Internet Brain Drain?

www.wired.com...

It’s an age of unprecedented, staggering technological change. Business models are being transformed, lives are being upended, vast new horizons of possibility opened up. Or something like that. These are all pretty common assertions in modern business/tech journalism and management literature. Then there’s another view, which I heard from author Neal Stephenson in an MIT lecture hall last week. A hundred years from now, he said, we might look back on the late 20th and early 21st centuries and say, “It was an actively creative society. Then the internet happened and everything got put on hold for a generation.” Justin Fox Stephenson was clearly trying to be provocative. But he’s not alone in the judgment that we’re not actually living in an era of great innovation. Economist Tyler Cowen’s e-book-turned-book, The Great Stagnation, made similar points: Compared with the staggering changes in everyday life in the first half of the 20th century wrought by electricity, cars, and electronic communication, the digital age has brought relatively minor alterations to how we live

Is the internet draining our brains? The article says since the internet was invented and became widely used, our minds have been too distracted to concentrate on new ideas. We just don't have the 'Moon Shot Mentality' any more. People use to have big ideas, big dreams and they would go after them. When is the last time you saw an invention by a private party? Everything is big business and no real helpful invention has come out of them for a long time. Billions get poured in, a trickle comes out. Yeah, we get new cars, but are they really better? New toys like the IPhone come all the time, but do they help? Are we so distracted we can't even think?
Don't get me wrong, I think the net is great. It helps with homework, keeps people in touch, gets the real news out and away from the MSM death grip. A massive amount of information is right at your fingertips. But, is it too much? Are we so overloaded with information, we can't take the time to use it?

Sorry, had to change something, screwed it up.

Just like TV the net has been flooded with garbage by TPTB. If the garbage and propaganda were removed we'd have the best tool ever invented for education and enhacing creativity.

I remember when the internet was young, it was full of so many interesting things that on every visit you learned something new, but now we have to wade through gigabytes of celebrity nonsense just to find a single byte of something useful.

I don't know if it is because I have gotten older or if it is indeed the Internet, but I used to write more, sketch more and have all kinds of ideas...now not so much...

Perhaps though our collective minds are just trying to catch up with the information and then we will reboot and take off to the stars!!!! Well I still dream big!

Originally posted by VoidHawk
Just like TV the net has been flooded with garbage by TPTB. If the garbage and propaganda were removed we'd have the best tool ever invented for education and enhacing creativity.

I remember when the internet was young, it was full of so many interesting things that on every visit you learned something new, but now we have to wade through gigabytes of celebrity nonsense just to find a single byte of something useful.

Well said, I remember "surfing" from site to site absorbing information! TV and the Internet can still be amazing tools of education it is just all the crap you have to eliminate to get there. Shame really I blame hyper -capitalism and Advertising!

I hate to say it, but I think it's true too. I don't have any way of really knowing, but my perception is that the internet has definitely become a negative distraction. I know, I know, it can be very useful, and I do use it for educational purposes a lot, for myself and for my kids for home schooling, but it can get in the way for sure. Like abeverage said, I too don't write like I used to and don't feel that I use my creativity as much as I used to. I can't blame it solely on the internet, but it contributes to the problem I think.

I have to agree, the net is too distracting. For example, I was looking for a way to keep my cats from sleeping in the big planters, so went on a search. By the time I waded through all the side articles, popups and the like, an hour had gone by because I'd let myself get side tracked.

By the way, I invented my own way of keeping them out. Orange peels. Their sensitive noses can't stand it and they stay out of potted plants.

Its kind of funny but I suspect this is all a vicious cycle, the internet has made life overall more fast paced so now we tap our feet and say "why aren't things happening faster?" The form factor of computing is still a fairly rapidly changing part of technology, we went from clunky personal computers to sleek laptops and from phones as large as a loaf of bred to smart phones and tablet PCs which have more power than the first home computers. It used to be that the only way you could interact with a computer was the keyboard, then the mouse was developed and now we are pushing forward with direct touch interfaces like the Microsoft Surface and even experimenting with more esoteric interfaces that detect eye motion or take voice prompts.

I don't think the internet is completely to blame in this perceived slowdown of advancement so much as an overall trend in media towards sensory overload and instant gratification; your entertainment, information, even work is now faster than it has ever been before so we expect everying to be just as fast now.