Applied Linguistics at KMUTT

While the speed of the internet is getter faster and faster, our cognitive abilities are getting worse and worse.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

There's a fair amount of evidence that computer use changes our brains (see Nichols Carr's book The Shallows). Whether these changes are for the worse may be a matter of opinion.

Woravut wrote:While the speed of the internet is getter faster and faster, our cognitive abilities are getting worse and worse.

Which cognitive abilities are you referring to? And worse in what ways?

cognitive abilities - abilities to 1) process, 2) link, and 3) organize information.


Given the information available on the internet which is overwhelming, we are tempted to find easy or ready made answers to the questions that we have. We may be bombarded with the information so much so that our brain cannot process the information. And Given that it cannot process the information, it cannot perform higher functions (linking and organizing information).

Think about why a computer hangs. One of the causes, I think, is that it has to perform or anlyze million sets of data at a time. If a computer keeps hanging, is it going to do its job?

Woravut wrote:cognitive abilities - abilities to 1) process, 2) link, and 3) organize information.

Very interesting... Thanks for the follow-up! When I first read your post, I was also thinking about memory issues. As a kid I had all my friend's phone numbers memorized. Now I barely even know my own phone number. There's no need to remember these 10-digit numbers because they are just a tap away.

I haven't thought about the idea of linking and organizing though, but it's interesting. My initial idea was that information on the internet is like junk food -- easy to find, easy to digest, and cheap. It's just more fun to eat candy than vegetables.

I don't think it's an issue of too much information though. Instead, I think that the problem is that the linking and organization is pre-packaged for us by others. And since humans are inherently lazy, we are satisfied with the shallow pre-processed knowledge that we get from various media outlets that really are just existing to sell advertising. People don't crave deeper knowledge. (Well, WE crave more. That's why we are getting PhDs. I am talking about society in general.)

But is this any different than before? I am not convinced that the average person pre-Internet was spending their life in the library reading books and making links and organizing information either...

Stuart wrote:
It's just more fun to eat candy than vegetables.

Strange research idea that may actually have important implications: Do people who use the Internet a lot eat more candy than people who could use the Internet a lot but don't?