Shallow thinking

The younger generation is called digital natives, as opposed to us “oldies” who are called the digital immigrants (Mark Prensky, 2001). They are growing up in the information age. The volume of information available at one’s finger-tips, at the click of a mouse is truly mind-boggling. I do not think our human brain is capable of managing all of this information. It will adapt, but over time.

There are a few known facts about the brain. For example, the amount of information arriving at the retina (the actual image-capturing part of the eye) is estimated to be the equivalent of 10 billion bits per second. But, only 10,000 bits per second reach the area of the brain where vision is processed. The brain is made to survey the entire scene and make a quick decision and therefore it tends to leave out many details. It tends to abstract a manageable pattern without worrying about the particular.

It is also known that the brain cannot deal with approximately more than 7 bits of information at a time. Here also, the ability to abstract helps since that gives the brain less number of items to deal with. Indeed, the brain seems to do best when it can compare two items at a time and keep eliminating all the options except one best answer.

In my companion site on “Time for thought”, the emphasis is on how to think for yourself. It is important to learn how to get the most reliable, practical information from this vast amount of good, bad and outright wrong and harmful information. Then you have to think. You have to think carefully, because when there is too much information, the brain tends to be shallow in its analysis. The brain can think deeply, paying attention to all the details, if the information is manageable. But, with too much information, the thinking gets shallower. There is a whole new book on how the internet is changing the way our brain works. It is called The Shallows. (Nicholas Carr, Norton, New York. 2010)

Collect all the information you want. Go for the original and substantiated information. Assign time to look at what you collected. Discord useless, wrong and irrelevant information. Then spend time thinking.