If you’re reading this blog post on a computer, mobile phone or e-reader, please stop what you’re doing immediately. You could be making yourself stupid. And whatever you do, don’t click on the links in this post. They could distract you from the flow of my beautiful prose and narrative.

This is the alarm currently being rung by some in the bell towers of technology.

There is a lively discussion and some concern that computers, the Internet and multitasking are extracting a mental price.

Nicholas Carr argues in his book “The Shallows,” that the Internet, computers, Google, Twitter and the like, are making us into shallow thinkers and the neurocircuitry of our brain that long form reading creates is critical for society to function. Mr. Carr thinks that the Web, with its colored hypertext and endless abyss of bite-sized morsels of information, is making us stupid.

And although there are plenty of others in this camp, there are some who argue that not only are our brains just fine on the Internet, but they are indeed better off for it.

Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Harvard, argues on the Op-Ed page in Friday’s New York Times that the current outcry is nothing new. The same was heard, he writes, after the invention of the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television. Now, the fear stems from PowerPoint, search engines and Twitter.
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http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/in-defense-of-computers-the-internet-and-our-brains/



인터넷과 두뇌의 연관성에 대한 기사입니다.  저 개인적으로는 인터넷이 주의력을 무너뜨린다는 주장에 경험적으로 신뢰를 가지고 있습니다.  그래서 되도록이면 책과 같은 올드 미디어에 주력하고 트위터 같은 뉴미디어에는 보수적으로 대응하고 있는데요.

한편으로는 Steven Pinker나 Jonah Lehrer의 주장이 흥미롭게 다가오네요.  앞으로 뉴 미디어에 대한 대응에 적절한 이론적 기반이 될 것 같습니다.

이전에 제가 포스팅했던 글과도 깊은 연관이 있어 링크합니다.
http://scieng.net/zero/view.php?id=sisatoron&page=21&page_num=20&category=&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&keyword=&prev_no=&select_arrange=name&desc=desc&no=5957