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Will the internet eat your brain?

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  Will the internet eat your brain? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-08-28 17:49 +0000
    Re: Will the internet eat your brain? Hils <hils@saynotospam.net> - 2014-08-28 19:26 +0100
      Re: Will the internet eat your brain? RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-08-28 20:56 +0000

#4571 — Will the internet eat your brain?

http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21614088-neuroscientist-warns-will-internet-eat-your-brain

   A PICTURE doing the rounds on social media a few months ago showed two
   Hong Kong lovers hugging on a train. Resting their heads on each other's
   shoulders gave the girl and her boyfriend an ideal vantage point to gaze
   lovingly at the smartphone that each was fiddling with behind the
   other's back.

   It was meant to be funny. But for Susan Greenfield, a British
   neuroscientist, this is no joke. For several years Lady Greenfield has
   been warning of what she sees as the dangers of computers and the
   internet, as they move out of the office and into people's living rooms,
   pockets and personal lives. She has written newspaper articles and given
   lectures about the dangers of the digital world. She frets, worrying
   that smartphones and social networks are sucking users into an
   unsatisfying digital facsimile of reality, frying their memories,
   atrophying their social skills and generally rotting their brains.

   ...

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#4573

On 2014-08-28 18:49, Rich wrote:
> http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21614088-neuroscientist-warns-will-internet-eat-your-brain
> 
>    A PICTURE doing the rounds on social media a few months ago showed two
>    Hong Kong lovers hugging on a train. Resting their heads on each other's
>    shoulders gave the girl and her boyfriend an ideal vantage point to gaze
>    lovingly at the smartphone that each was fiddling with behind the
>    other's back.

That sounds remarkably like Banksy's street art:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-28950398

>    It was meant to be funny. But for Susan Greenfield, a British
>    neuroscientist, this is no joke. For several years Lady Greenfield has
>    been warning of what she sees as the dangers of computers and the
>    internet, as they move out of the office and into people's living rooms,
>    pockets and personal lives. She has written newspaper articles and given
>    lectures about the dangers of the digital world. She frets, worrying
>    that smartphones and social networks are sucking users into an
>    unsatisfying digital facsimile of reality, frying their memories,
>    atrophying their social skills and generally rotting their brains.

Isn't this at least partly because real lives have become more
disconnected, with people living in (at best, if they are lucky) minimal
families, when most of human evolution took place in extended kinship
groups of mutually-dependent individuals? Are we using social media to
re-establish the hunter gatherer connections which prevailing political
and economic ideas have made more distant than ever?

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#4575

Hils <hils@saynotospam.net> Wrote in message:
> 
> Isn't this at least partly because real lives have become more
> disconnected, with people living in (at best, if they are lucky) minimal
> families, when most of human evolution took place in extended kinship
> groups of mutually-dependent individuals? Are we using social media to
> re-establish the hunter gatherer connections which prevailing political
> and economic ideas have made more distant than ever?
> 


Holy crap, the bullshit is so deep in that article I almost need
 to get out my boots to wade through it.

Take a valium, lady.  Seems to me we'll look back at articles like
 this and laugh, much the way we laugh at the following:

TVs in every home destroying the fabric of human existence
Newspapers eliminating political exchange through talk
Remember when violent tv shows were a threat?
Remember when foul language in rock music was going to destroy
 human society?

Seriously.  Each of these things had an impact, but none has - so
 far- destroyed the human race.  More likely, people will learn
 how to absorb technology when it's useful and deal with the side
 effects.  Maybe that couple doesn't fight because there's an easy
 way to figure out where the restaurant is using some maps
 service?

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