Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: text style from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette, and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on
Speaker 1: fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched seabeams glitter
Speaker 1: in the dark near the tan Houser Gate. All those
Speaker 1: moments will be lost in time, like tears and rain. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a great way to start this podcast, as usual.
Speaker 1: If you know the source of the quote, please feel
Speaker 1: free to drop by uh Facebook or Twitter and let
Speaker 1: us know. Yeah. I thought that one was appropriate because
Speaker 1: the discussion we're going to have does play somewhat into
Speaker 1: the realm of art of facial intelligence somewhat. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about technology and its effect on our noggins,
Speaker 1: specifically gray matter, that brain that's slashing around in that
Speaker 1: cranium of yours. Yeah, this is this has been a
Speaker 1: topic of some debate recently. Um, probably, I guess more
Speaker 1: over the past year. Um, thanks to our not really
Speaker 1: good friend but someone we follow closely, Nicholas Carry, the
Speaker 1: technology writer. He wrote an interesting article for The Atlantic
Speaker 1: back in two thousand eight. Uh, and it was titled
Speaker 1: is Google Making Us Stupid? Wow? Is it that long?
Speaker 1: And that was two thousand eight July August two thou
Speaker 1: eight edition. I've got it up right now, so as
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I was just gonna say, yeah, he wrote
Speaker 1: this article is Google Making Us Stupid? And it was
Speaker 1: an interesting, um, just an interesting take on technology, the
Speaker 1: way we consume information, in the way we think. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh. He actually followed that up with a a
Speaker 1: much longer format, a whole book called The Shallows Um,
Speaker 1: which some people have taken issue with the title suggesting
Speaker 1: he's already decided that we're all stupid. But I'm not
Speaker 1: so certain that he actually meant it that way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That that's that sounds to me like the sort of
Speaker 1: criticism one might make before fully uh reading a book,
Speaker 1: you know, one of those things where it's just your
Speaker 1: initial reaction to a title and then so let me
Speaker 1: let me give you a little story here, Chris, Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, Uh, Now, when I was going to school
Speaker 1: the Internet was not really something I had access to
Speaker 1: all the way up until until the point where I
Speaker 1: got into college. Really, my sophomore year in college was
Speaker 1: when I was starting to really get get access to
Speaker 1: the Internet. I can relate to that. So up to
Speaker 1: that point, I studied just the normal way you would
Speaker 1: attend classes. You would read, uh study notes and read
Speaker 1: books and that sort of thing, and that's how you
Speaker 1: you would gain knowledge. Now today I work for a
Speaker 1: company where I write articles and blog posts and do
Speaker 1: podcasts where I have to research various topics new ones
Speaker 1: each week. I'm doing so using the Internet. Meanwhile, I
Speaker 1: also am tapped into various communication tools such as instant
Speaker 1: messenger email. I've got text messaging on my phone when
Speaker 1: it works. We're recording this on the day that my
Speaker 1: android phone died. Anyway, normally I have access to multiple
Speaker 1: means of communication, and this would presumably give me access
Speaker 1: to to amounts of information I never would have had
Speaker 1: access to before. Write a huge, deep, broad scope of information. However,
Speaker 1: despite this amazing ability to tap into lots of information,
Speaker 1: I find that it is much more difficult to concentrate
Speaker 1: on a single task for an any length of time
Speaker 1: and so I have decided that technology is to blame,
Speaker 1: and uh, it is ruining my brain. Now, what could
Speaker 1: possibly be wrong with this argument? Well, I would say
Speaker 1: that you're using anecdotal evidence. It's a good point. Yes,
Speaker 1: I am speaking from my own experience. I have not
Speaker 1: conducted any any deep study of this, mainly because I
Speaker 1: can't concentrate on that task for long enough to do it. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is it is anecdotal. It's now that does not
Speaker 1: mean that the information is wrong, right, Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is This is something that I wanted to address early
Speaker 1: in this podcast because this is really going to be
Speaker 1: an interesting philosophical discussion. It's not just technology, it's really philosophy.
Speaker 1: And part of that philosophy is that anecdotal evidence is
Speaker 1: not really good evidence to base an argument off of.
Speaker 1: But but that does not mean that it is in valid.
Speaker 1: It just means that, you know, there there are better
Speaker 1: ways to support your argument. Now, I've read quite a
Speaker 1: bit of agreement with Mr Carr's work, and I've also
Speaker 1: read quite a bit of disagreement. Uh, most of the
Speaker 1: disagreement I have read suggests that they all think, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he's either afraid of technology or that he's
Speaker 1: basing it on his own anecdotal evidence, which um, I
Speaker 1: think the anecdotal evidence sort of started him down the path.
Speaker 1: But in the Shallows he does explain, uh, a number
Speaker 1: of studies that have been done on the attention span
Speaker 1: of people who are using technology for work. Um And
Speaker 1: and therefore, you know, I am inclined to say that
Speaker 1: he's not. I'm why I'm not necessarily agreeing with his
Speaker 1: arguments in both the article and the book. I would
Speaker 1: say that um or is at least a kernel of
Speaker 1: truth in it that it can be very difficult for
Speaker 1: some people to manage the flow of information coming to
Speaker 1: them from multiple sources, especially the Internet, where there are
Speaker 1: so many different kinds of sources um to choose from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and going further than that, he car makes his argument
Speaker 1: in in his article and I'm sure in the book
Speaker 1: as well, but he makes his argument that reading and
Speaker 1: the way we consume information shapes the way we think.
Speaker 1: So the argument here is that there are two different
Speaker 1: ways you can think about thinking. Okay, there's the the
Speaker 1: method where you say our brains are structured in such
Speaker 1: a way that thinking is a process that is going
Speaker 1: to be the same no matter how you consume your
Speaker 1: information like it's just it's just a device. In a way,
Speaker 1: we're just reducing it in complexity to call it a device.
Speaker 1: It's a device that can accept information and then process it,
Speaker 1: and then we act on that information in some way.
Speaker 1: The other argument is that the brain is a very elastic,
Speaker 1: flexible organ that's that will generate different ways of thinking
Speaker 1: based upon the stimuli that it encounters. And in a
Speaker 1: way that argument makes a lot of sense because one
Speaker 1: of the the sources that car sites in his article
Speaker 1: is Maryanne Wolf's Proost and the Squid, which is a
Speaker 1: book about reading and learning, and Mary Ann Wolfe argues
Speaker 1: that humans are not born with the ability to read.
Speaker 1: It's not an innate ability that we possess, unlike say
Speaker 1: vision or hearing, where we can interpret the information in
Speaker 1: the world around us using those sensory organs. That's something
Speaker 1: that's innate that unless you have some sort of disability
Speaker 1: or or disease or whatever, or some other form of
Speaker 1: of impt a mint to those senses, you can. That's
Speaker 1: one way you can gather information and learn about your environment.
Speaker 1: Reading is a skill that we had to invent and
Speaker 1: develop over time, and it's relatively recent. It's just a
Speaker 1: couple of thousand years old. And that through reading, we
Speaker 1: changed the way we thought. So the developing reading was
Speaker 1: a skill that we had to learn. Through reading, we
Speaker 1: changed the way we learn. We could preserve information unlike
Speaker 1: we could before. Like before it was all folklore. Right,
Speaker 1: you passed it down by explaining to people what you knew,
Speaker 1: and then they would take the words you said and
Speaker 1: they would apply it so that they would understand the concept,
Speaker 1: and then they would have to pass it on. But
Speaker 1: there was no easy way to share that information. It
Speaker 1: meant that knowledge was kept in small pools across the
Speaker 1: human race. Writing allowed us to to keep that information
Speaker 1: in a locked format so that future generations could benefit
Speaker 1: from it. Right, it could be fixed in some way
Speaker 1: for you know, perhaps hundreds of years, so that that
Speaker 1: people could read an original account or at least a
Speaker 1: particular account of an event, or you know, to tell
Speaker 1: a story. Now. Car says actually has a very interesting
Speaker 1: little passage where he talks about how so creates uh
Speaker 1: sorry Socrates. How Socrates bemoaned the development of writing because
Speaker 1: he thought that by writing things down you did two things. One,
Speaker 1: you reduced a person's ability to actually take in information,
Speaker 1: understand it comprehended, and then build on it. Okright, because
Speaker 1: now it's in a concrete format. And too, he was
Speaker 1: afraid that it would give people a false sense of
Speaker 1: knowledge that because there was a written thing down, there's
Speaker 1: a written format of this information, that that would make
Speaker 1: people feel like they knew more than they did. The
Speaker 1: knowledge was written down, it wasn't necessarily in the person's head,
Speaker 1: and so he was worried that people would become less
Speaker 1: wise over time because they would be relying upon this
Speaker 1: written information. They wouldn't really understand it, they would just
Speaker 1: think they did. Hence cars argument exactly. Car takes that
Speaker 1: to a further extent. Now. Um, like many many people,
Speaker 1: I've read David Allen's Getting Things Done because there are
Speaker 1: just so many things I have to do in a day,
Speaker 1: a typical day here at how Stuff Works dot Com
Speaker 1: and my my own personal stuff that I wanted to
Speaker 1: improve my productivity. And one of the things that uh
Speaker 1: that Alan argues is that it is stressful to try
Speaker 1: to remember all the things that you have to do.
Speaker 1: M Um. So one of the things he says that
Speaker 1: is important for you to do is to write something
Speaker 1: down as soon as it occurs to you. Uh, so
Speaker 1: that you have you know, have it written down that
Speaker 1: you know you need to do it. You don't have
Speaker 1: to remember it anymore. You need to put it in
Speaker 1: some sort of system. Now, it could be a piece
Speaker 1: of paper, it could be a smartphone, it could be whatever.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what the medium is in this case. Um,
Speaker 1: but you need to write it down some way. And
Speaker 1: that sort of plays into uh, you know Socrates slash
Speaker 1: Cars argument, because if you're documenting everything, you don't have
Speaker 1: to remember it anymore. For for Alan, that is a
Speaker 1: sense of relief. You don't have to remember it anymore.
Speaker 1: You can take a deep breath and relax knowing that
Speaker 1: you're going to remember to do this thing because you've
Speaker 1: written it down. Um. On the other hand, however, you
Speaker 1: have the other argument that, well, you don't have to
Speaker 1: remember it anymore, so you're not training your brain to
Speaker 1: remember all the things that you have to do, and
Speaker 1: you're not to focus on it. Yeah, you're not making connections.
Speaker 1: That's another thing that Marian Wolf mentions in her book
Speaker 1: is that the brain makes actual neuron connections kind of
Speaker 1: like circuits really uh, for concepts, and you can start
Speaker 1: to connect seemingly unrelated concepts in your brain just by
Speaker 1: thinking about it, concentrating on it. Uh, it's not just
Speaker 1: that you know you you encounter information and now you
Speaker 1: know it. It's that you encounter information, you think about it,
Speaker 1: you actually take the time to consider it, and you
Speaker 1: start building connections from other information you've gathered previously, and
Speaker 1: you form new knowledge based on that. It's it's similar
Speaker 1: to a process a philosophy known as contemplative learning. In
Speaker 1: contemplative learning, the goal is to actually take time to
Speaker 1: consider the information that you have just encountered and to
Speaker 1: incorporate that into your body of knowledge, not just to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I encountered this fact, but to really have a deeper
Speaker 1: understanding of what that fact means. What's what it's it's relevance,
Speaker 1: it's context, that sort of thing. It's sort of an
Speaker 1: element of critical thinking, but it's a particular, a particular
Speaker 1: way to get to critical thinking. It also the think
Speaker 1: on how much you read about contemplative learning, it can
Speaker 1: start start sounding little touchy feely. It's got a lot
Speaker 1: of elements of meditation in there, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of Uh, there's a lot of tie ins between contemplative
Speaker 1: learning and spirituality, things that someone who may be more
Speaker 1: skeptical might find a little um questionable. All right, But
Speaker 1: the idea here is that you are allowing these connections
Speaker 1: to be made, and you're not just encountering information, reacting
Speaker 1: and then discarding, which is that That's kind of what
Speaker 1: cars argument is that the way we encounter information now
Speaker 1: on the web, we will look for some relevant facts
Speaker 1: for whatever it is we're searching on, and if we
Speaker 1: don't see it pretty quickly will bounce to another source, right, yes,
Speaker 1: and we may never go back to that first source ever. Again,
Speaker 1: We've mentioned that that study by the hands Britto Institute
Speaker 1: in Germany several times on the podcast now Um, in
Speaker 1: which they had studied what some people call the web
Speaker 1: generation u UM and UH. Also another group in Britain
Speaker 1: had had had done this, and I scrolled past the
Speaker 1: name of it UM. The Center for Information Behavior and
Speaker 1: the Evolution of Research cyber Cyber at the University College
Speaker 1: London both did similar studies on young people who were
Speaker 1: sort of expected to know how to use all the
Speaker 1: ins and outs of the Internet because because they grew
Speaker 1: up with it and they were they were born, they
Speaker 1: were born after the Internet with public Yes. Um, I
Speaker 1: studied this in my UH in pursuit of my Master
Speaker 1: of Science and Information Sciences degree because I was looking
Speaker 1: at and the way of people seek information, and those
Speaker 1: studies both backup Car in that regard and that people
Speaker 1: tend to look for information on the Internet. Now, this
Speaker 1: doesn't have anything to do with whether or not it's
Speaker 1: making you more or less intelligent. Uh, it's the way
Speaker 1: seek people seek information on the Internet, and they do.
Speaker 1: They skim from site to site, they hop around a lot. Um.
Speaker 1: Very few people spend a lot of time on websites
Speaker 1: when they are seeking information on a particular topic. Um.
Speaker 1: And uh, I should point out to that the people
Speaker 1: who have been demonizing Car for making these arguments. Uh,
Speaker 1: he says. Look, no, I'm a writer. I absolutely need
Speaker 1: the Internet. The Internet is completely revolutionized the way I
Speaker 1: search for information, and it's awesome and it's brilliant. It's
Speaker 1: just seems to be anecdotally, it seems to be changing
Speaker 1: the way I think, you know, which may not be
Speaker 1: a bad thing. No, changing the way we think that.
Speaker 1: This has been the history of technology and ways of
Speaker 1: recording information. It's just one of those things where we
Speaker 1: do start to adapt the way we think. It's something
Speaker 1: that's really unavoidable. I mean, unless you become a Luddite
Speaker 1: and you decide that you're going to go and adopt
Speaker 1: Socrates as manner and try and gain information that way.
Speaker 1: And even then it's just on an individual basis. You know,
Speaker 1: you're not going to stop the way the world is going.
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, the study that you were referring to,
Speaker 1: the cyber study, let me read exactly what they're finding was.
Speaker 1: It was called that they called it horizontal information seeking.
Speaker 1: This is a form of skimming activity where people view
Speaker 1: just one or two pages from an academic site and
Speaker 1: then bounce out, perhaps never to return. The figures are instructive.
Speaker 1: Around six of the journal users view no more than
Speaker 1: three pages, and a majority up to never return. So
Speaker 1: the suggestion there is that people are able to find information,
Speaker 1: but they may not necessarily comprehend it fully. So it
Speaker 1: becomes sort of like our brains become filters, right, we
Speaker 1: start filtering out anything that's not relevant to whatever it
Speaker 1: is we're searching, and we sort of we sort of
Speaker 1: pinpoint anything that is relevant and then uh, even Carl
Speaker 1: will mention um and and also Clive Thompson of Wired
Speaker 1: who wrote about this as well. He he had an
Speaker 1: interesting article about the Let's see why. He called it
Speaker 1: your outboard brain knows All was the title of his article,
Speaker 1: and he's written about the subject multiple times as well.
Speaker 1: He writes about how he uses various things like the
Speaker 1: email and Wikipedia and other Internet sites to rely on
Speaker 1: information so that he no longer retains it himself, and
Speaker 1: that he he thinks of it as a richer thinking experience,
Speaker 1: that he can add really valuable information in arguments and
Speaker 1: discussions by linking to it. Uh So it almost becomes like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know, I you know, I saw this, I found
Speaker 1: this information. It's relevant to this discussion. Here you go.
Speaker 1: But that's really all. That's incredibly different from understanding, retaining,
Speaker 1: and being able to articulate information. It just means that
Speaker 1: you're really good at searching. But that might be what
Speaker 1: the new definition of intelligence is. It may not be
Speaker 1: that's rotting our brains. You know. We kind of jokingly
Speaker 1: titled the podcast that, but that it's it's changing the
Speaker 1: the folk of how we think. Instead of thinking in
Speaker 1: one way, we're now becoming really good at seeking out
Speaker 1: and pulling up information. Although that that also takes practice
Speaker 1: because the studies showed that students weren't necessarily uh innately
Speaker 1: gifted with that ability. Now, there was an article called
Speaker 1: uh and of course cars title has been echoed in
Speaker 1: other titles, so this is kind of sound very familiar
Speaker 1: an article style title Does Google Make Us Stupid? By
Speaker 1: UM by Janet Quitney Anderson from Elon University and Lee
Speaker 1: Rainey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. UM
Speaker 1: and UH. They actually had UH referred to a rebuttal
Speaker 1: from uh Jemy Cassio I hope I'm pronouncing his name right, UM,
Speaker 1: who was an affiliate at the Institute for the Future
Speaker 1: and a senior fellow at the Institute for Ethics and
Speaker 1: Emerging Technologies UM. And in response to that, they had
Speaker 1: spoken with Nicholas Carr, who said, you know, clarified a
Speaker 1: little bit more to say, Uh, the answer to our
Speaker 1: question are the question we pose in our podcast title
Speaker 1: is no, it's not about whether your i Q was dropping.
Speaker 1: Your intelligence quote has nothing to do with this. It's
Speaker 1: because it's whether or not people are becoming utilitarian thinkers. UM.
Speaker 1: But Cassio UH, quoted neural physiologist William Calvin who basically
Speaker 1: said that uh I was referring to an ancient volcanic
Speaker 1: incident that that humanity learned from and in order in
Speaker 1: order to survive. And UH. Basically the argument in the
Speaker 1: UH in that article, which UH is really really awesome
Speaker 1: also on the the Atlantic, basically is, look, this is
Speaker 1: a new way of thinking. We'll adapt to it, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to adapt to it if we're going
Speaker 1: to survive because there's so much going on now, so
Speaker 1: many different kinds of events. Technology has advanced to the
Speaker 1: point where we are going to have to think differently
Speaker 1: and we'll just have to get used to UH what
Speaker 1: he calls fluid intelligence. Actually scientists call it fluid intelligence,
Speaker 1: which is UH the ability to find meaning and confusion
Speaker 1: and to solve new problems. As the quote there, UM, basically,
Speaker 1: it's not memorizing and reciting facts. It's to sort of
Speaker 1: think on your feet if you will. UM. And basically
Speaker 1: his argument is, no, you know, it's it. It may
Speaker 1: seem a little weird, it may seem a little funky
Speaker 1: and and possibly even scary to some people to have
Speaker 1: to think in this new paradigm, but um, we will
Speaker 1: will learn and it will be able to use our
Speaker 1: brains in this new technology. We just have to get
Speaker 1: used to it. And we've kind of addressed this sort
Speaker 1: of in our podcast about how to conduct research online.
Speaker 1: It's kind of talking about how to use this tool
Speaker 1: in the most effective way. And critical thinking is still
Speaker 1: very important even in this new paradigm of thinking. It's
Speaker 1: just that critical thinking, the definition of it may have
Speaker 1: to be tweaked, rather than sitting there and saying, all right, well,
Speaker 1: you have to really consider this information. It might be
Speaker 1: you have to be able to evaluate things like the source. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's validity, it's relevance. You may have to be able
Speaker 1: to do that on a very tight schedule. You may
Speaker 1: have to do it quickly because there's so much out
Speaker 1: there that you have to be able to separate the
Speaker 1: good from the bad quickly, or else you're just overwhelmed
Speaker 1: with information, some of which may not be very valuable. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, go ahead. I was going to say that.
Speaker 1: Car points out that the internet can be a very
Speaker 1: interruptive medium too. That you know, if you have alerts
Speaker 1: turned on, if you're an accuser and you have growl
Speaker 1: turned on, or if you're using Windows and have UM
Speaker 1: outlook open and you have the little uh windows popping
Speaker 1: up for example here at work or throwing around story ideas,
Speaker 1: and everyone else starts joining in. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you have new alerts popping up on your desktop every
Speaker 1: five or six minutes or more frequently, depending on how
Speaker 1: how often you turn it on. So pat your working
Speaker 1: jokes are being thrown in there. But yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: working on a project and you have these constant interruptions
Speaker 1: from I AM and Twitter and your email, they may
Speaker 1: distract you. Depending on the way you're thinking, they may
Speaker 1: distract you from what it is that you're working on. UM,
Speaker 1: and that can be that can be disruptive, especially for
Speaker 1: somebody who's used to thinking in a very linear fashion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that actually brings us to another study I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention in passing at least as a psychonomic bulletin and
Speaker 1: review article Supertaskers Profiles in Extraordinary multitasking Ability and a Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a study by Jason M. Watson and David L. Strayer,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to see, you know, people are getting
Speaker 1: accustomed to having to multitask, but most of us aren't
Speaker 1: very good at it. He wanted to kind of see
Speaker 1: exactly how how well people could deal with handling more
Speaker 1: than one task at a time. It also ties into
Speaker 1: the the statement about how using a cell phone while
Speaker 1: driving is equivalent to driving well under the influence of alcohol,
Speaker 1: or actually worse than driving under the influence of alcohol,
Speaker 1: depending upon the study. So what he did was he
Speaker 1: and Strayer actually and he they did. They took two
Speaker 1: hundred subjects, so small sample size. We should go ahead
Speaker 1: and sure, yeah, you know, two hundred subjects scientific, but
Speaker 1: could be more scientific, right, you're not scientific enough. But
Speaker 1: they took two hundred subjects and they they gave them
Speaker 1: tasks where they had to juggle multiple tasks at the
Speaker 1: same time. They found that all but two point five
Speaker 1: percent of the subjects performed poorly when having to do
Speaker 1: multiple tasks at once. So, uh, they could still perform
Speaker 1: the tasks, but they couldn't do it with the level
Speaker 1: of proficiency they could if they were concentering on just
Speaker 1: one task at a time. Two point five percent of
Speaker 1: those people could handle it without any demonstrative reduction in
Speaker 1: their abilities. So they were apparently able to do multiple
Speaker 1: tasks just as well as if they were concentering on
Speaker 1: a single one at a time, this two point five
Speaker 1: percent were called super taskers. Now, the interesting thing is
Speaker 1: that most of us think we're super taskers, even if
Speaker 1: we aren't. That there was another element of the study
Speaker 1: is that people who thought that they were really really
Speaker 1: good at this. Uh, there were way more people who
Speaker 1: thought they were really good at it than the actual
Speaker 1: people who were Like, you only had two point five
Speaker 1: percent who were good at it, but almost everyone thought
Speaker 1: they were in that two point five percent um. Now,
Speaker 1: it may be that the super tasking phenomenon is something
Speaker 1: that will grow over time. It may be that we
Speaker 1: as a species will adapt to this multitasking demand and
Speaker 1: that future generations will actually be super taskers. Now, in Lee,
Speaker 1: it's not it doesn't look like that's the case. It
Speaker 1: looks like most of us aren't super taskers. But it
Speaker 1: may be that that's part of this process of the
Speaker 1: way we change our thinking, that future generations of humans
Speaker 1: will actually be very adept at super tasking. Uh. And
Speaker 1: of course, then there's also another science fiction need kind
Speaker 1: of argument where you could say, yeah, or the singularity,
Speaker 1: you'll take care of it because we'll all have, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: sixty four core processors in our heads and we'll be
Speaker 1: able to handle sixty four distinct processes at the same
Speaker 1: time without any reduction in proficiency. That would be really useful.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind having that. Yeah, I wouldn't either, except
Speaker 1: my phone just died and I can only imagine what
Speaker 1: would happen if the processor in my brain died. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that could be problematic. But but that that kind of
Speaker 1: ties into this whole technology rutting your brain thing. Again.
Speaker 1: It's it's not it's we should we should go so
Speaker 1: far as to say, it's not the technology that's doing this.
Speaker 1: So it's it's not technologies fault at all. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: we do not hate technology. We aren't afraid of technology.
Speaker 1: Chris and I both embrace technology. We work for a
Speaker 1: technology company. We each have our own gadgets that are
Speaker 1: hooked into various networks. Um, it's just that it's the
Speaker 1: process of having to deal with so many different lines
Speaker 1: of communication when we're not used to that. That's not
Speaker 1: how we've trained our brains over the last hundreds of generations, really,
Speaker 1: And it's that, uh that you know, we had to
Speaker 1: develop new skills in order to consume information. There's so
Speaker 1: much information out there that you had to do it
Speaker 1: if you weren't wanted to have a meaningful experience, right,
Speaker 1: And I think to the thing to keep in mind
Speaker 1: for both people on both sides of this argument is
Speaker 1: it's gonna it's all going to depend on the individual.
Speaker 1: Some people process information differently from the way other people
Speaker 1: process information, and uh, you know, it's safe to say
Speaker 1: that someone like the Nicholas car spoke with many of
Speaker 1: the other writers that he knows and said, you know, look,
Speaker 1: I can't It's hard for me to focus on reading
Speaker 1: a book when I've been spending my time with the
Speaker 1: Internet because I'm I've been immersing myself in a very
Speaker 1: uh and a very short message, very immediate message type
Speaker 1: of thing. And then I sit down with a book
Speaker 1: and it's difficult for me to concentrate because I keep
Speaker 1: wondering what's going on on the internet. And for them,
Speaker 1: that may be the case, but it may not be
Speaker 1: for some of the people who are saying, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you guys are crazy, That's absolutely not the way we
Speaker 1: think you're You're just you know, afraid of technology and
Speaker 1: and you honestly don't know how to manage it, and
Speaker 1: you need to find a technology that's that you can
Speaker 1: use to manage your other technologies. Um, and maybe that's
Speaker 1: true for one person, but maybe not for the other.
Speaker 1: So you can say at least that there seems to
Speaker 1: be some relevance to his argument in the in the
Speaker 1: sense that old media adopts new ways of presenting information
Speaker 1: that are similar to the way new media does. Well.
Speaker 1: Marshall mclewin pointed that out long before the Internet became something, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, for people to consider. It's just the medium
Speaker 1: is the message, and you can't separate that the the
Speaker 1: actual medium it comes to you in is also part
Speaker 1: of the message itself, and that you can't separate them
Speaker 1: completely from one another. That's why any book is different
Speaker 1: from a paperbook. Well, it's also it also shows how
Speaker 1: old media has tried to adapt by doing things like
Speaker 1: you may look at a magazine and you see that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of little boxes that have, uh,
Speaker 1: an excerpt from that very article that you're reading. Like
Speaker 1: if you were to read the full article and then
Speaker 1: read the little box, he would realize, Hey, this is
Speaker 1: just a quote that comes right from the article. But
Speaker 1: that's quo. Yeah, it's an attempt to to give relevant
Speaker 1: information in a very quick, efficient way for people who
Speaker 1: that's how they consume information. It's also a good way
Speaker 1: to fill two inches if you can't find the shop
Speaker 1: at Okay, But I'm trying to say here, the Internet
Speaker 1: has kind of trained us all to to consume information
Speaker 1: that way. We're looking for the relevant facts as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible, and everything else is kind of in the way.
Speaker 1: And that's sort of how they sold media is kind
Speaker 1: of adopting it to They're like, well, you know what,
Speaker 1: if we don't play that game, no one's gonna buy
Speaker 1: the magazine, So let's do it this way. And um,
Speaker 1: I wanted to kind of talk a little bit, just
Speaker 1: just sort of closing out there are two different uh
Speaker 1: uh concepts I wanted to get across to our audience.
Speaker 1: One is epistemology, which is the philosophy of knowledge and
Speaker 1: how we gain knowledge and what knowledge is. That's sort
Speaker 1: of guided a lot of this discussion because there is
Speaker 1: a difference between information and knowledge. You know, you can
Speaker 1: encounter information, be able to recite information doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: know it, not not necessarily anyway, depending on how you
Speaker 1: define no. Really, because again this is philosophy, so that's
Speaker 1: a fascinating subject. If you're interested in this, I would
Speaker 1: recommend looking into epistemology and some of the writers who
Speaker 1: are really known for their their work in that field
Speaker 1: of philosophy. The other is cognitive science, which again is
Speaker 1: sort of how we learn and and what processes are
Speaker 1: important the way we learn, and uh, it's just one
Speaker 1: sort of branch of science that kind of tackles that.
Speaker 1: And again it has a lot to do with psychology,
Speaker 1: it has a lot to do with uh, various forms
Speaker 1: of of imparting information or absorbing information. That's also really
Speaker 1: interesting to me. So those two different fields or something
Speaker 1: I would recommend listeners look into if they find this
Speaker 1: topic really fascinating. If you don't, then I apologize for
Speaker 1: the last thirty minutes, But I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: there is other than the literal uh answer. No, technology
Speaker 1: is not rotting our brains. At least it doesn't appear
Speaker 1: to be at this point. I haven't seen any studies
Speaker 1: that suggests that, and even Nicholas Carr said, no, that's
Speaker 1: not what I meant, um, But yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's something that I think we're going to have to
Speaker 1: do a lot of thinking about because the Internet is
Speaker 1: still very new too many of us. Um uh and
Speaker 1: and you know, even those of us who have like me,
Speaker 1: who have had you know, twenty years of experiences in
Speaker 1: the internet, you know, I still don't think that's long
Speaker 1: enough to really grasp how it's going to affect how
Speaker 1: we learn and how we think, how we deliver information.
Speaker 1: So I think this is the kind of thing that's
Speaker 1: going to require more study before we really understand what's
Speaker 1: going on, and then that'll all change and want have
Speaker 1: to study. That will really be fascinating if we could
Speaker 1: just get a quick glimpse a hundred years in the
Speaker 1: future and just see what society is like and what,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the concept of learning at that point?
Speaker 1: Of course, by then maybe we're just doing the matrix
Speaker 1: thing and just downloading information directly to our brains. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That looked painful though, the thing that shooting in the
Speaker 1: back of your head. Yeah yeah, well, you know it's
Speaker 1: not for everyone. No, I'm just saying, there is no spoon.
Speaker 1: So well, that wraps up this discussion. If you guys
Speaker 1: have any questions or comments, if you want to let
Speaker 1: us know what you think, you can follow us on
Speaker 1: Twitter or join our Facebook group. You'll find both of
Speaker 1: both of those under the handle of text Stuff hs W,
Speaker 1: or you can email us because we know you guys
Speaker 1: love to do that. We would love to be able
Speaker 1: to respond to all of you, but man, it's getting hard. Um.
Speaker 1: The address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and Chris and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon if you're a tech stuff and be sure
Speaker 1: to check us out on Twitter text Stuff hs WSR handle,
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