What does reading on the Internet do to your day? Have you changed the way you work? What you do all day? How you manage your workload? The things you focus on?
There are lots of distractions: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, news sites like the Palm Beach Post and West Palm Beach Examiner, and blogs, live games, and millions more….
In his book review of “The Shallows” published in the Christian Science Monitor, Will Buchanan said, “I sit down at the computer to work, but after two minutes my e-mail in-box pings. Two new messages! I read them, write quick replies, and get back to work. But then I check ESPN.com to see how the Cardinals did yesterday, and then I decide to open a Pandora station. I return to my work, but three minutes later I check on the stock market and then skim headlines on Google News. I work for another minute, and then...”
Is this you?
In “The Shallows,” written by technology writer Nicholas Carr, he concludes that the Internet is changing what we think about and how we think. “Media ... supply the stuff of thought,” he writes, and “also shape the process of thought.”
Carr examines advances in communication from illustrated manuscripts to the printing press. They changed people too.
Hyperlinks changed how we read. The made us stop and make a decision. Keep reading or click? As Carr said, “This choice reroutes our thoughts.”
Now we have iPad’s, Kindle’s, PDF’s with embedded video. The method of “reading” has changed to “viewing” and “interacting.” Carr’s research presents how scientists are studying these changes and reveals interesting results.
So how has the Internet changed you?
Book reference: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains By Nicholas Carr W.W. Norton 276 pp., $26.95
Available and in-stock at Barnes & Noble at CityPlace in West Palm Beach.
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