Skronker

A report on Yahoo’s tech guide says technology is changing our brains.

“The Internet is not just changing the way people live but altering the way our brains work with a neuroscientist arguing this is an evolutionary change which will put the tech-savvy at the top of the new social order.

Gary Small, a neuroscientist at UCLA in California who specializes in brain function, has found through studies that Internet searching and text messaging has made brains more adept at filtering information and making snap decisions.”

Seems obvious no? It also goes on to say we have to find a balance between the web and the real world so you don’t become AN ADDICTED LOSER WITH  NO FRIENDS IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD ETCETERA ETCETERA!!!!

But of course the Internet is making us smarter in some ways and dumber in others. I’ll bet our information processing capacity grows each minute while our emotional intelligence and conversational skills plummet into Satan’s toilet.   

A pretty good book related to this topic is Everything Bad is Good for You, by Stephen Johnson. In it the author takes on people who turn their noses up at modern entertainment, and go around snuffling about how reality shows and such are useless mindmelting crap then goes on to illustrate (sometimes even with CHARTS!) how video games, reality TV and complicated dramas like 24 are making our minds sharper and more sophisticated.

Just so we’re clear, the title is misleading. Not everything bad is good for you. Heroin is bad for you. A book that illustrates this rather eloquently is Jessica Dimmock’s The Ninth Floor. Dimmock, a photographer, documents almost three years in the lives of an assortment of addicts living on the ninth floor of a Manhattan apartment building. I saw the exhibit in New York. You really need the book to get the full effect. It’s arresting, disturbing, disconcertingly compelling.

From the book jacket:

“The 3 bedroom apartment was leased by Joe Smith, 68. In the 70’s Joe had been a player in the downtown art scene. Joe subleased a room to a young hustler named Joey; soon Joey was joined by his brother Mike, Mike’s girlfriend Jesse, and many others. When I met this group in the fall of 2004 Joe no longer had a bedroom in his apartment. He stayed on the couch in hopes of gaining rent. In exchange for use of his apartment, people contributed money at first, then just bags of heroin, several cigarettes, a teaspoon of methadone or a daily beer. Unable to inject himself, Joe grew dependent on these young residents to shoot him up.”

Turns out there’s also a video. I had posted a clip from YouTube but it has since been removed. But the full length video is here. Jessica Dimmock’s website is here.