First Source: Carr
Chaya Leverton on Oct 30th 2012
“Although neuroplasticity provides an escape from genetic determinism, a loophole for free thought and free will, it also imposes its own form of determinism on our behavior. As particular circuits in our brain strengthen through the repetition of a physical or mental activity, they begin to transform the activity into a habit. The paradox of neuroplasticity, observed Doidge, is that, for all the mental flexibility it grants us, it can end up locking us into “rigid behaviors.” The chemically triggered synapses that link our neurons program us, in effect to want to keep exercising the circuits they’ve formed” (P.34).
In this quote, Nicholas Carr discusses how technology actually alters our brain activity; as we practice certain activities and behaviors, our brains re-wire to accommodate these new practices. The second quote provides an in-depth example of this phenomenon. Carr discusses the evolution of methods of time telling and how these methods changed the way our brains are wired. In earlier times, people would tell time from sundials, hourglasses, clepsydras, and the position of the sun in the sky, and thus their brains would perceive time as a continuous cyclical flow. They didn’t break up the day into units of time, because that is not how they were trained to experience time. However, when mechanical clocks were invented, people started to experience time as “a series of units of equal duration.” Time was no longer experienced as cyclical and continuous; instead, it was experienced as standardized and fragmented. As we got used to this new technology and experience of time, our brains actually started to re-wire themselves to accommodate these changes.
This idea got me thinking about some other effects technological advancements have on us. According to Carr’s lesson on the history or clocks, it is clear that the process of telling time today is more complex than it was in earlier times. In earlier times, all one needed to do to tell the time was gaze up at the sky and approximate the time based on the position of the sun. As things got more advanced, people would determine the time based on sundials or hourglasses, both still primitive and simple processes that the average person can do on his own from start to finish. Now, however, we tell time from mechanical or digital clocks, both more complex processes than earlier ones that the average person cannot carry out on his own from start to finish. In other words, advanced technology is produced through specialized, multistep processes that the average person cannot claim to be able to do from start to finish; how many of us can say we know how to build a mechanical or digital clock?
What does this mean for us? We live in a world where it’s no longer acceptable to approximate time using simple, pre-tech methods because our brains have become used to this new, standardized way of telling time. This means that now we can no longer rely on ourselves to tell time; instead, we have to rely on others- the people who produce and distribute mechanical and digital clocks. We become less self-sufficient and are forced to rely more on others. I think that the same holds true for many other advancements in technology. Our brains are no longer programmed to use outdated methods for doing basic things, like travelling and writing letters, so we turn to newer methods. But these newer methods are more complex than older methods, so we must rely on others to produce and distribute these technologies for us.