Comments on: Can Google Kill Neurons and Rewire Your Whole Brain?

by: Alvaro

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:55:01 +0000

Marcel, Grani, good comments.

Laura, I agree with the impressions you share in your blog (not egocentric at all!), the only favor I would ask is that next time you summarize your key point in your comment, before linking to it, so we don't need to open a separate page to understand what you are talking about. Thank you!

by: laura

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:55:37 +0000

good post - i'm glad you brought the atlantic article up.

i had my own take on it (or rather the whole internet information revolution and how we (i..) deal with it) and while it may seem egocentric, here's the link:

http://psiqueii.blogspot.com/2008/06/reader.html

by: Wednesday Round Up #24 « Neuroanthropology

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:55:53 +0000

[...] Alvaro Fernandez, Can Google Kill Neurons and Rewire Your Whole Brain? A good reaction at Sharp Brains to the neuro-lite The Atlantic Monthly article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? [...]

by: Grani

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 18:07:15 +0000

Good article thank you. Google is good for research but too much time is no good, as it makes your brain lazy. I have found that what you don't use you loose. My brain is rewiring from a big tumor operation. For me brain stimulation is of the utmost importance as this will decide the extent of my disability in the future. In closing Google will only rewire your brain if you allow this to happen. If you have a strong brain, only you are in total control

by: Marcel

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:42:40 +0000

I suspect we are simply losing what we don't exercise. By avoiding books, our book reading brain "muscles" become less agile and useful.

by: Alvaro

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:54:29 +0000

Hello Mistah, as you say, learning any skill does physically alter brain areas involved, but this does not imply it rewires the brain as a whole entity-what the Atlantic article implies-, stopping its abilities to do X, Y, Z (read boooks...) simply because it can now do A, B, C. Otherwise, we couldn´t speak 2 languages at the same time or, even more difficult, deploy different symbolic systems like math and spoken language, or mostly auditory languages (English) and visual/ auditory ones (Chinese).

Will take a look at the link, thank you for the suggestion.

by: mistah charley, ph.d.

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:37:43 +0000

I agree - developing your Googling skill (and there's a whole book/website on it by Nancy Blachman) does not kill neurons, although I think it could plausibly be argued that, like learning any skill, it DOES rewire your brain. Rand Spiro has been writing on how Web 2.0 is post-Gutenbergian (and how Wikipedia is not) - see http://postgutenberg.typepad.com/

by: HNG

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:54:55 +0000

Great post! I totally agree with you. It's the end user that makes the tools tools. If the program was created, would it be considered evil by its own nature if it was not used? No, because it wouldn't exist if noone was using it.

All the best,
H.N.G.