Though I was barely able to get to the end of the article, Nicholas Carr's nifty insight about the effect of the internet on the shape and nature of human thought is stuck in my brain like a splinter. He argues that with every easy click and skim we do online, our brain forfeits a bit of its ability to read in the deep and interpretive way necessary for meaningful interaction with written text. Longer printed text forced our brains to concentrate longer, and pay careful attention to the nuances of every character and the turns of every argument. The info bombing that our brain suffers with every jaunt online slowly trains our brain to acknowledge large amounts of information at once, rather than think deeply about one subject. In other words, it reshapes our thought from a plumb line - narrow and deep - to a pancake - short and flat.
The bitter and dangerous upshot of this? The internet’s assault on our attention span not only effects the way we absorb information, it also reshapes the types of thoughts humans create - from narrow and deep to broad and flat. Sciences of various kinds are only dawning on the research to support this – Carr offers some - but the most profound evidence Carr provides is anecdotal. Nietzsche - whom my brain cannot concentrate on even a little bit; even if he had a blog, I wouldn’t be able to read it – was forced by blindness towards the end of his life to use a typewriter (an evil tool, no doubt). His close friend commented that, after the switch, his writing had changed subtly, but fundamentally. The Ubermensch himself replied, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts".
This post is really about the nature of blogs, but blogs fit into the larger thought-trend driven by the internet. Blogs seem to both contribute to the lessening of our concentration, as well as reflect it. They contribute in the sense that any webpage does: they flood your mind with input, such as the ads to the right. They reflect the trend towards quick skimming that takes less concentration in perhaps obvious ways: they are short (like Chris Sturgeon). Problogger suggests that blogs should be about 250 words (I’m long), and that the average blog reader spends only 96 seconds on each post (usually longer than I last).
The worrisome aspect of this dynamic is what it portends for Christians, a people for whom interpretation booms in importance. There are times when the Bible breaks my heart, wets my eyes, and changes who I am, but daily, committed or lengthy reading certainly isn’t part of my life. But the job of interpreting things goes beyond the Bible for Christians: we also must interpret culture. What are the good and bad ideas in the world, media, politics, forming us? Finally, we have to interpret our selves. When am I doing good things for bad reasons?
Maybe critical thinking is always at risk. Or maybe this is just a bit of histrionics. Blogs and their internet buddies can be good too. Quick and easy can be strengths. They are free and available to anyone with a computer. And most importantly, they’re totally unfiltered. These are fundamental aspects of our first amendment rights.
What do you think about blogs? The internet as a thought medium? Maybe I’m full of shit; you should point that out. (wiener jokes are in parentheses. Its unfiltered right?)
