Pay Attention! Or, what is our brain on the Internet?

The Internet has made the world a smaller place. Networking sites such as facebook, twitter, myspace, youtube, tumblr etc. has made talking to people, meeting people, and staying untop of latest news faster and easier. Also search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. has made getting information quick and the type of information endless.
Before the Internet the most common way of meeting people was through personal encounters and small talks. Now in days meeting people is as easy as logging into your social networking site and accepting or sending a friend request. The more people use networking sites the more they meet, talk, and stay in touch with mostly everyone they have ever met. For example when I started using facebook i only had a few friends, which were close and school friends. After having facebook for a few years I now have many more friends then when I started using it, most of them bieng friends i met through facebook. Ive also notice that i have alot of mutual friends with most of my friends. The faster and easier it is to meet people around your area or country the smaller the world gets.

Other issue that has been affecting the U.S for more than decade now would have to be the war in Afghanistan. Since the war began on October 7, 2001 there have been about ninety thousand American soldiers fighting to protection our country. About a thousand and seven hundred American soldiers lives have been lost and about thirteen thousand American soldiers have been wounded. According to CNN over a trillion million dollars have been spent in the war in Afghanistan. Many Americans believe the time has come for us to leave Afghanistan because of the money it is costing us to fight the war, but most importantly because of all the lives that been lost. Others argue it is critical for us to continue fighting in Afghanistan to protect our homeland from anymore terrorist attacks. Clearly the American people are divided when it comes to the war, but one thing is certain we must find a way to reduce our spending in regards to the war because we have spent way too much money fighting this war and it would be almost impossible to keep funding this war at this rate for other ten years.

I remember a couple of days ago, my internet was extremely slow. I did a couple of speedtests and got around 10mbit/500kbit. For some, it’s very fast and for others; like me, it’s extremely slow. I can’t download music, play games online or stream live t.v on my ipad while on Facebook and AIM because my internet bandwidth wasn’t sufficient. In September of 2004, I got my first internet service. It was from AOL, which back then was very popular. Using the 56k modem, I would connect to the internet and download songs at 8kbs a second. It was amazing to me then. Internet seems so fast even though it’s nothing compared to what it is now. While the internet was slow then, my attention span was still pretty good toward things. Now, as time passed and the internet became faster, and more convenient, it’s just hard to focus on everything. What seems like hours is actually minutes when my internet is slow. But this won’t change. The internet will keep getting faster and more accessible. Will this mean our attention spans will decrease more and more as the world advances in technology?

One part that I found interesting was the quote that describes their hopes for Google as “something that understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want”. That reminded me of a speech that I saw on TED.com, there was a man speaking on the problem with search engines , what he called ‘filter bubbles’. A filter bubble is an imaginary profile that Google has of the users computer that gives the user results based on what they have in the past. According to the speaker, although this may seem beneficial it actually limits the user and inhibits the user from expanding his/her range of knowledge.

The example he gave to further illustrate his point involved him and his two friends. He told each of them to Google “Egypt” and to send him screenshots of their results. One of his friends got results on the crisis in Egypt and information on their foreign policy, while the other only got resorts , hotels and tourists sites in Egypt. This  clearly reflects how Google and other search devices “tailor” the result based on who is searching.

The main problem with this is that while one may get information that is relevant to them important things that we should know about is completely invisible to us.

Here is the link to the speech , really interesting.

There are so many people who are against the internet and who believe it’s hurting our attention span and just our overall experience with books and newspapers. Authors and journalists across the world have lost their jobs because of the Internet. I don’t think this is a reason to dislike the internet. The internet does what the authors and journalists do, but ten times better.

The amount of opportunities the Internet provides for new jobs is unlike anything else. While many journalists and authors are losing their jobs because of the internet, millions of other people are finding them. This reminds me of a conversation between my father and me. My father thought i was lazy and would tell me that he used to work at a convenience store when he was in high school and that i should be doing the same. I then told him that I bought wholesale goods and sold them on ebay and made what he made in a month at the convenience store in just a couple of days on the internet. He stopped calling me lazy after that.

What I’m trying to say is that there are both sides at looking at the Internet. There are the haters and then there are the people who take advantage of the internet and use it to flourish. The internet obviously isn’t only good to make money or find jobs. We could do everything on the internet. We could speak to friends who are across the world in matters of seconds. You could video chat with someone you haven’t seen in years with a click of the mouse. The fact that there are people against the internet just confuses me.