网络让你变傻了吗？
- wangzh -
作者: NICHOLAS CARR 免责声明
The Roman philosopher Seneca may have put it best 2,000 years
ago: "To be everywhere is to be nowhere." Today, the
Internet grants us easy access to unprecedented amounts of information.
But a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the
Net, with its constant distractions and interruptions, is also
turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers.
罗马哲学家Seneca2000年前的一句名言说得好，“遍地皆是等于一无所有”.如今，互联网是我们能够能以很简单的方式获得数量史无前例的信息。然而越来越多的科学证据表明，互联网，由于其固有的分心与打断特性，正在是我们变得变得无法专心和肤浅起来。
The picture emerging from the research is deeply troubling,
at least to anyone who values the depth, rather than just the
velocity, of human thought. People who read text studded with
links, the studies show, comprehend less than those who read
traditional linear text. People who watch busy multimedia presentations
remember less than those who take in information in a more sedate
and focused manner. People who are continually distracted by
emails, alerts and other messages understand less than those
who are able to concentrate. And people who juggle many tasks
are less creative and less productive than those who do one
thing at a time.
这个由研究的来结论真是一件麻烦事情，起码对于那些更看重思维的深度而不是速度的人来说，尤其如此。研究表明，那些通过网络连接来实现阅读的人，对于信息的领悟完全不及那些通过纸质媒体阅读的人。而学习频繁的多变的多媒体演示的效果也远远不如镇定与集中精力的阅读。频繁被email，和各种提醒消息分心的人对于事件的理解也不如专心致志地处理一件事情的人。同时处理多件事情的人其创造力和效率都不如专心于一件事情的人。
The common thread in these disabilities is the division of
attention. The richness of our thoughts, our memories and even
our personalities hinges on our ability to focus the mind and
sustain concentration. Only when we pay deep attention to a
new piece of information are we able to associate it "meaningfully
and systematically with knowledge already well established in
memory," writes the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist
Eric Kandel. Such associations are essential to mastering complex
concepts.
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对于这些能力的缺失，共性就是我们被分心了。我们思想的丰富程度，记忆力的强弱甚至人格特征都是和我们关注一件事情注意力的集中程度密切相关的。只有能够全神贯注地关心眼前的新信息，我们才能够把这段信息“系统地有意义地”我们记忆中已经建立起来的额知识相关联”，诺贝尔得主、神经学家Eric
Kandel写道。这种关联对于理解一些复杂的概念非常重要。
When we're constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend
to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and
expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness
to our thinking. We become mere signal-processing units, quickly
shepherding disjointed bits of information into and then out
of short-term memory.
当我们的注意力被不断地分散打断，就像我们上网的时候，我们的大脑将无法建立强大可扩展的神经元连接来实现无法思维的独创性。刺死我们不过仅仅是一个信号处理单元，把支离破碎的信息吸收进然后又赶出短暂的记忆中。
In an article published in Science last year, Patricia Greenfield,
a leading developmental psychologist, reviewed dozens of studies
on how different media technologies influence our cognitive
abilities. Some of the studies indicated that certain computer
tasks, like playing video games, can enhance "visual literacy
skills," increasing the speed at which people can shift
their focus among icons and other images on screens. Other studies,
however, found that such rapid shifts in focus, even if performed
adeptly, result in less rigorous and "more automatic"
thinking.
去年《自然》杂志的一片文章里，心里学家Patricia Greenfield回顾了一些关于各种不同的媒体技术是如何影响人的认识能力的文章。一些案例显示，一些计算机任务，如玩视频游戏，可以增强人的“视觉识别技巧”，能够提升人们在屏幕上不同的图像之间注意力切换的速度。其他一些案例，表明这种类型的注意力转换、即便非常熟练，也仍然缺乏精度行，并且并且更像是自动化思维。
In one experiment conducted at Cornell University, for example,
half a class of students was allowed to use Internet-connected
laptops during a lecture, while the other had to keep their
computers shut. Those who browsed the Web performed much worse
on a subsequent test of how well they retained the lecture's
content. While it's hardly surprising that Web surfing would
distract students, it should be a note of caution to schools
that are wiring their classrooms in hopes of improving learning.
康奈尔大学做过一项实验，比如说，上课时在一个班级中给一半的学生使用能够联网的笔记本，另一半关掉电脑。在课后的测试中发现那些能够上网的人表现的更糟。上网可以使学生分心，这一点毫不奇怪，这对那些给教室提供网络以改进教学的学校而言可算是一个值得三思的问题。
Ms. Greenfield concluded that "every medium develops some
cognitive skills at the expense of others." Our growing
use of screen-based media, she said, has strengthened visual-spatial
intelligence, which can improve the ability to do jobs that
involve keeping track of lots of simultaneous signals, like
air traffic control. But that has been accompanied by "new
weaknesses in higher-order cognitive processes," including
"abstract vocabulary, mindfulness, reflection, inductive
problem solving, critical thinking, and imagination." We're
becoming, in a word, shallower.
在这些并非虚夸的文章中，我们还是能发现一点有价值的东西的，比如说在汽车的到的，对于老张来说，这简直就是挑衅了,明白了这些道理，那么对于下面发生的事情也就真的不难理解了。于是就有一个令人绝望的结论等在这里。由谁去承担这些苦痛？
In another experiment, recently conducted at Stanford University's
Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab, a team
of researchers gave various cognitive tests to 49 people who
do a lot of media multitasking and 52 people who multitask much
less frequently. The heavy multitaskers performed poorly on
all the tests. They were more easily distracted, had less control
over their attention, and were much less able to distinguish
important information from trivia.
The researchers were surprised by the results. They had expected
that the intensive multitaskers would have gained some unique
mental advantages from all their on-screen juggling. But that
wasn't the case. In fact, the heavy multitaskers weren't even
good at multitasking. They were considerably less adept at switching
between tasks than the more infrequent multitaskers. "Everything
distracts them," observed Clifford Nass, the professor
who heads the Stanford lab.
It would be one thing if the ill effects went away as soon
as we turned off our computers and cellphones. But they don't.
The cellular structure of the human brain, scientists have discovered,
adapts readily to the tools we use, including those for finding,
storing and sharing information. By changing our habits of mind,
each new technology strengthens certain neural pathways and
weakens others. The cellular alterations continue to shape the
way we think even when we're not using the technology.
The pioneering neuroscientist Michael Merzenich believes our
brains are being "massively remodeled" by our ever-intensifying
use of the Web and related media. In the 1970s and 1980s, Mr.
Merzenich, now a professor emeritus at the University of California
in San Francisco, conducted a famous series of experiments on
primate brains that revealed how extensively and quickly neural
circuits change in response to experience. When, for example,
Mr. Merzenich rearranged the nerves in a monkey's hand, the
nerve cells in the animal's sensory cortex quickly reorganized
themselves to create a new "mental map" of the hand.
In a conversation late last year, he said that he was profoundly
worried about the cognitive consequences of the constant distractions
and interruptions the Internet bombards us with. The long-term
effect on the quality of our intellectual lives, he said, could
be "deadly."
What we seem to be sacrificing in all our surfing and searching
is our capacity to engage in the quieter, attentive modes of
thought that underpin contemplation, reflection and introspection.
The Web never encourages us to slow down. It keeps us in a state
of perpetual mental locomotion.
It is revealing, and distressing, to compare the cognitive
effects of the Internet with those of an earlier information
technology, the printed book. Whereas the Internet scatters
our attention, the book focuses it. Unlike the screen, the page
promotes contemplativeness.
Reading a long sequence of pages helps us develop a rare kind
of mental discipline. The innate bias of the human brain, after
all, is to be distracted. Our predisposition is to be aware
of as much of what's going on around us as possible. Our fast-paced,
reflexive shifts in focus were once crucial to our survival.
They reduced the odds that a predator would take us by surprise
or that we'd overlook a nearby source of food.
To read a book is to practice an unnatural process of thought.
It requires us to place ourselves at what T. S. Eliot, in his
poem "Four Quartets," called "the still point
of the turning world." We have to forge or strengthen the
neural links needed to counter our instinctive distractedness,
thereby gaining greater control over our attention and our mind.
读书的过程其实是经历一次非同寻常的思想历程的过程。要求我们能够像艾略特在《》一书中写的那样“”。
It is this control, this mental discipline, that we are at
risk of losing as we spend ever more time scanning and skimming
online. If the slow progression of words across printed pages
damped our craving to be inundated by mental stimulation, the
Internet indulges it. It returns us to our native state of distractedness,
while presenting us with far more distractions than our ancestors
ever had to contend with.
—Nicholas Carr is the author, most recently, of "The Shallows:
What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains."
2010-06-09 19:12:45
flowingwater.culog.cn
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