More on Brain Rewiring
Posted onSeemingly right after I became acquainted with the whole “Too Much Tech at Once is Bad!” idea through Mr. Nicholas Carr, the Gray Lady featured not one but two articles on this subject along with an interactive quiz designed to show how if you are a heavy multi-tasker what has happened to your cognitive abilities.
The first article is titled Hooked on Gadgets and Paying a Mental Price and is about how:
Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information. These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.
If you surf the web (um, you are reading this blog) and/or use a computer to navigate and manage your life , this is a must read article. It’s long, but worth it.
The second article is titled An Ugly Toll of Technology: Impatience and Forgetfulness and I think the title speaks for itself. This is also a must, ans much shorter, read.
The Test Your Focus and Test How Fast You Juggle Tasks quizzes are an eye opener. I for one have tried to check my email less and I’m making more of a concerted effort to get through my magazine backlog and to get to the books on my list.
What does this all mean? Like so much else in this wide world, moderation is key. Too much of anything in excess is bad, m’kay?
