The age of stream of consciousness — and insanity
My point, which I hope is obvious by now, is that such streams of consciousness describe the beginnings of too many of my mornings, and probably many of yours, too. Need I say this is insanity? It’s little wonder that the human attention span is minimized at the bottom right of your screen. Or that today’s children, who have known no other way of being, are so jacked up, agitated and distracted that they need amphetamines to calm them down. (Whatever happened to running laps?)
.. Much has been written about the effects of the Internet on our minds and culture, including Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.” Not only are we forging new neural pathways in the brain, but we’re also losing the capacity to absorb and retain complex information.
Computers and the Internet may make us smarter in some ways, as neuroscience finds, but baby boomers who grew up with three channels and rabbit ears are the last generation to have been formed primarily by books requiring lengthy, focused attention, as well as the experiential learning that comes from engaging one’s imagination rather than navigating someone else’s often-bizarre, interactive digital fictions.