Chapter 1: Have you noticed the same symptoms?

NicoleisQuantized

Hello all! I am absolutely enjoying this book, as I am sure all of you are.

In Chapter 1, Nicholas Carr listed symptoms he attributed to long term internet use. Have you experienced the same symptoms or any others?

ScatteredThoughts

I know I definitely tend to skim the surface of many things, for work in particular. There is so much that I would like to get more involved with, but never seem to have enough time for. I find that I get enough information to get me over whatever road bump I have encountered, and then there is always another problem which needs to be handled.

There is an exam which I have taken, CISSP, and it is often described as being "a mile wide and an inch deep". In some ways, this applies to much of the information that you can find easily on the Internet.

lachesissss

I've been a big skimmer since I was child, but I'm not sure if that habit has increased as the internet has evolved how our culture consumes information. What I find that I do more, is look at a page and not focus on a word, but let a word(s) jump out at me and start acquiring information. I also find myself trying acquire information at a faster rate. When I need something to entertain myself with, I sometimes open wikipedia on a topic and then click through all of the hyperlinks that interest me and just keeping reading. Kind of "Choose your own adventure" style. That being said, even though I read and consume this information in bulk, very little of it is retained as finite pieces of knowledge, and I never feel any true mastery over the subject matter. Nor does it abate any confusion, if I have it, on a topic. It's sort of just de-mystifies it, simply because it's readily available.

gazelleintraining

Yes, I have noticed similar symptoms, though none more pronounced than when I returned to the Net after six months off while travelling. During my time off I quickly regained a greater attention span and range of thinking within 2-3 weeks, curiously, the same amount of time some researchers believe is adequate to break/loosen ingrained habits and rewire the brain toward more lasting change with less effort going forward. After returning to the Net, I experienced a similar 2-3 week adjustment period during which my attention span felt uncomfortably distracted and I remember feeling greatly dulled; my interest in many things both online and off waned and my ability to make connections across knowledge disciplines (so, pattern/similarity recognition?) was greatly impaired. It was like having too much caffeine. I notice these symptoms are directly proportional to the amount of time I spend online. Whenever I get these symptoms, if I disconnect and do other things, it is akin to "defragging" a hard drive. In that, I find that the brain is elastic and recovers just fine.

LINIA

am reading our book on my IPad, using the kindle app...that attention wandering we are reading about, so true!!! I have to force myself to continue reading instead of enjoying the little forays n2 the past history by fact checking the written statements about our author's early computer use, btw, a lot of it is similar to my own experiences in the 90's whenusing the WWW exploded.

ObtainingBalance

Yes, I've noticed the same symptoms. I skim stuff easy, I do online school and sometimes it's hard to focus on reading my history book. I don't know if the net caused it, but there is a good chance it did.