I could hardly imagine changing the way I live when it comes to Internet and media consumption. But now, it seems I will have to. It became so much more difficult to determine what sort of information I actually need from the stream offered to me every single day. Recently,

I’ve read about the study of David Chalmers who captured and analyzed modern behaviors of people on the Internet. After reading his work – I have no choice but implement some changes in my life…

“Life on the network is tearing neural connections in our brain” -he says.  Piling endless digital “to do” lists and bookmarks in enormous folder tree, becomes truly nothing else but quasi-intellectual masturbation. The truth is that I would never get back to this what I left to study later on. There’s just way too much stuff and not enough time during the day (and night).

This naive sensation of research making, while being flooded with information we try to digest is in fact analyzed much slower than we think what causes our brain to re-purpose itself in order to catch up with our ambitious demands. Brain cells luckily remain intact, but just change their principle as skimming and endless searching and then finding becomes slowly – “new learning” – as we outsource our memory to “the cloud”.

Since we know where the answer is, we don’t need to have it in our internal memory anymore. Especially since Internet is nowadays “always” there in our pocket.

David conducted plenty of studies on how linking, interruptions, distractions, media multitasking, divide our attention. Deep thinking processes go along with the act of paying attention. That’s how we create links in our own brain based database. It’s the only way to enrich our own mind. Even when we process this knowledge, we would never use it in a way we potentially could.

There is no way or point in dividing good from bad aspect as all this what enriches us is also what’s leading us in to what we’re not. Another words, over time, online data becomes not just a supplement, but replacement. Modern perception of our own brains shapes itself in to the idea of hard drive. Our memory is nothing like it however. It’s something way more sophisticated. It works on organic principles creating network of connections with very distinctive and on very personal level. That’s how we get distinctive intellect. Information becomes something more than utilitarian resource. Having all that in us, we gain an interest that cannot be acquired from just consuming the data. In fact it seems that we shouldn’t be writing or recording anything at all, as our memory is where we live. As we have moved from oral society to written society e have lost ability that we have no idea about anymore. Same transition may occur as we move to the model of outsourced brain. Lets just hope that what we have gained from writing and reading paid of, same way as our further transitions may bring…

“The key idea is that when bits of the environment are hooked up to your cognitive system in the right way, they are, in effect, part of the mind, part of the cognitive system. So, say I’m rearranging Scrabble tiles on a rack. This is very close to being analogous to the situation when I’m doing an anagram in my head. In one case the representations are out in the world, in the other case they’re in here. We say doing an anagram on a rack ought to be regarded as a cognitive process, a process of the mind, even though it’s out there in the world.”

This is where the iPhone comes in, as a more contemporary example of how the extended mind works.

A whole lot of my cognitive activities and my brain functions have now been uploaded into my iPhone. It stores a whole lot of my beliefs, phone numbers, addresses, whatever. It acts as my memory for these things. It’s always there when I need it.

David Chalmers even claims it holds some of his desires.

“I have a list of all of my favorite dishes at the restaurant we go to all the time in Canberra. I say, OK, what are we going to order? Well, I’ll pull up the iPhone—these are the dishes we like here. It’s the repository of my desires, my plans. There’s a calendar, there’s an iPhone calculator, and so on. It’s even got a little decision maker that comes up, yes or no.”

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I could hardly imagine changing the way I live when it comes to Internet and media consumption. But now, it seems I will have to. It became so much more...