The reading from Nicholas Carr and the relationship between the Internet and attention I found to be extremely true as well as interesting. I would have to agree with almost every point he made and I referred back to myself and how much I do all the things he talked about. I found when we discussed the points further in class I really learned to what degree and severity this is happening in our world. I will talk about the significance of power browsing and cognitive load in our lives in the post below.
Starting off with power browsing, we established this in class to be scanning the text but not reading everything in full depth. I would like to think that everyone does this from time to time. I know personally I do this a lot. I find myself doing this on social media when scanning through the news feed or someones profile. Power browsing makes surfing instagram or twitter so much easier due to the fact you can skip over the things you're less interested in and really focus in on the things you want to see or read about. For example, on Facebook you have those family members or people you don’t know as well as your close friends that you are more interested in. You have a tendency to skip over or not care too much about their posts rather than people more significant to your life. However, this can also be a bad thing. Power browsing can also be having multiple tabs or windows open and not giving your full attention to any of them. Due to this, you could be missing out on vital information or not giving your attention to things that need to be tended to, like your email or responding to someones message. It’s really easy to get distracted or side tracked and I believe power browsing is a component to those things.
Continuing on the negative side of things we see how cognitive load has impacted our brains and how they function. Nicholas Carr and our class discussion distinguished the concept of cognitive load to be the amount of information entering our consciousness at any instant. As I continued my study as to what cognitive load is I learned just how impactful cognitive load is to our memory. When our cognitive load exceeds the limit of our working memory, our intellectual abilities take a hit as well as our memories. Information moves into and out of our mind so quickly that we never gain a good mental grip on it and the content it contains. This would be the explanation as to why you can’t seem to remember the little things or forget them easier. The information we have received vanishes before we have time to intellectually store it. A brain that is overloaded with information can increase in your distractedness from what you initially want to achieve. We begin remembering less and our knowledge as well as the ability to think critically and conceptually weakens. That’s why information overload can truly be a thing and can cause serious consequences.
Overall I found Nicholas Carr reading to be something anyone with social media can relate to. I thought his points lined up so well with the culture and society today, along with how it’s impacting us. I know that personally it might be better for myself to put down the phone a little more often and check social media a little less.
Sources: http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/cognitive-load.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/conversation-nicholas-carrs-the-shallows-what-the-internet-is-doing-to-our-brains/
Further research articles: http://www.nssa.us/tech_journal/volume_2-2/vol2-2_article4.htm
http://theelearningcoach.com/learning/what-is-cognitive-load/
Maggie Grosshans
No comments:
Post a Comment