iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alterationof the Modern Mind

Wow Cindy--what a great question to pose: do our needs change our
thinking or does our thinking change our needs? I'm sure it works both
ways, but it seems that mindsets certainly trump--and prevent--clear
thinking. Cultures have tremendous influence over experience. Things
happen, events occur, we receive stimuli, then we label and interpret
the stimuli and place a value on it. How we interpret experience may not
be exclusively determined by culture, but culture is a great factor.

Must be plenty of research that grapples with this question, at least in
limited ways. I'd love to hear more from anyone out there who has a
source to share.

Begin at the beginning, the king said, gravely, and go till you come to
the end; then stop.

Lewis Carroll

Maggie Reilly
User Experience Architect
Distribution Marketing | IHG

O: 770 604 2653
M: 404 316 0518
email: maggie.reilly at ihg.com
YIM: graywalkers at rocketmail.com

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of
Cindy Chastain
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 2:52 AM
To: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] iBrain: Surviving the Technological
Alterationof the Modern Mind

Hi Ali,

The Atlantic magazine published an article about this same subject in
their July/August issue called "Is Google Making us Stupid."

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

I went back to look over the article and it doesn't mention Small's
book, but does present an interesting and well balanced article.

The most interesting part was at the end, where the author, Nicholas
Carr talked about how this is not first instance in history where a new
form of technology has provoked fears about it's impact on our
intellectual abilities as well as our culture.

For example, Socrates, bemoaned the act of writing (the new technology
of his day) thinking that it would cause people to %u201Ccease to
exercise their memory and become forgetful%u201D.
Next, Gutenberg's printing press spurred similar fears. According to
the article, Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the
easy availability of books would "lead to intellectual laziness, making
men less studious and weakening their minds."

In both cases, some fears were warranted and indeed proved prescient,
but neither anticipated (or so it seems) the benefits spreading
information, spurring fresh ideas, and expanding human knowledge that
writing and printing would have on our culture. So, yes, our modern
memories fail to have the motivation or capacity for memorizing Ovid,
but we also have unprecedented access to information.

But is this making us flat (wide) and thin thinkers, rather than deep
thinkers? Do our needs change our thinking? Or does our thinking
change our needs as a culture? In any case, it's a very interesting
topic.

That said, I hope some of the UX Bookclubs will now and then choose
books that pose larger cultural/philosophical questions like this one.

Thanks for bringing it up. Let us know what you think when you've read
it.

Cheers,
Cindy

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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=36180

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