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Multimedia in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education
Commentary: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think,Read and Remember
Received for publication, March 3, 2011
Graham R. Parslow‡
From the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The University of Melbourne,Victoria 3010, Australia
The title of this commentary relates to the content ofNicholas Carr’s book The Shallows [1]. This is a confront-ing read as it challenges all teachers to keep up with themind-set of current and future students. The book doesa good job of dispelling the long time dogma that theadult brain is a fixed entity by describing multiple exam-ples of neuroplasticity. Our brain changes adaptivelywhen circumstances change, most spectacularly when asense like sight is lost. The internet is a new tool forhumanity and, just like adapting to cars for transport, ourbrains are changing to use the internet. Carr points outthat we also like doing things to activate the areas of ourbrain that we have changed to support our activities. Iconfess to a mild e-mail addiction and feel disconnectedif I do not get a regular fix of new messages. I know thisfrom my withdrawal reaction when I was recently discon-nected at home for several days due to a technical prob-lem. Carr’s words also gave me insight into the behaviorof a concert pianist friend who always departs punctuallyfrom the amiable banter of university lunch time conver-sation to practice for a regular set time. We becomefixed in our activities, and we repeat those activities forcerebral fulfillment. Our current students consume enor-mous feeds of information, but the activity tends to beunsystematic and the information is selected as smallbits from a screen. Carr argues that this type of behaviormakes it difficult for students to read a whole book oreven a whole page. Students are losing skills that mostteachers take for granted.
Plato [2] was among the first recorded naysayersabout the next generation when he complained thatbook reading ‘‘will create forgetfulness in the learners’souls, because they will not use their memories; they willtrust to the external written characters and not rememberfor themselves.’’ Likewise, Carr leads us to despair that
the internet has made it much harder for our children toengage with long texts and complex ideas. If Plato didnot get it completely right in 360 BC then we can hopethat Carr is likewise in error. Jonah Lehrer [3] has madethe following rebuttal. ‘‘What Carr neglects to mention isthat the preponderance of scientific evidence suggeststhat the Internet and related technologies are actuallygood for the mind. For instance, a comprehensive 2009review of studies published on the cognitive effects ofvideo games found that gaming led to significantimprovements in performance on various cognitive tasks,from visual perception to sustained attention. Thissurprising result led the scientists to propose that evensimple computer games like Tetris can lead to markedincreases in the speed of information processing.’’
Change is not inherently bad, but it is inevitable. As anearly adopter of word processing I used the technologyfor many years to transcribe words into the computerthat I had composed with pen and paper. Did I write witha different style then? If you take Carr’s slant on this,using the example of Frederick Nietzsche, then you maybelieve that the ubiquitous keyboard has widely dimin-ished the creativity of writers. Carr largely avoids men-tioning those who are empowered by the new technol-ogy, even though he claims that he is not a Luddite. TheShallows has led to many strong commentaries in theblogosphere, so seek it out; that is if you still retain thecapacity to read long texts.
REFERENCES
[1] N. Carr (2010) The Shallows, Atlantic Books, London.[2] Plato (360 BCE) Phaedrus, Available at: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/
phaedrus.html (accessed March 3 2011).[3] J. Lehrer (2010) Our Cluttered Minds, Available at:http://www.nytimes.
com/2010/06/06/books/review/Lehrer-t.html (accessed March 3 2011).
‡ To whom correspondence should be addressed.E-mail: [email protected].
DOI 10.1002/bmb20514 This paper is available on line at http://www.bambed.org228
Q 2011 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY EDUCATION
Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 228, 2011
