ICT researchers worldwide are currently wrecking their brains how to design the Future Internet. They should be equally interested in the effects of the current and the future Internet on human cognition. A growing number of heavy Internet users are rapidly evolving into the species of homo connectus, the connected human. We better learn fast what the positive and detrimental effects of the Internet on human cognition are in order to shape the future of interconnected humankind in a desirable way.

Is Google making us stupid?

In 2008, the lingering­ debate on the good and bad effects of the Internet culminated in an article by the American author Nicholas Carr with the title: “Is Google making us stupid?”. In his book “The Shallows” he explored two years later, how the Internet has changed our brains and why our thinking has become more superficial. At the Digital Forum in Seoul he reiterated his warnings against the dangers of the Internet for our brains in May 2011. What even his most fervent critics acknowledge is his statement that the Internet has been changing the way we think. However, the Internet advocates consider the net effects on our thinking to be overwhelmingly beneficial.
Let us have a look at Internet search, for example. Mr Carr claims that the Internet, particularly hypertext and Internet search, undermine our ability to focus on a task for a longer time as well as our ability to think deeply. Scientific evidence does not support this. A 2009 study by neuroscientists at the University of California found that performing Google searches increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the very brain area which is responsible for selective attention and deliberate analysis, traits that according to Carr have vanished in the Internet age. Thus, there is no evidence Google makes us stupid, rather the opposite.

Is reading books making us stupid?

If we look back at the technological development of the last 2,500 years, the current debate on the cognitive effects of the Internet does not look so special anymore. Already in the 5th century B.C. Greek philosopher Socrates bemoaned the forgetfulness he saw as an effect of the invention of books. Instead of remembering themselves, people were blindly trusting written characters, he claimed.
Times and technologies changed, but the pattern of lamenting the allegedly negative effects of new technologies remained. After the invention of the printing press had brought about a surge of books, English scholar Robert Burton complained in his book (!) “The Anatomy of Melancholy”, published in 1621, about the “vast chaos and confusion of books” that make the eyes and fingers ache.
Similar reactions were later on caused by ­other technologies that fundamentally changed the way humans live and communicate, including the telegraph, the radio and television. In the 1970s and 1980s technology sceptics, like Neil Postman, warned against the brain-numbing effects of television.

Lessons to be learned from history

What do we learn from this? Every time a new disruptive technology entered the scene, two things happened: human behaviour changed, and some critics focused on pointing out the negative effects. In fact, with every new technology there has always been a trade-off: you loose some of the good aspects of the old way of communicating and gain benefits from the new way of interacting. The definition of good and bad effects always changed over time.
The advent of books certainly lowered the memory and rhetorical skills of most people. However, we accepted this as the benefits for ­science and human development were overwhelming.
Will the generation that has grown up with the Internet be as critical as people from previous generations who grew up with books instead of computers and the Internet? I doubt it. They may not know what precious abilities they may have lost compared to their ancestors from the book age. However, they will not miss these abilities, whether Mr Carr considers their thinking shallow or not.
So I predict that the same transition problems that occurred with every change of dominating communication technologies will also happen with the Internet. However, this does not mean we should become careless in how we design and use technologies like the ­Internet.
In fact we should rather take technology sceptics like Nicholas Carr serious and learn how we can enhance the positive effects of the Internet while reducing the negative effects. In many cases it is how we use a technology which decides whether the effects will be good or bad. Surfing the Internet all day will certainly make you dull, as will watching TV all day. So we should learn when and how best to use technologies like the Internet to reap the benefits for ourselves and for society. Exploring in more depths the complex effects of the Internet on human cognition would definitely be useful for a healthy development of homo connectus.

References:
Nicholas Carr: Is Google Making Us Stupid? ­Atlantic Magazine, July/August 2008, URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868
Nicholas Carr: The Shallows. What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York 2010