conscientious of the distractions.
Posted by: Rick Kowalski | 17 June 2010 at 08:03 PM