InquiryLabs
Politics, Programming and Possibilities
What the Internet is Doing to My Mind
Author: Duane Johnson28 Jan
You know how teachers shifted from teaching rote memorization to teaching concepts sometime during the 19th or 20th century? I think the Internet is causing me to shift in a similar way with regard to facts themselves. I’m not sure if it’s all a good thing, but I just noticed for the first time that instead of thinking about facts, I tend to think about search terms. In other words, my use of memory has been abstracted to a higher level: I don’t recall what I need to know, I recall what will lead me to what I need to know.
Is the (known) world becoming so big that we can’t contain it all in our heads? Or are we just lazier now that there is a means to offload what we would otherwise have to memorize? It’s probably some combination of both.
As my memory of details declines and my construction of queries improves, at least I have the innovations of the InnerSpace Foundation to look forward to.
5 Responses for "What the Internet is Doing to My Mind"
This makes a lot of sense to me. It really is true that our known world is becoming much bigger. One pithy example of this is today I had some questions about my dog’s behavior, and so I searched for dog forums. I’ve never been active in one or even read one, but in a couple of hours I had a good conversation about my dog’s behavior. And it’s a cheap, more convenient time investment because it’s done asynchronously and prioritized appropriately with other things I’m doing.
What would I have done back in the day, before I could google “dog forums” and be on my way? Maybe call a friend. Go to the library and read up on dog behavior. Look in the paper for obedience courses? All potentially good things in their own right. It’d be a shame to lose those. We still get them in the web way because my five minute search might yield suggestions to sign up for an obedience course or read some dog behavior links, linking the instant access of the web to the vividness of reality. And then once you absorb more knowledge and experiences, you index it and have a broader or richer set of search abstractions!
Another interesting example of search is that today I wanted to link to an article I read, so I searched my delicious tags and it wasn’t there. I knew though that I had associated this article with that tag for months though, so after I found it via another tag I added the one I was originally thinking of. I know for a fact that this article is in my mental index for that tag, so I can improve the big storage system (in this case, delicious) by keeping it up to date.
It may be possible to get too lazy, I don’t know, but it’s certainly possible to use it to enhance your life/interests/whatever
I totally agree, but I do not think one should be afraid of being to lazy. This is the human nature, we have always founds ways of making things easier/faster.
I think of it as Refactoring
Without even realizing it, I’ve been doing the exact same thing. Thanks for pointing it out.
@Pat: Nice example. And I can’t do without delicious.com anymore either
@Mathias: I have a friend (Vlad) who brought insight to the world for me when he said “the world drives for efficiency.” I think you’re right on that.
I think u r right on. I notice often in my dreams that I am reading text, kind of like close captioning!
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