Are
Twitter and Facebook Affecting How We Think?
Is
constant use of electronic gadgets reshaping our
brains and making our thinking shallower?
By Neil Tweedie
How many times do you click on your email icon in
a day? Or look at
Facebook, or Twitter? And how many
times when reading on the internet do you click on a link
navigating
away from the text that was the original object
of your enquiry? The web, it seems, is like an electronic
sweet shop, forever tempting us in different directions. But
does this mental promiscuity, this tendency
to flit around
online, make us, well, thicker?
Nicholas Carr, the
American Science writer, has mined
this theme for his new book, “The Shallows”, in which he
argues that
new media are not just changing our habits
but our brains. It turns out that the mature human brain
is
not an immutable seat of personality and intellect but a
changeable thing, subject to “neuroplasticity”.
When our
activities alter, so does the architecture of our brain. Tm
not thinking the way I used to think,”
writes Carr. “I feel it
most stronglywhen l’m reading.”
Disponível em: www.telegraph.co.uk. Acesso em: 27 fev. 2012.
Neil Tweedie levanta vários questionamentos
sobre a
utilização de diferentes recursos tecnológicos disponíveis
hoje em dia. A partir desses
questionamentos e dos
argumentos do escritor norte-americano Nicholas Carr, o
texto sugere
que