I read a fascinating article about a year ago from the Atlantic Monthly called Is Google Making Us Stupid?. Nicholas Carr candidly admitted an increasing inability to concentrate for very long while reading. It got me to thinking about my own tendencies. I too, have been experiencing something eerily similar to Carr's own difficulties in concentration. Like him, after a few pages in the best of books, I become antsy and lose attention. I close the book, get up, do something else, and try to refocus. I flip through a few pages and ask myself "how long is this chapter?" Fifteen minutes later it happens again.
Contrast this with my own wife who can sit through Dickens, Bronte, Austen, or Eliot for hours on end.
Carr spends much time on-line doing research for his own calling. So do I. We both see the sirens luring us into the rocks. Information is cut and pasted in short bites, with little proof or "unnecessary" detail, uncluttered by evidence, and loaded with bright colors and images.
Yep, Bright lights, big city.
And it's turning my brain to mush.
I'm beginning to understand what my students go through when they open works which they are cordially demanded to absorb. And although I have adjusted to life on the web, they have grown up with it and have been (mal)nourished by it.
Carr's gut reaction (and that of others he has spoken with) is that our brains are actually being rewired in ways that change the way we think and process information. His article reminded me of an updated version of Neil Postman's classic Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Now, of course, I know that there are some procedural methods of ensuring that our students don't overuse the web in research - limit the number of internet sources, teach them how to identify evidence, and how to think critically. Beyond these, how do we help our students and ourselves to renew rather than rewire their minds from the dangers of the google monster?