Can the human brain be rewired?
August 19th, 2009
Just read a great article titled Seeking: How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous. - and I think you all should read it - it's important stuff to understand, especially if you make websites.
Things I learned:
The article parts with concern that we are being hard-wired to like small snacks of information and have shorter attention spans. It offered no proof however. I want to believe in our human intelligence and say it's impossible to hard-wire ourselves like that, and that people will still always be able to consume longer-form information if we need too. Leave a note in the comments if you have more information on this.
The internet has clearly moved us a shorter-form for all content - and I'd argue this is good as it's making us more efficient. Yes it's true you can't write a Pulitzer in short-form, or even get across a complicated thesis like you can in a book. Or can you? Most nonfiction books have 1-2 chapters of actual thesis - the rest is buildup or fluff that could easily be skipped. For instance, I recently read Free by Chris Anderson - and if you want to know the gist of Chris's thesis all you have to do is read his article in Wired - the rest of the book was interesting - but non-essential to his overall point.
Things I wonder: has the human mind ever been "rewired" before by media or societal change? I've heard it said that the Internet is revolutionizing our society on the level that only introduction of TV and the industrial revolution have done in in the last century. Did those events re-wire our brains in any way?
Things I learned:
- Seeking is related to opiate side of the brain, and controls our desire to seek more information. Addiction is controlled by the dopiate side of the brain, and is unrelated to seeking. This means people can't literally "be addicted to Twitter". Opiate drugs are cocaine and amphetamines - different from dopamine increasing drugs like Marijuana.
- "Wanting and liking are complementary. The former catalyzes us to action; the latter brings us to a satisfied pause. Seeking needs to be turned off, if even for a little while, so that the system does not run in an endless loop."
- When we sit and hit refresh on Twitter or Facebook feeds for hours on end, we are seeking. When we find something interesting to consume, we aren't satisfied, so we keep going.
- When we play a game the "possibility of a payoff is much more stimulating than actually getting one."
The article parts with concern that we are being hard-wired to like small snacks of information and have shorter attention spans. It offered no proof however. I want to believe in our human intelligence and say it's impossible to hard-wire ourselves like that, and that people will still always be able to consume longer-form information if we need too. Leave a note in the comments if you have more information on this.
The internet has clearly moved us a shorter-form for all content - and I'd argue this is good as it's making us more efficient. Yes it's true you can't write a Pulitzer in short-form, or even get across a complicated thesis like you can in a book. Or can you? Most nonfiction books have 1-2 chapters of actual thesis - the rest is buildup or fluff that could easily be skipped. For instance, I recently read Free by Chris Anderson - and if you want to know the gist of Chris's thesis all you have to do is read his article in Wired - the rest of the book was interesting - but non-essential to his overall point.
Things I wonder: has the human mind ever been "rewired" before by media or societal change? I've heard it said that the Internet is revolutionizing our society on the level that only introduction of TV and the industrial revolution have done in in the last century. Did those events re-wire our brains in any way?
1 Response to “Can the human brain be rewired?”
Sorry, comments are closed for this article.
August 20th, 2009 at 02:15 AM I'm not sure that Mssr. Anderson's fluffy, largely unjustified thesis can be claimed to fairly represent the bounded medium's effective utilization. Most nonfiction books might have 1-2 chapters of thesis; most are also not worth reading even to that depth.