Turn off your phone; Turn off your brain (in a good way)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/technology/25brain.html?pagewanted=1&ref=homepage&src=me

An early skirmish in the upcoming battle between neuroScience and Technology: constant occupation with electronic media is affecting our brains' ability to process information.

There is a great Radiolab segment which illustrates the basic bit of science behind this article: your brain needs time to process new information and it does so by basically re-running the experience in downtime, mostly sleep but probably other times when it isn't engaged. Pretty sure it's somewhere in the episode "Sleep." Where as a computer can take information and store it straight to the hard drive, the Brain basically stores it in a buffer where it must go through processing and reprocessing in order to be store with any sense of permanency. Now, smartphones and the ubiquity of LCD screens with Fox News or TLC or other garbage have led us to develop habits that hamper the brains ability to go into this processing mode.

The article claims that this constant occupation with stimuli is even going so far as to make us more tired. The subjects who provide quotes for the articles are the classic rats in the lab who shock themselves silly with pleasure, even at the expense of food and water, but with a twist: their quotes show them as completely aware of what they are doing - says one subject, "It’s become a demand [...] a demand of my head, I told my girlfriend that I’m more tired since I got this [Blackberry].” People are now willing to submit themselves to constant electronic stimulation - by way of smartphone rather than direct shock - even at the expense of generally feeling well.

The real question is why do people feel the need to fill what once used to be stand-alone activities with digital snippets (the funniest part of the article by far is how the cable went out at a health club and people went ape shit about it). Exercise is a particularly good example; as a Runner I feel very strongly about this. At the lowest level we have people who need to go with other people and chat while they run - this I can at least understand. Then there are the misdemeanor offenders who can't go for a jog without their iPod. Finally, we have those who cannot go for a run if it is not in a health club, on a treadmill, while they watch something on TV - a crime which deserves capital punishment. I think this has something to do with This Modern Life, where we know we should be doing certain things that we don't actually care for. Then again, I am open to the possibility that people really really enjoy "running with an iPod" as an activity that is somehow different than simply "running". I was somehow going to end up with a comment on the democratization of information, but I forget how I was going to get there.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless Blackberry.