Post CoolCarving up the new frontier of style
1August 2012
Rural>City>CyberspaceThe Biggest Migration In Human History
Anti-Smartphone ToolkitStay away from your phone and get 40 percent off your drinks
中文
R u r a l > City > Cyberspace Nicholas Carr
中文
A series of psychological studies over the past 20 years has revealed
that after spending time in a quiet rural setting, close to nature,
people exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory, and generally
improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper. The
reason, according to attention restoration theory, or ART, is that when
people aren’t being bombarded by external stimuli, their brains can,
in effect, relax. They no longer have to tax their working memories by
processing a stream of bottom-up distractions. The resulting state of
contemplativeness strengthens their ability to control their mind.
RE-POST
>
Migrating into the digital era, are we cognitively more advanced?
The results of the most recent such study were published in
Psychological Science at the end of 2008. A team of University of
Michigan researchers, led by psychologist Marc Berman, recruited
some three dozen people and subjected them to a rigorous and
mentally fatiguing series of tests designed to measure the capacity
of their working memory and their ability to exert top-down control
over their attention. The subjects were divided into two groups. Half
of them spent about an hour walking through a secluded woodland
park, and the other half spent an equal amount of time walking
along busy downtown streets. Both groups then took the tests a
second time. Spending time in the park, the researchers found,
“significantly improved” people’s performance on the cognitive tests,
indicating a substantial increase in attentiveness. Walking in the city,
by contrast, led to no improvement in test results.
The researchers then conducted a similar experiment with another
set of people. Rather than taking walks between the rounds of
testing, these subjects simply looked at photographs of either calm
rural scenes or busy urban ones. The results were the same. The
people who looked at pictures of nature scenes were able to exert
substantially stronger control over their attention, while those who
looked at city scenes showed no improvement in their attentiveness.
“In sum,” concluded the researchers, “simple and brief interactions
with nature can produce marked increases in cognitive control.”
Spending time in the natural world seems to be of “vital importance”
to “effective cognitive functioning.”
There is no Sleepy Hollow on the internet, no peaceful spot where
contemplativeness can work its restorative magic. There is only the
endless, mesmerizing buzz of the urban street. The stimulations of
the web, like those of the city, can be invigorating and inspiring.
R u r a l > City > Cyberspace
中文
August 2012
RE-POST
>
These writers are certainly correct in arguing that we’re being molded
by our new information environment. Our mental adaptability, built
into the deepest workings of our brains, is a keynote of intellectual
history. But if there’s comfort in their reassurances, it’s of a very cold
sort. Adaptation leaves us better suited to our circumstances, but
qualitatively it’s a neutral process. What matters in the end is not
our becoming but what we become. In the 1950s, Martin Heidegger
observed that the looming “tide of technological revolution” could “so
captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking
may someday come to be accepted and practiced as the only way of
thinking.” Our ability to engage in “meditative thinking,” which he
saw as the very essence of our humanity, might become a victim of
headlong progress. The tumultuous advance of technology could, like
the arrival of the locomotive at the Concord station, drown out the
refined perceptions, thoughts, and emotions that arise only through
contemplation and reflection. The “frenziedness of technology,”
Heidegger wrote, threatens to “entrench itself everywhere.”
It may be that we are now entering the final stage of that entrench-
ment. We are welcoming the frenziedness into our souls.
Nicholas Carr is the former
executive editor of the Harvard
Business Review. He is well-known
for his cover article in The Atlantic
which asked, “Is Google Making Us
Stupid?” He explored this question
in more depth in his latest book The
Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing
to Our Brains. Carr lives in Colorado
and blogs at roughtype.com
Excerpted from The Shallows:
What the Internet Is Doing to Our
Brains by Nicholas Carr (c) 2010 by
Nicholas Carr. Used with permission
of the publisher, W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc.
A prominent economist writes, cheerily, that
An Atlantic author suggests that our
“the web allows us to borrow cognitive strengths
from autism and to be better infovores.”
“technology-induced ADD” may be “a short-term
problem,” stemming from our reliance on “cognitive
habits evolved and perfected in an era of limited
information flow.” Developing new cognitive habits
is “the only viable approach to navigating the age of
constant connectivity.”
R u r a l > City > Cyberspace
中文
August 2012
RE-POST
Read more
digital paper
Post CoolCarving up the new frontier of style
1August 2012
Rural>City>CyberspaceThe Biggest Migration In Human History
Anti-Smartphone ToolkitStay away from your phone and get 40 percent off your drinks
中文
R u r a l > City > Cyberspace Nicholas Carr
中文
A series of psychological studies over the past 20
years has revealed that after spending time in a
quiet rural setting, close to nature, people exhibit
greater attentiveness, stronger memory, and
generally improved cognition. Their brains become
both calmer and sharper. The reason, according to
RE-POST
attention restoration theory, or ART, is that when people
aren’t being bombarded by external stimuli, their brains
can, in effect, relax. They no longer have to tax their
working memories by processing a stream of bottom-
up distractions. The resulting state of contemplativeness
strengthens their ability to control their mind.
>
Migrating into the digital era, are we cognitively more advanced?
The results of the most recent such study were
published in Psychological Science at the end
of 2008. A team of University of Michigan
researchers, led by psychologist Marc Berman,
recruited some three dozen people and subjected
them to a rigorous and mentally fatiguing series
of tests designed to measure the capacity of their
working memory and their ability to exert top-
down control over their attention. The subjects were
divided into two groups. Half of them spent about
an hour walking through a secluded woodland
park, and the other half spent an equal amount
of time walking along busy downtown streets.
Both groups then took the tests a second time.
Spending time in the park, the researchers found,
“significantly improved” people’s performance on
the cognitive tests, indicating a substantial increase
in attentiveness. Walking in the city, by contrast, led
to no improvement in test results.
R u r a l > City > Cyberspace
中文
August 2012
RE-POST
The researchers then conducted a similar experiment
with another set of people. Rather than taking walks
between the rounds of testing, these subjects simply
looked at photographs of either calm rural scenes or busy
urban ones. The results were the same. The people who
looked at pictures of nature scenes were able to exert
substantially stronger control over their attention, while
those who looked at city scenes showed no improvement
in their attentiveness. “In sum,” concluded the researchers,
“simple and brief interactions with nature can produce
marked increases in cognitive control.” Spending time
in the natural world seems to be of “vital importance” to
“effective cognitive functioning.”
There is no Sleepy Hollow on the internet, no peaceful
spot where contemplativeness can work its restorative
magic. There is only the endless, mesmerizing buzz of the
urban street. The stimulations of the web, like those of
the city, can be invigorating and inspiring.
>
These writers are certainly correct in arguing
that we’re being molded by our new information
environment. Our mental adaptability, built into
the deepest workings of our brains, is a keynote of
intellectual history. But if there’s comfort in their
reassurances, it’s of a very cold sort. Adaptation
leaves us better suited to our circumstances, but
Nicholas Carr is the former executive editor of the
Harvard Business Review. He is well-known for his
cover article in The Atlantic which asked, “Is Google
Making Us Stupid?” He explored this question in
more depth in his latest book The Shallows: What
the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Carr lives in
A prominent economist writes, cheerily, that
An Atlantic author suggests that our
“the web allows us to borrow cognitive strengths
from autism and to be better infovores.”
“technology-induced ADD” may be “a short-term
problem,” stemming from our reliance on “cognitive
habits evolved and perfected in an era of limited
information flow.” Developing new cognitive habits
is “the only viable approach to navigating the age
of constant connectivity.”
R u r a l > City > Cyberspace
中文
August 2012
RE-POST
Read more
digital paper
qualitatively it’s a neutral process. What matters in the
end is not our becoming but what we become. In the
1950s, Martin Heidegger observed that the looming “tide
of technological revolution” could “so captivate, bewitch,
dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking may
someday come to be accepted and practiced as the only
way of thinking.” Our ability to engage in “meditative
thinking,” which he saw as the very essence of our
humanity, might become a victim of headlong progress.
The tumultuous advance of technology could, like the
arrival of the locomotive at the Concord station, drown
out the refined perceptions, thoughts, and emotions that
arise only through contemplation and reflection. The
“frenziedness of technology,” Heidegger wrote, threatens
to “entrench itself everywhere.”
It may be that we are now entering the final stage of that
entrenchment. We are welcoming the frenziedness into
our souls.
Colorado and blogs at roughtype.com
Excerpted from The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing
to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (c) 2010 by Nicholas Carr.
Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc.