Can You Use the Internet and Mobile Phones to Rewire Your Brain?

Email, search engines, social networking sites, text messaging, blogging, twitter, web-based phones, GPS, playing/making music/videos, taking and instantly sharing pictures and a slew of other technological capabilities have become widely available thanks to the internet, mobile phones and other hand-held gadgets.   These new ways of creating, finding, sharing and using information are so powerful and pervasive that they are transforming how we learn, make-decisions, collaborate creatively and do many other brain-intense activities.

Some argue that they make us smarter or dumber. For example, the Atlantic Magazine article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?  triggered a firestorm of discussion.  Fortunately, the answer is no. Google and using search engines actually makes us smarter! Others take the point further and argue that the collective effect of all these technologies is driving a rewiring of our brains on a basic level. For a good introduction to this type of argument check out the book, Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind.

The book’s theme is controversial but the authors do a great job outlining the specific technologies and their likely impact on boosting or dowsing cognitive performance. This is just the kind of information we will be covering in the Next Brain Blog. I will look at each claim and recommendation in later posts.

In the meantime, I am interested to hear reader stories on how the internet or mobile computing is being used to improve cognitive performance and build a better and longer-lasting brain.