What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains – Nicholas Carr Book Talk By Dr T.H.Chowdary Director:...

What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains – Nicholas Carr

Book Talk

By

Dr T.H.ChowdaryDirector: Center for Telecom Management and Studies

Chairman: Pragna Bharati (intellect India )Former: Chairman & Managing Director

Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited &Information Technology Advisor,

Government of Andhra PradeshT: +91(40) 6667-1191(O) 2784-3121®

F: +91 (40) [email protected]

Talk @ TCS, KLK Bldg, Hyd: 18 Nov 2010

mailto:[email protected]

THC_CTMS S448_Aug 2010 2

GALLOPING KNOWLEDGE• By the time the child born today graduates from

college, the amount of knowledge will be four times as great

• By the time he is 50, it will be 32 times as great• And 97% of everything known in the world will have

been learnt since that child was born• The memorising of reams of facts will not be

necessary; they will be quickly available on computers. Search engines like Google will get them for you in a second,

• But future man will need great wisdom if only to know what is it he wants

• If the paper so used can cover the earth’s surface six (6) times!

thc@ctms S453_Nov'2010 3

Post office, Telephone, Broadcast studio, Soap Box, Auction House, Sound Recording, Movie theater, used car showroom, Insurance Office, Distributor ware house, studio for fashion designer, University Class Room…, Political Campaign, Medical Diagnostics, Mammoth Library

Internet -8th Wonder (1)

Internet – 8th Wonder (2)

• Encyclopedia ( Wikipedia); You Tube, Video service, Flicker photo repository, Huffington Post , blog compendium, world’s meeting House, chat, gossip, argue show off, flirt, court, Face book, Twitter, MySpace….social & anti-social networks

thc@ctms 4S453_Nov'2010

Internet – 8th Wonder (3) Anybody can have his own website; his journal; linked to a

portal: Most powerful and pervasive medium for news, views,

commerce, purchases, conferences, payments, services (eg: e-sewa); public relations…..

Convergence of Voice, images, text, data (multi-media) Wireless access; always on,

i-mode, (9.6 kbps); 3G (384 kbps/2MBPS) 4G - 4MBPS both by DoCoMo of Japan; WiFi, WiMax….

Location-based services


thc@ctms S453_Nov'2010 6

Internet – 8th Wonder (4)

Network of networks; Information stored in de-materialised, electronic/photonic form, converged platform,Info-space

Internet conceived & started in1969. WWW is just 20 years old; app. 500 million hosts 3,500 million users 1 Trillion pages of information 5 billion pages seen every day ( 10 pages/ Internet sub/ day) 3.5 bln E-mail addresses, growing 25% a year 14 bil [1400 crore] e-mails/day

Internet – Viewing or Addiction ? (1)

• An average American is looking at a screen either of the cellphone or the TV or the PC for 8.5 hrs a day.

• By the beginning of 2009 the average American cell phone user was sending or receiving nearly 400 texts a month

• The average American teen was sending or receiving a mind boggling 2272 texts a month

• China has opened a number of de-addiction centers to wean away the addicts from cell phone /Internet use from excessive and compulsive use of the devices.

• Worldwide 2 Tln ( 2 lakh crore) text messages / year > voice calls .• US children between ages 2 and 11 use the Net about 11 hours a

week.


Internet – Viewing or Addiction ?(2)

• Recently, an Indian lady has sued for divorce in the Delhi High Court. Her plea was that her husband has no time to look at her or speak to her. As soon as he comes from the office or before he goes to office, he is either on the cell phone or on the Internet. So the disease that has already afflicted Korea and China is gripping some of our 80 mln Internet users and over 700 mln cell phone users.


Screen Replaces Page

• In 50 yrs following Gutenberg, as many as all in the last 1000 yrs!

• The two main attributes of citizenship –writing & reading –Robert Darnton, Harvard Historian.

• 550 years’ reign of the printing press giving way to electronics - 1950s on radio, cinema, phonograph, TV

• Screen replaces page – technologisation , digitisation.


E-Books, Vooks !

• E-books up from 10% in Y ‘08 Jeff Bezos CEO• Digital readers sales up from 1 mln in Y’08 to 12 m in ‘10 .• Has wireless connection to Internet• Newsweek reduced from 2.5 to 1.5 mln • Vooks ( not books, e-books with video – Simon & Schuster)• Working memory is minds scratchpad, long term memory is

filling system. • Hypertext +multimedia =Hypermedia • The more you multitask hampers our ability to think deeply

and creativity


How the Brain gets affected (1)

• Many features of hypertext result in increased cognitive load & thus may require working memory capacity that exceed brain’s capability

• Comprehension declines as number of links increase



• Our brains become adept at forgetting and inept at remembering.

• Dependence on Web’s information stores is the product of a self perpetrating self amplifying loop.

• Makes it harder to lock information into our biological memory

• Forced to rely more and more on the net’s capacious and easily searchable artificial memory and makes us shallow thinkers



• The sharper the attention the sharper the memory – For memory to persist, the incoming information must be must be thoroughly an d deeply processed. This is accomplished by attending to the information and associating it meaningfully and systematically with knowledge already well established in memory”

- Eric KandelNobel Laureate



• Every tool imposes limitations even as it opens possibilities

• “After working with a word processor for a time, I began to lose my faculty for writing and editing in longhand .

• Ability to translate thoughts into cursive writing diminishes…tapping letters & watching letters appear as if by magic on screen!

• We shape our tools and there after they shape us….



• The Internet usage creates different brains. Its heavy use as neurological consequences. …

• Daily use of computes stimulates brain cell alteration and neuro transmitter release , gradually strengthening new neural pathways in our brains while weakening old ones...

• Experiments shown that the brain is sensitive to just an hours day of computer exposure what happens when we spend more time on –line….

• Searching on the net creates a different pattern of brain activity than when we read a book like text. …

• Working memory sit h mind’s scratch pad… • Long term memory is the filing system.



• Our brains turned into simple signal processing units quickly sheppherding information into consciousness and then back out again.

• Printing (Johannes Gutenberg 1439) press in 50 years, following as many books as were produced in the previous 1000 years were produced.

• “Changed the face and condition of things all over the world so that no empire or sect or star seems to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs” – Sir Francis Bacon 1620 in Novum Organum.



• The brighter the software, dimmer and duller the user’s brain

• More information can mean less knowledge• Hypertext and multimedia can severely

compromise our ability to learn, when our brains become overloaded with diverse stimuli on line.


Problem Solving: With & W.O computer (1)

• More information can man less knowledge. But what about the effects of the many software tools we use? How do all the ingenious applications we depend on to find an d evaluate information, form and communicate our thoughts, and carry out other cognitive chores influence what and how we learn? In 2003,a Dutch clinical psychologist named Christof van Nimwegen began a fascinating study of computer-aided learning that a BBC writer would later call “one of the most interesting examinations of current computer use and the potential downsides of our increasing reliance on screen-based interaction with information systems.



• Van Nimwegen had two groups of volunteers work through a tricky logic puzzle on a computer. The puzzle involved transferring colored balls between two boxes in accordance with asset of rules governing which balls could be moved at which time. One of the groups used software that had been designed to be as helpful as possible. It offered onscreen assistance during the course of solving the puzzle, providing visual cues, for instance ,. To highlight permitted moves. The other group used a bare-bones program, which provided no hints or other guidance.



• In the early stages of solving the puzzle, the group using the helpful software made correct moves more quickly than the other group, as would be expected. But as the test proceeded, the proficiency of the members of the group using the bare-bones software increased more rapidly. In the end, those using the unhelpful programs were bale to solve the puzzle more quickly and with fewer wrong moves. They also reached fewer impasses-states in which no further moves were possible- than did the people using the helpful software. The findings indicated, as van Nimwegen reported, that those using the unhelpful software were better able to plan ahead and plot strategy,



• While those using the helpful software tended to rely on simple trial an d error. Often, in fact, those with the helpful software were found “to aimlessly click around” as they tried to crack the puzzle.


Ph.Ds off the Internet; Doctorates

• Shift the burden of problem solving and other mental labour away from user’s brain on to the microprocessor

• As we “externalise” problem solving an do the r cognitive chores to computers we reduce our brain’s ability to build stable knowledge structures – schemes that can be later applied in new situations…


De-humanisation (1)

• Computers can follow rules; they can’t make judgments

• Feeling, emotions, sympathy, intonation, expressions ( face, eye’s modulation, gestures) absent -


De-humanisation (2)

• The easy way may not always be the best way, but easy way is the way computer an d search engines work

• A broadening of available information leads to a narrowing of science and scholarship.


De-humanisation (3)

• Our mind-reading capability –declines & dies. Over activity of such brain regions

• Attention Restoration Theory (ART): When people are not bombarded by external stimulie their brains can relax. No taxing of their working memories by processing a stream of distractions. Result; contemplativeness strengths their ability to control mind – TAPAS. – Identification with Paramatma


ELIZA: Real or Computer Creature

• Jan 1966 Joseph Weizenbawm computer scientist at MIT wrote ELIZA

• (Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl in George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmallion” learns English under Prof Higgins)


The conversation between ELIZA the computer programmed speaker and a young woman.

• YW: Men are alike • ELIZA: In what way • They are always bugging us about something or other• Can you think of a specific example • Well, my boy friend made me come here• Your boy friend made you come here • He says I am depressed much of the time • I am sorry to here to you are depressed• It is true I am unhappy• Do you think coming here will help you to be not unhappy• I need some help that much seems certain• What would it mean to you if you got some help • Perhaps I could learn to get along with my mother.


The conversation between ELIZA the computer programmed speaker and a young woman.

• Tell me more about your family• My mother takes care of me • Who else in your family takes care of you• My father• Your Father?• You are like my father some ways• What resemblance do you see• You are not very aggressive but I Think you don’t want me to notice

that • What makes you think I am not very aggressive • You don’t argue with me• Why do you think I don’t argue with you • You are afraid of me • Does it please you to believe I am afraid of you• My father is afraid of everybody


Google Church

• Larry page (Google’s founder = Googleplex = speaking at the 2007 at the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAA)

• My theory is that, if you look at our programming,, your DNA, it’s about 600 megabytes compressed, “he said, “so it’s smaller than any modern operating system, smaller than Linux or Windows…and that includes booting up your brain, by definition. SO your program algorithms probably aren’t that complicated (intelligence) is probably more about overall computation…”


Internet in Sum• Incredible amount of information • Instantaneous availability• Shallow Knowledge • Thinking suspended• Memory outsourced• Learning devalued• Screen(s) replace pages• Pressing (keys) replaces writing• Inattention to detail• Depth gives way to shallowness• 10 secs of page – view instead of 180 secs, reading of a page• Brain’s storage and • Retrieval (search & present) capacity diminished• Plasticity of brain unexploited ( Memorisation, storage, retrieval can last far, far

into “old” age but in capacitated due to googling


Old Testament Psalmist• Their idols are silver and gold.• The work of men’s hands.• They have mouths, but they speak not;• Eyes have they, but they see not• They have ears, but they hear not • Noses have they, but they handle not;• Feet have they, but they walk not;• Neither speak they through their throat.• They that make them are like unto them;• So is every one that trusteth in them


Dhanyawad:Thank You


What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains – Nicholas Carr Book Talk By Dr T.H.Chowdary Director:...

Documents

Transcript of What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains – Nicholas Carr Book Talk By Dr T.H.Chowdary Director:...