Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?

by John Brockman

  The Internet may not have changed how my brain works, but if you take thinking to mean the interaction between what’s in your brain, what’s in other people’s brains, and what’s in the environment around you, then the Internet is changing everything. In my line of work, as a writer and journalist, “changing the way you think” is now more of an imperative than a possibility: If you don’t change, you risk extinction.

  Powerful new technologies inevitably work a destructive fire on older ways. As advertising revenues vanish to the Internet, newspapers and magazines find they can no longer subsidize the information- gathering operations that the public is unwilling to pay for directly. The job of print journalist is starting to look as quaint as that of chimney sweep. Many of the print newspapers and magazines that employ those journalists may not survive the Internet at all.

  The book is likely set to vanish, too. I imagine a late-twenty-first-century Wikipedia entry reading:

  BOOK: A format for conveying information consisting of a single continuous piece of text, written on an isolated theme or telling a particular story, averaging around 100,000 words in length and authored by a single individual. Books were printed on paper between the mid-fifteenth and early twenty-first centuries but more often delivered electronically after 2012. The book largely disappeared during the mid-twenty-first century, as it became clear that it had never been more than a narrow instantiation, constrained by print technology, of texts and graphics of any form that could flow endlessly into others. Once free from the shackles of print technology, new storytelling modes flowered in an extraordinary burst of creativity in the early twenty-first century. Even before that, the use of books to explain particular subjects (see textbook) had died very rapidly, as it grew obvious that a single, isolated voice lacked authority, wisdom, and breadth.

  These changes and wonderful new creative opportunities, arrived or arriving, are the outward manifestation of a change in how we think as we shift away from information scarcity, low levels of interpersonal interaction, and little feedback on the significance of what we say, to information abundance and high levels of interaction and feedback.

  As a journalist, I can remember when my most important possession was a notebook of “contacts.” The information I wrested from them was refined with the help of a few close colleagues. That is the past. Thanks to the Internet, search engines, and the millions of organizations, pressure groups, and individuals who are producing free information, almost everything is already out there and available to everyone.

  My work is not digging out information but providing the narrative thread that connects it. In the deluge of bits, it is the search for the bigger picture, the larger point, that matters. You no longer find things out but find out what they mean. That new way of thinking is not so easy. Even the mighty U.S. Department of Homeland Security could not connect the dots regarding a recent incident when different fragments of information about a young Nigerian radical surfaced. As a result, a plane full of passengers was very nearly blown from the sky.

  To do that job well, I don’t think with just a few close colleagues; I’ve delocalized my thought and spread it around the world electronically. (Homeland Security might need to do the same.) With the Internet, my thoughts develop through sharing them with others who have a like interest; I have virtual friendships of ideas with scores of people I probably will never meet and whose age, background, and gender I do not even know. Their generosity is a delight. Anything I write is now soon modified. I don’t think alone. Rather, I steer a global conversation given form by the Web.

  Neither magazines nor books in solid, physical form are good at capturing this flow, which is partly why their future is uncertain. The survivors among them may be those that exult in their physicality—in their existence as true objects. Physical beauty will flourish alongside a virtual world. I look forward to a rebirth for magazines with a touch, feel, look, and smell that will make them a pleasure to hold closely.

  The word pleasure is a good one with which to switch direction. The Internet may be changing the way I think in the cerebral sense, but it may be changing the way the world thinks in a far more physical way. The Internet is awash with sex. In a few hours, an innocent can see more of the pleasures and perversions of sex, in a greater number of close-up couplings, than an eighteenth-century roué could experience in a lifetime devoted to illicit encounters. The Internet is the greatest sex education machine—or the greatest pornographer—that has ever existed. Having spent time teaching at a Muslim university, where the torrent of Internet sex was a hot topic, I would not underestimate its impact on traditional societies. There is a saying that rock and roll brought down the Soviet Union; once the Soviet subconscious had been colonized, the political collapse followed easily. The flood of utterly uncensored images of sexual pleasure that reaches every corner of the world is certainly shaking the thinking of young men and women in the conservative societies I’ve worked in. Where the conflicting emotions that have been unleashed will lead, I cannot tell.

  My Sixth Sense

  Albert-László Barabási

  Distinguished Professor and director of Northeastern University’s Center for Complex Network Research; author, Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do

  For me the Internet is more than a search engine: It has become the subject of my research, a proxy of the many complex systems we are surrounded with.

  I know when this transition started. It was December 1994—which was the time I decided to learn a bit about computers, given that my employer at that time was IBM. So I lifted a book about computer science from a shelf in the Thomas J. Watson Research Center to keep my mind engaged during the holidays. It was my first encounter with networks. A few months later, I submitted my first research paper on the subject, and it was promptly rejected by four journals. No one said it was wrong. The common response was: “Why should we care about networks?” (While my paper never got published, it is still available—where else but on the Internet? At the Los Alamos preprint archive, to be precise.)

  The Internet eventually rescued me, but it took four more years. In the meantime, I sent countless e-mails to search engines asking for data on the topology of the Web. (All those requests must still be on their way to V4641 Sgr, the closest black hole to Earth, somewhere out there in the Milky Way.) Finally, in 1998 a gifted postdoc, Hawoong Jeong, told me that he knew how to build a search engine. And he did, providing us the map that has finally legitimized my years of persistence and serial failures. In 1999 it led to my first publication on networks. It was about the structure of the World Wide Web.

  Today my work could not be possible without the Internet. I do not mean only the access to information. The Internet has fundamentally changed the way I approach a research problem. Much of my research consists of finding organizing principles—laws and mechanisms—that apply not to one but to many complex systems. If these laws are indeed generic and universal, they should apply to our online world as well, from the Internet to online communities on the World Wide Web. Thus, we often test our ideas on the Internet, rather than in the cell or in economic systems, which are harder to monitor and measure.

  The Internet is my sixth sense, altering the way I approach a problem. But it has just as fundamentally changed what I think about, and that may be even more significant in the end.

  The Internet Reifies a Logic Already There

  Tom McCarthy

  Artist and novelist; author, C

  “How has the Internet changed the way you think?” It hasn’t.

  Western culture has always been about networks. Look at Clytemnestra’s “beacon telegraph” speech in the Oresteia, or the relay system of oracles and cryptic signals that Oedipus has to navigate. Look at Daniel Schreber’s vision of wires and nerves, or Kafka’s and Rilke’s visions of giant switchboards linking mortals to (and simultaneously denying them access to the source code of ) gods and angels. Or the writings of Heidegger or Derrida: meshes, relays, endles
s transmission. The Internet reifies a logic that was already there.

  Instant Gratification

  Peter H. Diamandis

  Chairman/CEO, X PRIZE Foundation

  In mid-2009, I made a seven-day, round-the-world business trip from Los Angeles to Singapore, India, United Arab Emirates, and Spain. It was a lecture tour—all work. As I landed in each of these countries, I tried an experiment and tweeted my landing, asking if any friends were in that country. My tweet was automatically posted to my Facebook. In each case, in each country, my inquiry was answered with a “Hey, I happen to be in town as well. Let’s meet for coffee.” Instant and very unexpected gratification. Ask and you shall receive.

  In a separate experiment, I was musing about the volume of gold mined by human beings since the start of mining industry. I was interested because I was fascinated with the idea of mining precious metals from asteroids in the decades ahead. I had done some back-of-the-envelope calculations that amazed me. I posted the following: “Total gold ever mined on Earth is 161,000 tons. Equal to ∼20 meters cubed . . . pls check my math!!”

  Within minutes, I had three confirmations of the calculation, as well as numbers for platinum (∼6 meters cubed), rhodium (∼3 meters cubed) and palladium (∼7 meters cubed). Ask and you shall receive.

  How many times do I wonder about something and then let it drop? I’m realizing that even complex questions can be answered (with enhancements!) with little more work than a digital prayer cast into the socialverse. The better and more intriguing my questions, the more compelling the answers I receive. Looking forward, I can imagine this holding true for requests for artwork, videos, manufactured goods. The point is that nearly instantaneous gratification is possible, and it’s the quality of the incentive that is most important, incentives in this case being a chance encounter and an intriguing question. Future incentives will be such things as cash, or who is asking the question, or the importance of the problem to be solved.

  The Internet as Social Amplifier

  David G. Myers

  Social psychologist, Hope College; author, A Quiet World: Living with Hearing Loss

  I cut my eyeteeth in social psychology with experiments on group polarization—the tendency for face-to-face discussion to amplify group members’ preexisting opinions. Never then did I imagine the potential dangers, or the creative possibilities, of polarization in virtual groups.

  Electronic communication and social networking enable Tea Partiers, global warming deniers, and conspiracy theorists to isolate themselves and find support for their shared ideas and suspicions. As the Internet connects the like-minded and pools their ideas, white supremacists may become more racist, Obama despisers more hostile, and militia members more terror-prone (thus limiting our power to halt terrorism by conquering a place). In the echo chambers of virtual worlds, as in real worlds, separation + conversation = polarization.

  But the Internet as social amplifier can instead work for good, by connecting those coping with challenges. Peacemakers, cancer survivors, and bereaved parents find strength and solace from kindred spirits.

  By amplifying shared concerns and ideas, Internet-enhanced communication can also foster social entrepreneurship. An example: As a person with hearing loss, I advocate a simple technology that doubles the functionality of hearing aids, transforming them, with the button push, into wireless loudspeakers. After experiencing this “hearing loop” technology in countless British venues, from cathedrals to post office windows and taxis, I helped introduce it to western Michigan, where it can now be found in several hundred venues, including Grand Rapids’ convention center and all gate areas of its airport. Then, via a Website, hearing listservs, and e-mail, I networked with fellow hearing advocates, and by feeding one another our resolve gained strength.

  Thanks to the collective efficacy of our virtual community, hearing-aid-compatible assistive listening has spread to other communities and states. New York City is installing it in 488 subway information booths. Leaders in the American Academy of Audiology and the Hearing Loss Association of America are discussing how to promote this inexpensive, wireless assistive listening. Several state hearing-loss associations are recommending it. The hearing industry is now including the needed magnetic receiver in most hearing aids and cochlear implants. And new companies have begun manufacturing and marketing hearing-loop systems. Voilà—a grassroots, Internet-fueled transformation in how America provides listening assistance is under way.

  The moral: By linking and magnifying the inclinations of kindred-spirited people, the Internet can be very, very bad, but also very, very good.

  Navigating Physical and Virtual Lives

  Linda Stone

  High-tech industry consultant; former executive, Apple Computer and Microsoft Corporation

  Before the Internet, I made more trips to the library and more phone calls. I read more books and my point of view was narrower and less informed. I walked more, biked more, hiked more, and played more. I made love more often.

  The seductive online sages, scholars, and muses that joyfully take my curious mind wherever it needs to go, wherever it can imagine going, whenever it wants, are beguiling. All my beloved screens offer infinite, charming, playful, powerful, informative, social windows into global human experience.

  The Internet, the online virtual universe, is my jungle gym, and I swing from bar to bar, learning about how writing can be either isolating or social, about DIY Drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) at a Maker Faire, about where to find a quantified-self meetup, about how to make sach moan sngo num pachok. I can use an image search to look up “hope” or “success” or “play.” I can find a video on virtually anything: I learned how to safely open a young Thai coconut from this Internet of wonder.

  As I stare out my window at the unusually beautiful Seattle weather, I realize I haven’t been out to walk yet today—sweet Internet juices still dripping down my chin. I’ll mind the clock now, so I can emerge back into the physical world.

  The physical world is where I not only see but also feel—a friend’s loving gaze in conversation, the movement of my arms and legs and the breeze on my face as I walk outside, and the company of friends for a game night and potluck dinner. The Internet supports my thinking, and the physical world supports that as well as rich sensing and feeling experiences.

  It’s no accident that we’re a culture increasingly obsessed with the Food Network and farmers’ markets—they engage our senses and bring us together with others.

  How has the Internet changed my thinking? The more I’ve loved and known it, the clearer the contrast, the more intense the tension between a physical life and a virtual life. The Internet stole my body, now a lifeless form hunched in front of a glowing screen. My senses dulled as my greedy mind became one with the global brain we call the Internet.

  I am confident that I can find out about nearly anything online and also confident that in my time offline I can be more fully alive. The only tool I’ve found for this balancing act is intention.

  The sense of contrast between my online and offline lives has turned me back toward prizing the pleasures of the physical world. I now move with more resolve between each of these worlds, choosing one, then the other—surrendering neither.

  Not Everything or Everyone in the World Has a Home on the Internet

  Barry C. Smith

  Professor and director, Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London

  The growth of the Internet has reversed previous assumptions: The private is now public; the local appears globally; information is entertainment; consumers turn into producers; everyone is an expert; the socially isolated become part of an enormous community preferring the virtual to the real. What have all these changes brought about?

  Initially they appear empowering. Everyone can have a say, opinion is democratic, and at a time when natural resources are shrinking and environmental threats require us to limit our emissions, the Internet seems to be an ever
expanding and almost limitless resource. Here, it seems, I discover a parallel world, where neat models replace messy reality, where freedom reigns, where wrongs are righted and fates can be changed. I am cheered by the possibilities.

  However, the truth is that the virtual world grows out of, and ultimately depends on, the one world whose inputs it draws on, whose resources it consumes, and whose flaws it inevitably inherits. I find everything there: the good, the bland, the important, the trivial, the fascinating, and the off-putting. And just as there are crusading writers and eyewitness reporters, there are also cyber lynch mobs, hate-mailers, and stalkers. As more of my information appears on the Net, more use is made of it, for good or for ill. Increasing Internet identity means increasing identity theft, and whatever I have encrypted, hackers will try to decode. So much so that governments and other organizations often restrict their most secure communications to older technologies, even sending scrolled messages in small capsules through pneumatic tubes. This, of course, fuels the suspicions of Internet conspiracy theorists.

  Looking at what have I’ve gained: I now hear from a greater range of different voices, discover new talents with something to say—niche writers, collectors, musicians, and artists. I have access to more books, journal articles, newspapers, TV programs, documentaries, and films. Missed something live? It will be on the Web. The greatest proportion of these individuals and outputs were already offering something interesting or important, to which the Internet gave worldwide access. Here we have ready-made content for the voracious Internet to consume and display.

  But new media have emerged, too, whose content arose for, or on, the Internet. These include blogging, Wikipedia, and YouTube, along with new forms of shared communication, such as Facebook, Google Groups, and Twitter. Will these new forms replace the ready-made contents? It’s unclear. Amid the bread-and-circuses element of the Internet, there is a need for good-quality materials and a means to sort the wheat from the chaff. Garbage in, garbage out, as computer programmers say. It is our choice, some will argue, yet I find myself looking with sheer disbelief, or ironic amusement, at what people have chosen to put up on the Net. The most fascinating are bloggers who provide alternative slices of life. Here we have diarists who desire to be intimate with everyone. Those with a distinctive voice and a good theme have found a following; when worldwide word spreads, the result is usually a contract to publish their output, lightly edited, as a book, which in turn can be read on the Internet.