A lot of people seem to be obsessed with all this media around us and how that’s affecting our brain. This was in no way sudden. One early sign was how neurobiology started getting more coverage in rather mainstream media two years ago. Then Barnes & Noble ran its Brain Awareness Month this year.
I’ve seen this issue make a lot more noise fairly recently – owing to two individuals – Nicholas Carr and Clay Shirky and the books they’ve brought out this year. This is not a review of those books – I think Jonah Lehrer did a great job with that – the reviews can be found here and here. Over summer I’ve read both these books. Each author had their research down. They sometimes quoted the same examples, the same research and even quoted each other. But the interpretations led them to different results – and hence books that deal with Internet optimism and Internet pessimism.
By the time I read both these books, I was even more curious about what was really happening. I dedicated the next few weeks to pull more information from other sources. Over the next few days, I’ll post the things I found in my quest to discover the connection between Digital and the Brain. Stay tuned.
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