Computerized and Writing Blindly

Warning: Click on links at your own brain-health risk.

I was putting together a collage of sorts the other day, and when I finished - I didn't like it. Somewhere within the dark recesses of my mind, I 'reached' out for the undo key on the computer. While that 'reach' lasted only a millisecond, it seriously (and literally) tripped me and caused me to turn and wonder where the heck I was to consider such a move. The next day, my dentist (don't ask) told me about an article he read, "Skinny Dipping" (which I have yet to find) that discussed negative ramifications of spending too much time on the computer - with such consequences as lessening the ability to speak (orally) and think (clearly). On the other hand, Anuradha Menon from the "The Future of Things" (TFOT) announced that "Surfing the web is good for the brain" But that was two years ago. (The article was written in 2008, and the article also focuses on older individuals.)

Compare Menon's article to Nicholas Carr's 2010 article "The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains," in Wired Magazine, where - regardless of our age, I am assuming, interrupting ourselves by clicking on active links, checking email, and researching related topics weakens our brain's ability to pass information, 'thimble-full by thimble-full,' from working-term to long-term memory. Carr defines the Internet as "an interruption system," instead of an information system, where "it [the Internet] seizes our attention only to scramble it." While Carr does not negate the individual control we have over choosing such breaks in our attention, he does give some troubling information on the subject:

We know that the human brain is highly plastic; neurons and synapses change as circumstances change. When we adapt to a new cultural phenomenon, including the use of a new medium, we end up with a different brain, says Michael Merzenich, a pioneer of the field of neuroplasticity. That means our online habits continue to reverberate in the workings of our brain cells even when we’re not at a computer. We’re exercising the neural circuits devoted to skimming and multitasking while ignoring those used for reading and thinking deeply. 

That third sentence stuck with me: "...our online habits continue to reverberate in the workings of our brain cells even when we're not at a computer." Thinking about my own bad Internet habits, that sentence worried me. Thinking about my youngest daughter's Internet habits, I wanted to hide her computer. Yet I don't 'hear' any problems in Carr's emphasis on 'shallow thinking' when I talk with my daughter on the phone every day. She delves into an issue, uses appropriate words and shows evidence of a strong vocabulary, and she analyzes points in depth.

This issue continues to intrigue me, though, especially in light of blog responses from my online students. For example, Carr states that "[w]hen we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain." Just today, in reading through my students first discussion blog prompt, I read my students stories of hearing their friends say they won't read anything over a paragraph long... and other students that say they need bullet points to read through a text. One longer thread included a discussion of why primary audiences are able to skim texts more than other readers. Yet in reading every single word my students wrote I saw ample evidence that these students can form sentences, construct whole paragraphs, and (most can) delve in depth into an issue and come out with some kind of synthesis (see Bloom's Taxonomy for great info on this).

So, I'm not too worried, even though I have to remind myself at times to rely on my own ideas instead of referencing ideas on the web. When that issue gets sticky, I grab my pen and spiral notebook (or  my pen and a printed article), go to the coffee shop, and do what I force my students to do in my face-to-face classes: Annotate-while-reading, one paragraph at a time: 1) I read one paragraph carefully, 2) summarize it in the right column, 3) make comments on discrepancies, connections, notes in the left column, and - at the end - 4) comment on whether the writer did what s/he said s/he would - and why.

I began this process several years ago by giving my f2f students a copy of Roger Rosenblatt's 2000 article (published in "Time") "I Am Writing Blindly" and having them to work through the four steps above. While Rosenblatt's article is completely engaging, it prompts varying responses from my students, which always leads to whole-class discussions. The jewel of this all: Reading and working through this article complicates reading - and writing - and responding... but it also engages the reader in a real-time situation by making connections to another person's ideas and figuring out how/why/why not it all works... which is why we're reading in the first place.

As a postscript, Carr states that "more brain activity is not necessarily better brain activity" (and that is certainly true), and we all have choices to make about what we read and where. Certainly, an article about the dangers of reading online that includes in-your-face multiple choices for clicking on outside links (like the YouTube video on the same page with Michael Cera and Edgar Wright texting each other a question while they're physically sitting next to one another) might cause us to pause. Yet even more so should the two comments posted by the reader - two days apart - help us to laugh at our Internet worries:

• Posted by: minimum_gnome | 05/26/10 | 12:57 pm |  : Very interesting, but halfway through I realized that it had been at least 10 minutes since I checked my email, which started me thinking about stuff I wanted to look up online. Please tell me how the article ends, since it was longer than my attention span.
• Posted by: minimum_gnome  | 05/27/10 | 11:48 am | : Very interesting article, but halfway through I was reminded that I haven't checked my email in at least 10 minutes, which started me thinking of things I wanted to look up on-line. I might have been able to get through the entire article, if it was broken up into smaller chunks, but the pages and pages of text was too much for my brain to process.