This post is absolutely connected with the one called What Technologies are doing with Our Brain. But tonight I would like to share with you some thought, I found in a book iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. According to authors, there is type of people born before Internet Era and in the Internet Era. As human brain is very plastic, there may have happened several changes, which we can not feel, but we may notice. During the process of evolution we gain some new functions and we lose some too.
ability to recognize emotions. In research made by Robert McGreeven, where group of computer-addicted pupils was recognizing main human emotions worse than those who haven't computers at home. What is important human empathy have had an urgent, and life-important ability to survive. Using empathy human beings were able to hunt, to communicate in society and to understand emotions of animals.
multitasking. All threads of information contemporary teenager meets, may be not as empathic as it was before, but it is much more diverse, deep and multifunctional.We are able to switch from book to movie, from movie to article. Imagine if our predecessors were switching from tiger to elephant and then to birds...
close contacts. In past people were living/ hunting/ surviving in small groups with closest relatives and friends. Now the number of social contacts is enormous. Remember how many friends do you have on Facebook or Vkontakte?! But to most of them you are just ready to write "Hey, what's up? How are you?"
new gestures. We recognize smiles, menu of the browser and also we are able to type on keypad with a speed of 200 signs per minute. We are using mouse or we are using touch pad with our fingers- and now this gestures are much more meaningful to us than to our ancestors.
our language. Accoring to Noam Chomsky, grammar is inside our brain from our birth. General rules are included. Apparatus of grammar is common for every language, and the difference between different languages appears only when person learns languages. Now we included a lot more things in our language. LOL, WTF, IMHO, (:, (;. Internet like parasite is putting new formulas in our brain.
computer as a best friend of a child. Children are giving names to their computers and the miss them on holidays. It seems like small ducks think that you are their mother, considering the fact if you were the first thing they saw after birth.
slow reading. Twitter, MSN, Skype, SMS taught us to be short. Influence of the language on the ability to think is well-known. There is an opinion that our logical thinking was born with writing and speaking clear, with slow reading. Now for us is much more difficult to read articles and books than messages and statuses. Text is not oral speech: you can compare parts, you can go backwards, you can follow the development of thought. Reader is not under the influence of speaker. Text includes more complicated constructions. Short statuses bring us bactk to exclamations ? Or they make us be more concrete in producing our thoughts?
deep logic. The brain technique of reading web-page is absolutely unique. Hypertext is another type of reading. Here you can go deeper (move with a link, than with another one, and it can be infinity).
There was an experiment where scientist invited experience Google-users and newbies. They put them into MRI (tomograph), which were scanning they brain while they were making Google search. At the end, they found that those experienced users were using particular and specific zone in their brain, which were not active in the brain of newbies. This means that brain created/planned particular zone for the internet search! Brain is reading web with another part of the brain, than when it is reading book. This part of the brain is also responsible for the fast and intuitive decision making process.
