Question Is Internet ruining our minds?

[ar81]

Do you think this article is on the right track?

Book asks: Is Internet ruining our minds?

 

[Pilot7893]

I may have to agree with him. Ever since I got disconnected from Steam and Xbox Live, I've been doing more schoolwork.

 

[Xyon]

Yes, the question should be "Is the internet ruining our minds?"

 

[dbeachy1]

"Ruining our minds?" Some common uses for the Internet:

1. Telecommuting (working remotely).
2. Communicating with colleagues and friends (e.g., on O-F).
3. EMAIL (who would really want to give up email??)
4. Handling finances (bill payment, bank accounts, etc.)
5. News / information.
6. Research on an infinite variety of topics. Want to know how much lions sleep per day on average? Just Google it and get an answer inside 30 seconds! :thumbup:

Just being able to work remotely saves me 400 minutes (6.6 hours) a week where I am NOT sitting in traffic. A better question might be, "How could we live without the Internet?"

 

[T.Neo]

Yes and no, but it depends on what you do on the internet. The internet isn't going to rot your brain any more than watching television will...

Perhaps the most important aspect of the internet from my experience is the ability to research things quickly- something that cannot be done with books.

"How could we live without the Internet?"

It is possible for the unfortunate people that don't have the internet.

It certainly makes things a whole lot easier though.

 

[Shadow Addict]

It's a blessing and a curse. In my personal experience alone, the Internet has helped me learn a lot of things. Without the communities and resources I've found on the Internet, I wouldn't be aware of spaceflight or programming, two things I really love. It has its social benefits, too, though those pale in comparison to the amount of time wasted on a social website. And I have wasted a lot of time on the Internet, and I still do, and it's terrible. It's a great tool in moderation, but I don't seem to have the willpower for that kind of moderation.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

The question is, more likely, it destroying our BODIES through lack of exercise and physical experience, because used properly, it can only be GOOD for our MINDS.

Perhaps they mean it is mentally addictive? So is chess, for some people. I still vote NO, nonetheless. These scaremongers have always been around. Almost everything of technology that makes our lives easier today was once the object of an attack by some group of past principles devotees saying "Oh! This will destroy our family values / will take over the world..." etcetera, etcetera.

Piffle...

 

[eveningsky339]

No.

 

[Kevon Daye]

I think it's more what we put into it. Garbage in, Garbage out. If there were more site like O-F out there ( and more games like orbiter), maybe test scores would go up.

More than that it's about the individual. The moron who sits there watching MTV and posting crap like "Yeah...MTV." on his Facebook page every five minutes is going to be more socially (and mentally) inept than say someone who watches the History channel and spends more time researching things on Wiki (useful things). But, hey, at least they'll know whenever Lady Gaga takes a crap right. That's what really counts in life.

 

[Izack]

Think about who you're asking to this question to.
This is a spaceflight/sim discussion board full of aerospace/computer science enthusiasts. What do you think the overwhelming answer will be? :lol:

 

[AirSimming]

I know people who don't even have an email address and not even a computer at home because they simply don't feel the need for it. I personally don't own a cell phone because I don't feel the need for it. And if space flight and aviation would not be my hobby, I would easily live without the internet as well. It is a widespread fallacy that living without modern communication media is not possible or lets say enjoyable. But it is certainly true that the internet is running a lot of peoples minds. But those people would find something else that would run their minds anyway

 

[Ghostrider]

"Ruining our minds?" Some common uses for the Internet:

1. Telecommuting (working remotely).
2. Communicating with colleagues and friends (e.g., on O-F).
3. EMAIL (who would really want to give up email??)
4. Handling finances (bill payment, bank accounts, etc.)
5. News / information.
6. Research on an infinite variety of topics. Want to know how much lions sleep per day on average? Just Google it and get an answer inside 30 seconds! :thumbup:

Just being able to work remotely saves me 400 minutes (6.6 hours) a week where I am NOT sitting in traffic. A better question might be, "How could we live without the Internet?"

Ready, Normal People? Let me hear it!

The Internet is for Porn
The Internet is for Porn
All these guys unzip their files
For Porn, porn porn

The Internet is for Porn
The Internet is for Porn
Why d'ya think the Net was born?
Porn, porn, porn!

'nuff said.

 

[Andy44]

The internet, in my experience, seems to be a blessing in most respects, but the availability of it and the conditioning of users to get things in bite-size proportions tends to lessen your ability to concentrate.

I usually have my laptop on while I'm watching TV, and I can't get through a half-hour TV show without getting distracted and browsing OF or checking my email or playing a game or looking something up on imdb or whatever.

The short attention span becomes a habit that affects my ability to read and study at work for more than 15 minutes at a time.

Either that or I'm just getting old. Or maybe its...what were we talking about again? I gotta go check my gmail...

 

[Urwumpe]

Short: No. Just like the railroad didn't kill us by traveling faster than 30 mph.

Such books are, in my eyes, deepest culture pessimism and written by people who have absolutely no healthy relation to the Internet themselves.

I just have access problems with my Internet, which really gives me a bad feeling - not about not having the Internet, but about such ordinary things as: No being able to check a online game, not being able to order some books online, not being able to read a MIL-STD standard online. That annoys you, but is sure no sign of my brain getting bad. It is a sign of the data being stored in a different medium and communication happening over a different medium.

People who write such stupid books should not label it about the harm of the internet, but about their own failure to gain the required technology competence to handle it.

Cars also require a lot of technology competence when you switch to it from a bike, and since you can kill people with a car and incompetence, you need a drivers license to prevent the biggest problems. Maybe you should have a drivers license for the internet as well, but I personally fear the other implications of limiting access to public communication and information - the Internet is the newspaper of the early times of democracy, you need it for being citizens today.

 

[Notebook]

The internet, in my experience, seems to be a blessing in most respects, but the availability of it and the conditioning of users to get things in bite-size proportions tends to lessen your ability to concentrate.

I usually have my laptop on while I'm watching TV, and I can't get through a half-hour TV show without getting distracted and browsing OF or checking my email or playing a game or looking something up on imdb or whatever.

The short attention span becomes a habit that affects my ability to read and study at work for more than 15 minutes at a time.

Either that or I'm just getting old. Or maybe its...what were we talking about again? I gotta go check my gmail...

Abdy44, could you precis this please? Got part way through, lost my place
, fed the cat, came back, couldn't remember what thread I was reading...

N.

 

[Face]

I wouldn't want to say that it is ruining our minds, more like slowly changing them.

I noticed for myself, that e.g. attention span is getting shorter. In addition, there is less urge to learn something up to a point where you can recite it easily, because you know that there is "information on your finger-tips". Google and Wikipedia is becoming something like a brain-extension.

I don't think you can paint this change in black and white to judge it to be good or evil, so at least the term "to ruin" is something I won't agree with.

regards,
Face

 

[garyw]

The question is, more likely, it destroying our BODIES through lack of exercise and physical experience, because used properly, it can only be GOOD for our MINDS.

Like anything, some will take it too far and I'll admit that I spend a LOT of time online. I check emails on my phone when I'm waiting in a queue or waiting for Krys to pick out the right pair of shoes but I also excercise a fair bit and will continue to do so.

I'm really with dbeachy1 on this, as an IT person I need the internet and as a semi-sensible person I know when to take a break.

 

[RisingFury]

For myself I can say a distinct no.

This year I've been staying at my university appartment with no net. Got net only when I returned back home on weekends... and I'm still alive.

 

[Ark]

Every time something new comes out and completely revolutionizes our culture, a bunch of conservative ignorant old people have to complain about how it's destroying society. Cars, Elvis, the Beatles, computers, and everything in between. The truth is that society isn't being "destroyed" at all, it's just changing away from what you were comfortable with.

 

[Moach]

hmm, lets see...

i would have never learned programming if there weren't the internet.... thus, i would not have a job, hence, poverty...

hmm... also, the hours of fascinated clicking and multi-tabbed browsing of wikipedia has given my mind quite some good exercise... it'd be much harder to do that with books, that you'd need to check out from a library, and search "manually" for whatever you wanna know... not quite as compatible with my impatient curiosity as wikipedia is...


ppl, who say the internet is bad for the brain either don't really understand it or are trying to keep physical book sales up... of course there's boatloads of mindless stupidity out there... but come to think of it, there was already a bunch of that before the internet came around (how on earth did we live back then)


i find it hard to have patience with ppl who say things like "oh, the world is so more violent nowadays..." - i'm sure there were much more terrible things happening in periods like the dark ages or the times of gengis khan... we probably have it pretty easy, in comparison