Latest Obsession: The Internet

As of lately, I've become a Barnes and Noble bum. I secretly mark books I have no intention of buying and continue to return to begin reading where I left off. The book I am currently mooching off is "The Shallows" By Nicholas Carr. It is about how the Internet is affecting our brains, and if the internet is making us 'dumber'. Reading this book makes me feel not so alone.

These past couple years I've started noticing a change in my self. An inability to sit down and read a whole entire book. The majority of the knowledge that I acquire is through magazines (i.e. The Atlantic, and The Economist) and the Internet. The new style of journalism is quick, fast, and easy. Our wants as consumers don't necessarily have to do with 'quality' but more with 'quantity.' Let's see how many things we can learn in the shortest time possible without having to read too much. So essentially (and not intentionally) generation x, my generation (y), and the one to follow are being bred to be 'scanners'.
Now, technically, by the United States standards I am an adult, and by puberty standards, I'm starting to wind down and will probably be 100% done by next year. What used to be common among the scientific field is that once adulthood was reached our brains stopped growing. They were no longer rewiring and growing. But due to experimentation and research, this common knowledge is being proved false. An experiment was conducted with five monkeys where a researcher (his name slips my mind) would cut open their skull and use a probe to mess up their neurons. What this did was mess up their nerves so when you would touch the end of their finger it would signal the brain that the middle of the finger was receiving the stimulation. Now with previous knowledge, one would assume the brain and nerves or now damaged for essentially ever. A couple weeks later the researcher touches the fingertips of the monkeys again and the brains have corrected the issue and now the right part is being registered as touched. If the monkeys don't convince you enough (because the fact their monkeys means well their animals and it couldn't possibly relate to us) there has been revolutionary physical therapy where someone who has lost the ability to use the left side of their brain, thus, numbing the left side of their body has through intensive therapy rerouted the neurons so that the left side of the body could respond once again. We as humans are very adaptable and we can gain lost abilities (though of course, hard work)

This is as far as I've gotten in the book. It just worries me how this abundance of technology is going to affect us in the future. It is already worrisome how it is affecting us now. English professors are complaining that people who plan on majoring in english aren't reading the books. It's obviously not technologies in itselfs fault that we are abusing it, but it makes me think of the two books "1984" and "Brave New World. The similarity of these two books are the fact that they give us an idea of a negative utopia and how they'll be our downfall. The difference is the fact that "1984" talks of oppression (from the government) destroying us while "Brave New World" shows how our pleasure seeking will be our oppressor. For the longest time I've heard how 1984 called it, George Orwell knew what was up. It seems though Huxley had a better idea of how it is all going to go down. Our apathy and our obsession with pleasure will destroy us.

Well, I'll have more to say once I have read some more. Every time that I do gives me a little bit of fire. So, happy reading and goodnight. :)