"Nicholas Carr asks anxiously if “Google is making us stupid”, the Internet “altering the way we think to make us less capable of digesting large and complex amounts of information, such as books and magazine articles”.
A better question would be to ask if the elaborate articulation of messages doesn’t run against the inevitable acceleration of life and culture introduced by electricity since the advent of the telegraph.
All rhythms of life and learning have been completely altered by a rapid succession of ground-changing technologies including the telephone, radio, television, personal computers, the Internet, cellular phones and mobile technologies in general.
A short attention span may not imply a poor attention, but rather a quick one.
In simple terms the Augmented Mind is the mind, such as we know it (or think we know it) inside our heads, but externalized, shared, multiplied, accelerated, random accessed and generally processed connectively outside our heads.
The functions that we all thought were exclusively internal to us, like memory, that is the active recalling of anything, and imagination, that is the creation of images inside our heads, are actually emigrating to screens outside our heads, there to serve new purposes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Derrick de Kerckhove, Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology since 1983, is a Full Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto, cross-appointed at the Faculty of Information Studies and the Knowledge Media Design Institute. He was an associate of the Centre for Culture and Technology from 1972 to 1980 and worked with Marshall McLuhan for over ten years as translator, assistant and co-author.
«In De Kerckhove theory each technology is depicted as a brainframe as well as a new skin for our culture». [Diana Corati & Francesco Fumarola]
A better question would be to ask if the elaborate articulation of messages doesn’t run against the inevitable acceleration of life and culture introduced by electricity since the advent of the telegraph.
All rhythms of life and learning have been completely altered by a rapid succession of ground-changing technologies including the telephone, radio, television, personal computers, the Internet, cellular phones and mobile technologies in general.
A short attention span may not imply a poor attention, but rather a quick one.
In simple terms the Augmented Mind is the mind, such as we know it (or think we know it) inside our heads, but externalized, shared, multiplied, accelerated, random accessed and generally processed connectively outside our heads.
The functions that we all thought were exclusively internal to us, like memory, that is the active recalling of anything, and imagination, that is the creation of images inside our heads, are actually emigrating to screens outside our heads, there to serve new purposes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Derrick de Kerckhove, Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology since 1983, is a Full Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto, cross-appointed at the Faculty of Information Studies and the Knowledge Media Design Institute. He was an associate of the Centre for Culture and Technology from 1972 to 1980 and worked with Marshall McLuhan for over ten years as translator, assistant and co-author.
«In De Kerckhove theory each technology is depicted as a brainframe as well as a new skin for our culture». [Diana Corati & Francesco Fumarola]
