Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future

Edge Question

by John Brockman

Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Chris Anderson, Nassim Taleb, Esther Dyson, Brian Eno and nearly 150 other intellectual rock stars reveal how the internet is changing our minds, culture, and future, in John Brockman’s latest compendium from Harper Perennial and Edge.org.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Psychology, Technology, Essays, Internet, Philosophy

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

John Brockman is an American literary agent and author specializing in scientific literature. He established the Edge Foundation, an organization that brings together leading edge thinkers across a broad range of scientific and technical fields.

He is author and editor of several books, including: The Third Culture (1995); The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2000 Years (2000); The Next Fifty Years (2002) and The New Humanists (2003).

He has the distinction of being the only person to have been profiled on Page One of the "Science Times" (1997) and the "Arts & Leisure" (1966), both supplements of The New York Times.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The following review was written with a certain amount of sleep deprivation. I should have waited to either write the review and/or post it. I say a few things that I think are more inflammatory than they should have been, I might or might not write a more coherent review / edit this one in the near future. Or not. I'll erase this preamble if I ever go through with making myself sound like less of a tard than I currently do in this review.
Months ago I wrote a review where I talked about science being only one narrative among many in making up the world. A small fight broke out in the comment section and I bowed out of the fight without saying what I wanted to, partially because I was at work at the time and when I got home a mere 7 or so hours later in internet time the moment had passed and it didn't seem appropriate to stir up the waters again, and partially because I was still thinking about what I wanted to say. As a slight aside I'm fairly certain that one person on goodreads dropped me as a friend because of my heresy in demoting science to a 'mere' narrative. Whatever.

But to return to the argument it was mostly between David and MFSO. At one point MFSO accused me of creating a straw man (I did), and said that most scientists don't think in the limited way that I was portraying them (or actually maybe as David was, fuck, I should go read the old review, and maybe put a link here, be right back.... ok here is the review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), whatever, if you want you can read the back and forth between the two of them with my very limited engagement if you want to have the context of what I'm talking about here.

This review is going to be sort of what I might have said that day if I continued with the argument. I had actually just started reading this book back then, and some of the ideas were fresh in my mind. Actually I should have been reading this book instead of wasting my time reading that stupid New Age book I found in my bedroom at my parents house.

Actually maybe it's not going to be. Maybe I'll come back to this argument later on, but for now I'll sum up a larger thought in a simpler manner than I'd like (because I'm daunted by getting everything I'm thinking down in a coherent manner), the scientific thinking that I was critiquing isn't in Scientists, but in people who have turned over a fanatical belief in say God or philosophy for the warm embrace and reassurance of science. It's the people who believe that science can give a quick remedy and happiness to life in the popping of a daily pill of venlafaxine. Of people who wield and submit to statistics about everything and base the way they see the world from them. People who blindly trust and believe in what they think is holy writ coming from some ivory tower Mt. Sinai. The idiots who believed in Y2K because some authority figure told them it would be so. Everyone with very strong pro and con opinions about global warming who take their opinions from whichever 'scientific' camp they prefer the sound-bite of but who have never gone to see what the actual data is or what is really being said, and I could keep on running off examples on and on and on......

And I would even add anyone who has it on the authority of some scientist that the internet is changing (or not) the way we think, our attention spans or dumbing us down or making us smarter.....

What I've learned (been reminded of might be a better term) from this book is that scientists have many different perspectives, they are living beings with their own experiences and their own prejudices and interests. I've also learned that no one knows what the internet is doing to our thinking, and that in the space of ten pages you can have one scientist saying how she believes the sustained use of it will modify some of the brain's structures and then have Steven Pinker say the exact opposite, that the internet won't change our brains in a physical way. This book is filled with optimists and pessimists. Former writers who screamed the praise of the internet back in Wired during the 90's now see it as a frightening thing. Daniel Dennet writes about how it has robbed him of his productivity, other writers scream praises about how it allows them to be more productive in their professional lives and get work done that would have been impossible without the wonders of access to all that information. Some wish they could turn off the constant barrage of connectivity and others write about the lengths they go to stay connected at all times. And these are all (generally) very smart and informed people and they are (mostly) writing about themselves, and they don't agree at all about the question of what the internet is doing to them. So many different viewpoints is fucking awesome, it shows that the nay-sayers who see the internet as some kind of great homogenizer into a mass intellectual groupthink hive when it comes to the future of scientific thought couldn't be farther off the mark, there is a great big world of differing thoughts and they are all in one way or another poking around at this massively great big world of information from their own vantage points to continue moving forward, or just getting stuck reading too many celebrity gossip columns online, but all bringing something personal to the way they view this monster that is the internet.

I also learned that the close minded entries in this book all seemed to come from the 'creative' sector. Some of the novelists, artists and musicians (not all though) were the ones with the very limited 'scientific' view (even if it was a very negative version of it), or who mistakenly took their own opinions as a gospel of sorts (ok, there were a few scientists too who seemed to mistake their own viewpoint and experiences with the internet as being indicative of the whole, a couple who see the interent (as in one essay) as a giant structure that raises the awareness of environmental issues. Yeah maybe the internet does that, but I think that is in one small corner of the interent among people whose main interest is environmental issues, it would be like me saying that the internet is a great big structure that brings more book reviews written by non-professional book reviewers into the world just because for me that is my main preoccupation with the internet, or the guy who thinks of the internet as a giant structure for engaging in fantasy baseball.... you get the point though). Most of the essays that annoyed me were by the people who I should have been sympathetic with, those that come from the humanities world. But even those essays usually gave me something to think about. Every essay actually helped spark some idea, made me mull over some stuff in my head, or sent me on some tangential idea. This book is awesome for that.

My only (real) complaint about the book is that it is like the internet itself to me, it's too fucking overwhelming. I could only read a handful of essays at a time before I got overwhelmed with all the viewpoints and everything got messy in my head. In order to think about what I'd read I'd have to stop reading, and sometimes the book scared me and I'd avoid it because there was just too much stimulation in it. I get overwhelmed just as easily by the internet.

My only other complaint (ok, there are two, this one is really pedantic though) is that the majority of the essays didn't answer the question. The question was "Is the Internet changing the way you think?", but most of the responses were more like an answer to "How is the internet effecting your life?", or "How is the internet influencing you?". The word thinking got thrown around a lot in essays but very few really focused on what is thinking and how is the thinking being changed or not changed. The word was being very casually used, and it was kind of being used at times like a synonym for any number of things, of which actual thinking may or may not have been really related to.

I'd recommend people read this book but even though there were requests for my copy I'm going to decline lending it out. My own copy has too much marginalia and it's embarrassing to me to lend out books that I've marked up.

Appendix
My answer to the question, feel free to answer it yourself.

I'm going to be like most of the writers in this book and not focus on my actual thinking, or thought process. I think that the way I generate thoughts and how I go about thinking is roughly the same as before I used the internet. I still have the same over-thinking and anxiety inducing shit running through my head. As far as being a distraction, yes it is, but it's one that overwhelms me and when I get overwhelmed by it I just ignore it and go on to something else. I find it much less distracting than TV, and it doesn't bombard me with the overflow of information and stimulation that watching quick edited commercials or MTV used to. There is more content, an immense amount more a few keystrokes away, on the internet but there is no one deciding the pace I have to be absorbing it. I read or view what I want when I want to, I can pause on the internet. I feel no compulsion to answer an email right away. I very very rarely open up a chat program so there is no 'real-time' communication going on between me and anyone generally when I'm online. I sometimes wish I felt more of a compulsion to keep up with things going on in the internet world I'm a part of, but I make my own tradeoffs between seeing everything that is happening and say watching a movie or reading. With the internet I read more books than I do without the internet but I read very little on the internet. It's made me more dynamic and thoughtful about what I read because I feel some compulsion to write these silly book reviews. Yes, the internet wastes large chucks of time, did I need to spend an hour playing Mahjong Safari tonight? Or the hours last week I spent playing the stupid balloon popping game? Yes I could have spent those hours doing something better but I'm sort of lazy and it's my own fault I let stupid games distract me, I'd probably play video games or watch movies if I wasn't doing those things. The internet allows me to have some semblance of interaction with people who share interests that I do, first when I started using the internet back in the early 90's with music, and now with books. If I had to rely on only the people I knew in 'real life' to talk about books I read I'd be pretty much only talking to Karen, as very few other people I know personally have anything close to my tastes, but there is something limiting about only seeking out people who are like you in some way, but since I'm a reclusive type it's not like I'd be going out of my way to meet interesting people with a wide variety of interests in the real world, maybe the internet has helped in making me a bit more of a recluse than I would have been, but in any of the instances mentioned above it only amplifies parts of my life that were already there but I can't say that it's done much to change me.

[Lauren Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seems I'm not a big fan of the Edge series, in which John Brockman asks his annual question to 150 intellectual luminaries. Like so many things, the idea sounds better than its execution turns out to be. This book, for example, could be subtitled: 150 Ways to {Mis|Re}interpret a Question.

Which is the problem. These folks are pretty much all answering different questions. Steven Pinker, for example, a thinker I truly admire, is answering this question: Are electronic media revamping the brain's information-processing mechanisms? Put this way, the answer is obviously, of course not. But that's not all that interesting (unless you really did believe your brain was being resculpted by your Internet use). Others feel free to go off on any old tangent they like; the nature of friendships on- and offline, telecommuting, our collective withdrawal from nature.... Some of these digressions are fascinating; some are tedious. A lot of these authors are depressingly impressed with themselves. Many take the opportunity to flog the ideas in their latest books. Altogether, though, it doesn't add up to much.

Just about the only theme common to nearly all the answers was this: gee, it sure is hard to carve out time for old-fashioned, sustained concentration amid all these distractions. This problem evidently bugs just about everyone.

And it's true. So, although it has some interesting tidbits, this book is most likely one distraction you can skip.

[Florin Pitea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging subject, interesting points of view, convincing conclusion. Recommended.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the kind of book you would put in the bathroom. The question was asked, "Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?" but could just as easily asked, "How is the internet changing the way you think?" Philosophers, scientists, professors, authors, psychologists, sociologists, and plain old smarty-pants answered this question. A hundred plus articles comprise this book with the answer to this question. Some of them are dry. Some of them completely fascinating. All of their answers are unique and give the reader a different perspective. I can not summarize the opinions as they are vast and varied but the answer is, yes, the internet is changing the way we think just as television changed the way we think.

Like I said, put it in the bathroom and read an opinion every day. Mull it over, talk it over with friends or co-workers, return tomorrow and have a different perspective for the break room. People will find you ingenious.

[Marc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fantastic idea to put this very "hot" question to 150 very "skilled" people. The result is a broad spectre of insights and opinions, and of course not everything is relevant. But this sample has enough sensible material to form your own opinion, and at the same time to stay prudent. In my view the Internet is absolutely a great step forward for mankind. But you must not stay blind for the dangers (especially the Big-Brother-aspect) and you must search for a way to keep the use of it controllable and enjoyable. Something like Goodreads, for instance (but let's face it: always be on your guard!).

[Supriya · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book of essays that starts one to think about the positive and negative implications of the Internet on our minds, a fascinating subject that we are just getting started on exploring

[Dane Cobain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book in a discount bin at The Works, which just goes to show that there’s no justice – even four years after its publication, this is still a fascinating collection of insights by some of the world’s sharpest minds, and it hasn’t aged like so many other books about the internet have. In fact, if you’re curious about the answer to the book’s titular question, there’s no better place to look.

John Brockman is actually the editor of the book as well as the organiser of the Edge, a loose collection of prominent thinkers which was created “to arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.” These prominent thinkers include such well-established names as Marissa Meyer, Richard Dawkins and Brian Eno to name just a few, and while not all of them are technically qualified to give you an answer, it’s still interesting to see what they think.

There are over 150 individual responses in this collection and so there’s no shortage of answers to be had, and while not all of the respondents could agree on any one thing (they couldn’t even agree on whether the internet actually does change the way you think or not), they do all argue their opinions with some eloquence. For the record, I’m on the side of those who argued that the internet doesn’t change the way you think, but it does change what you think about and what you do with those thoughts once you arrive at them.

There were a couple of minor typos here and there, and so I had to mark my score down accordingly – it seems as though Brockman didn’t have as much time as he would have liked to iron out any flaws, and you’re bound to have a strange collection of formatting to deal with as is when you’re asking over a hundred different contributors for their thoughts.

But despite all that, this is actually a cracking collection and well-worth reading, especially if you’re interested in the internet. Keep an eye out for it in bargain bins and you might get a deal!

[Ninakix · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who is constantly thinking about questions like these, I was absolutely addicted to this book. There is truly a range of opinions and perspectives in this book, some of them wildly unconventional. What's most fascinating is the fact that rather than being purely a book of informed opinion, it's a bit ethnographic in nature: the question seems to invoke a kind of description of the users' internet activity, and more importantly, their attitudes towards it. For anyone who works in this space, I'd consider it required reading, just to get a perspective on how different people think about, and interact with, this incredibly multi-faceted thing we call the Internet.

[Abcdarian · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was definitely some interesting stuff here, but like the internet itself there was just too much of it: little snippets from too many people with no discernable organization or conclusion. From an "ordinary" person's p.o.v. a lot of these people seem way too immersed in the field to speak to me in a fashion I can (a) understand or (b) trust. You know something is weird when Brian Eno's is the clearest piece on the topic. :-)

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of short - often very short - essays. As always in collections such as this, some essays are stronger than others. Probably the Brian Eno chapter alone is worth the price of entry. But it is a provocative collection, and the ideas have been presented in a readable and conversational fashion. This is not the foundation for research but it is the trigger for thought.

[Arash Kamangir · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب رو از نیمه کنار گذاشتم. تغییر نویسنده و حرف در هر دو یا سه صفحه اذیتم می‌کرد.

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

What happens when you get 150 of the world's most advanced thinkers and ask them to discuss how technology is fundamentally altering our way of engaging the world? You get the same answer 150 times.

Okay so that's an exaggeration, but there seriously is a strong uniformity in the passages here. The vast majority respond saying something along the lines of: "while the internet is not physically changing the way my brain processes thoughts, it changes the way in which I explore and interact with data as well as creating novel communities through which thoughts can be shared and democratized." Theres also a couple dozen response that are somewhat incoherent, whether through rambling or through lackluster attempts at creating an "artistic", critical-theory-esque bromide. The main issue here is that almost every single person surveyed is some sort of STEM academic, so of course the answers received will emerge from a similar worldview. There's a lack of humanities academics here, let alone non-academics. The entire book probably contains answers from fewer than 10 people without a PhD. Fair enough, you want responses from a certain demographic. It just seems to me that the book would be more interesting by including a greater diversity in thought. Where are the politicians, actors, chefs, explorers, athletes, and so on? Just because they don't have advanced degrees doesn't mean they don't have an interesting way of viewing the changing world.

I should say that some of the responses within are fascinating. There's a lot of trite, but also some absolute diamonds to be found. Certain people engage with the question in such a way as to fundamentally alter the way you conceive of the internet as a system or community. A number of responses truly reveal the way that the internet might dramatically alter the concept of modern society and the individual's place therein. Only time will tell how the advent of mass democratized telecommunications will catalyze change in the human sphere, but there are some very compelling hypothesis in this book to this extent.

[Kes · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

So many of the essays talked about how the Internet was short / fragmented - and the essays in this book seemed written along the same lines: short (with some "essays" being a paragraph) and fragmented (with no discernable theme running between them).

There are a lot of responses to the question - but these responses seem like reflections: "Is the Internet changing the way I think, rather than the more generic "you". In fact, some of the responses are honest that they don't know how to answer the question, and will therefore respond to their own invented question. There are some beautifully written answers - like Chris Anderson (who curates TED talks) ending with "The Web has allowed us to rediscover fire" when he talks about how the Internet promotes the spoken word (though, to be fair, this seems to be based off his experience). There are some with interesting facts, like Lera Boroditsky talking about how using a fork causes the multimmodal neurons in the brain to expand their receptive fields, keeping track of a larger part of space to include parts within the fork's reach. She uses that as an analogy when talking about the Internet.

It's an interesting book, but the essays do blur together after a while. I do wish they had been arranged with a more obvious thematic structure or in some other way (e.g. the artists being grouped together) so it would be easier to grasp viewpoints (whether opposing or supporting). It would also have been more interesting if there seemed to have been some sort of dialogue between the authors, instead of standalone essays.

Ultimately, 2.5/5 stars

[Alexandru Somesan · Rating 2 out of 5]

"In functional terms, being spread too thin means we have too many Websites to visit, we get too many messages, and too much is "happening" online (and in other media) that we feel compelled to take on board. Many of us lack effective strategies for organizing our time in the face of this onslaught. This makes us constantly distracted, unfocused, and less able to perform heavy intellectual tasks. Among other things, or so some have confessed, we cannot focus long enough to read whole books. We feel unmoored, and we flow along helplessly wherever the fast-moving digital flood carries us." Larry Sanger

Does it book contain some splendid perspectives on the impact of the internet? Yes. Does it also have a chaotic structure, articles repeating the same ideas or bad articles which misinterpret the main question of the book? Yes.

It would have been great if there was just 1 impartial author discussing multiple perspectives on the same question, instead of going through 400 pages - of which only one quarter might feel as relevant and unique content.

[Kent Winward · Rating 4 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed this book, even though it was dated by ten years. Reading it with the gift of hindsight, shows just how much the "experts" missed about what was coming. For me technology has become less interesting as I'm pushed into behaving according to algorithm. Just as I am rhythmically challenged, I believe I'm algorithmically challenged.

The problem that almost no one saw coming ten years ago wasn't that the Internet would change how you think, but that the Internet, despite its immensity, would funnel you into a world of digital conformity. The worries of the robots or AI taking over humanity, missed the covert invasion of our minds by a machine deciding what gets in front of our eyes.

[YHC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Internet is like the 2 sides of a knife, could be a useful tool if you use it well, could be harmful if you are lost init without being able to filter out what is the trustworthy information.

One thing is for sure that internet is convenient, still we need to keep reading books or more complete information to get the whole pictures of the whole thing.
There are too much fake news, info circulated on line. We need to learn to be wise to distinguish them.

[Hko · Rating 1 out of 5]

ongetwijfeld 8 jaar geleden een aantal boeiende visies maar voelt achterhaald en sowieso wel erg filosofisch over iets wat inmiddels commodity of zelfs 1e levensbehoefte is geworden. Ik werd er niet wijzer van en dat is toch mijn bedoeling als ik deze boeken lees, dus ben halverwege afgehaakt.

[Nate Guimond · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little long.

[Carley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked it and recommend it for writers at all levels.

[Thomas Fratkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars for being interesting yet not giving a definitive answer to the question posed.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

So. Firstly, not quite what I expected. I expected something more similar to journal articles rather than the more personal, anecdotal articles here. These address more than the question posed in the title; historical changes are addressed, but also deeper, implied questions that lead on from this first, how and in which ways the internet has changed thinking. (On a completely unrelated note, my IB English teacher would be so pleased. I still hear those two phrases in italics in her voice.) It addresses the question of the nature of thought, and whether that has been changed.

The different authors bring a different perspective in addressing the questions. Predictably, the overall consensus is that the internet has changed thinking. But there are some interesting insights as well. Two that are especially prominent in my mind are Anthony Anguirre's (the first part, the second is missing) and Ai Weiwei's. The first discusses how the author, an associate professor of PHysics, finds that "the Web seem[s] to be the enemy of insight". The speed of the flow and the volume of information leave little space for personal thinking. The second, in its entirety:

Nowadays I mostly think only on the Internet. My thinking is divided into on the Net and off the Net. If I'm not on the Net, I don't think much; when I'm on the Net, I start to think. In this way, my thinking becomes part of something else.

While I don't necessarily agree with these, they are interesting viewpoints, and lead to further questioning.

Unfortunately, most frustrating thing was that there was a tendency for the articles to be cut off unexpectedly, and for the pages to be in a very odd order. I'll probably have to reread this when I get a proper copy of it.






---

Added on to the list of things to do this weekend. Only just got it; and it goes on sale on the 18th this month, so trying to read and review before then. Very excited that I got a proof copy :)

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book created from the essays written in response to the Edge.org question of the year, this is, as one might imagine, both fascinating and a little numbing. Essentially there are three types of response: the physiological (nothing has changed in your cortex), the cotidian (everything has changed in the way you research) or the whimsical (a musing on some philosophical element missed by options A and B). It is a question which everyone could have an answer to, but here it is essentially a group of scientists, with more or less technological experience, who set their thoughts down on paper.

It's nice to see to what extent research has been transformed. No longer forced to trawl libraries, these scientists spend quality mouse time on the thousands (or millions) of papers that are available online. It's also "nice" to see that eggheads suffer from the same time constraints as the rest of us: the maths start to stack up against our finite lifetimes when the access to useful, essential or desirable material increases to this extent. We no longer have any excuses, now we are forced to prioritise and to own our "Sophie's Choice" moments.

The upside is a feeling of power vis-a-vis knowledge, the downside is a feeling of impotence vis-a-vis mortality and time. The genie is out of the bottle, some are more in its thrall than others, but ultimately we are all existing in fear of a blackout which could bring us to our data-related knees.

The Edge.org books edited by John Brockman make up a compelling series with some undeniably big names and great minds; they are however tinged with the curse of all portmanteau works, that once within the forest, the trees can take on a certain sameness which acts as a somnolent detour from the crux of the question. For the record, I would say that the Internet is a tool in the sense of the tools in Fantasia. Start to use it and put it to work, but be aware that it can turn on you or run away from you at any time, because its parameters are so much broader than yours could ever be.

[Yaser Sulaiman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Before reading this book, I would have answered its question—"Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?"—with an almost reflexive "Of course" (being mainly influenced by Nicholas Carr's The Shallows ). Now, my answer is different.

In terms of answers, this book has a lot of them (and a lot of questions too). It consists of more than 150 short essays, which are available on the Edge website. The answers vary wildly, from "The Internet is profoundly and irreversibly changing the way I think," to "Hell if I know," to "Not at all." This wild variety is at once the book's strongest and weakest point: you get exposed to (almost) all of the major opinions on the topic, but most, if not all, of the essays are not long enough to support the expressed opinions in a convincing and satisfying manner. Some of the essays are surprisingly well thought out and well written, but generally the signal-to-noise ratio isn't high enough.

Is the Internet changing the way I think? The Internet is definitely changing some things about me, such as the increasing tendency to believe that if I can't find a piece of information online quickly, then it doesn't exist online, and if it doesn't exist online, then it doesn't exist. But is the Internet really changing the way I think? I simply don't know.

[Bria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got a pre-publication copy of this book for free from Goodreads giveaways, which explains why the pages were completely out of order and I had to use two bookmarks and do a bit of searching in order to turn the pages. Either that's what happens when you get free things, or it is a conscious response to the concerns over the ease of reading on computer screens being so unchallenging that our memory and brainpower are suffering. That would be pretty clever.

These essays function as pretty good 'what not to do with the internet' compilation. It's pretty mind-numbing to read 150 essays on the same question; even with all the different takes and perspectives, there's a lot of repetition. And I was already pretty sick of the topic. It made me want to have nothing to do with the internet again, just so that I wouldn't have to think about its impact, and it sort of reinforced a lot of my already-standing pessimism. Not the sort of pessimism that may have been expressed in a lot of essays, that considers things to be part and parcel of the technology. I don't think the effects of the internet that I find worrisome are inevitable. I think we're perfectly capable, on an individual level, of making our own choices to be the humans we want to be in this technological society; I just have my doubts about people recognizing that, or of making choices that lead to results I find desirable.

[John Orman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The relevant question was posed to 150 of the world's most influential people and biggest thinkers.

Essays on the destruction of precise knowledge, the consequences of infinite information, the hive mind, wired brain, and the future of Deep Thought.

From Martin Rees to Alan Alda, serious thinkers pose both startling answers and puzzling questions to the dilemma of the Net.
Quote: "The Internet is the infinite oscillation of our collective consciousness interacting with itself."

Alda's short essay "Speed Plus Mobs," posits that the internet gives us those two assets, which reduce the accuracy of information and our thoughtfulness in using it. It makes him think that the phone is not such a bad communication device after all!

Pros and cons of the web, from "The Web Helps us see what isn't there" to "The Greatest Detractor to Serious Thinking Since Television."
Some other interesting titles: "I have Outsourced my Memory," "The Rise of Internet Prosthetic Brains and Soliton Personhood," and "It's Not what you Know, but what you can find out."

An extremely thought-provoking book, written as I type this into the all-encompassing WWW!

[Vera · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book consists of numerous tiny essays on the relationships between the Internet and human thinking. The good thing is that it offers a great diversity of perspectives from various intellectuals ranging from artists to writers to mathematicians. The downside is in its format as well: the essays are so short that they only allow the introduction of ideas without further development or critical interpretation. Overall, worth reading.
Update:
since I am interested in gender and technology, I became curious and counted gender ratio of the book's contributors: 80% men and 20% women (in the best case and approximately... I may have missed a few people). And again, contributors come from a variety of fields, including psychology, biology, film-making and much more... Seriously, are there not enough female public intellectuals whose opinion could be asked on the personal, social and political implications of the digital technology?

[Nilagia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short essays from experts in a variety of fields, this book may not be for everyone, but I thought it was a fun read. You get to read responses from the likes of Clay Shirky, Steven Pinker, Brian Eno, and dozens upon dozens of others, answering the book's title question. Don't go in expecting lots of hard facts and research to back up each individual's claim though, as the essays are often more anecdotal in nature. Normally, that may bother me, but if you take the book for what it is -- a kaleidoscope of philosophical musings on the nature of the Internet, rather than a compendium of research with a concrete answer to the title question -- I think it does reasonably well. Just reading so many different viewpoints, whether you agree with them or not, definitely gets you thinking.

[David Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is a collection of essays from 150 of "today's leading thinkers" as selected by Edge.org. It's stated goal is to learn of "The Net's" impact on our thinking, our minds, and the future. Some of the essays are insightful, while others made me wonder why they were included. As might be expected from a book compiling 150 responses to the same question, there is both tremendous overlap and tremendous divergence in views. While you could categorize the responses into "has changed" and "hasn't changed" the way we think, the more revealing insight is into how each essayist defined the question itself. Overall, I did find my thinking stimulated at times, though at other times felt the book wasn't a very good use of my time. Which, ironically, is what many of the contributors said about the internet.

[Leonidas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compendium of 150+ intellectuals, creatives, entrepreneurs, philosophers voicing their opinions on the human thought process as it is developing along-side the internet. Opinions range from positive, to negative, to uncertainty, all the while acknowledging the major impact of information overload through speed and accessibility.

Rating: 4.2? - Plenty of historical opinion and intuitive insight of what may establish itself. Also how the internet affects scientific, technological, and political innovation. Perspective educating, to say the least.

Food for Thought: There is a disparity between those who use the internet for prosperity and development, and those who use it for abstaining and time wasting :P

[Penny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of very short essays by people from many fields (though heavy on psychology and the physical sciences, it seems) trying to make sense of the Internet revolution while we're still in the thick of it. It's a little tedious if you try to read straight through cover to cover, and may be best enjoyed as sort of a coffee table book (but without the pretty pictures). Pick it up when you have a spare minute and read one or two entries. Some are optimistic, some are pessimistic, but all are thoughtful.