Daddy K Whacks at Gophers While Jet Skiing

I read an article at Atlantic.com a couple of weeks ago by Nicholas Carr titled Is Google Making Us Stupid?.

Fascinating read. Like Nicholas and many other folk, I've been online for over 10 years, surfing the Web as they say and Googling research tidbits that otherwise would've taken days to find. I'm wired to my laptop and iPhone (Mama A does make me put them away, no worries) and am constantly jumping from e-mail, to blogs, to client projects, back to e-mail, to podcasts, to blogs, to YouTube, to online newspapers and magazines, back to e-mail – it's like the whack-the-gopher-on-the-head game at an amusement park; how many things can I touch in 5 minutes, retaining bytes of info without going too deep.

Because you can't go deep if you're jumping around on the surface.

Something has changed the way we process information, and maybe not always for the better. I recommend you read that article but this was something that totally stuck with me:

My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Zip along like a guy on a Jet Ski. Yikes. That's me. This rewiring of the brain that Nicholas refers to is causing us to have a new form of attention deficit disorder (and he does a great job of highlighting how other advancement changes in history like the printing press have changed the way humans consume and process information).

However, I do fight back. I do take the time to absorb myself in my novels, read the news weekly instead of scanning, and write more uninterrupted. And while there's no doubt that the Web is a powerful learning tool and platform for global human interaction, it's changing the way we think.

It's hard, though, because –

Whack!

I have to check –

Whack!

Too many things –

Whack!

Check this –

Whack!

Check that –

Whack!

Phew. I'm pooped. So the question is how soon do we introduce the power of the Web to Baby B? There are different schools of thought on this and we'll have to investigate further as we zip along the surface of life.

Mindful living in the present will help us, that's for sure.