#Nicholas carr does it matter pdf creator for free
#Nicholas carr does it matter pdf creator how to
#Nicholas carr does it matter pdf creator drivers

#Nicholas carr does it matter pdf creator for free

вЂњAlthough neuroplasticity provides an escape from genetic determinism,вЂќ Carr writes,ДЄ loophole for free thought and free will, it also imposes its own form of determinism on our behavior. As you gain expertise in your new skills, new connections are forged and existing connections strengthened.

#Nicholas carr does it matter pdf creator how to

Your brain is somewhat less plastic now than it was when you were a child, but itвЂ™s never too late to learn another language, or the street grid of a new city, or how to program an Excel spreadsheet. The advantages to this structural flexibility are obvious.

#Nicholas carr does it matter pdf creator drivers

The changes wrought by neuroplasticity arenвЂ™t trivial a famous 1990s study of London cab drivers (cited in this book) found that cabbies whoвЂ™d been navigating LondonвЂ™s complex street system for two years or longer displayed a measurable increase in the size of the posterior hippocampus, a section of the brain associated with spatial memory, and that the longer a cabbie had been driving, the larger this part of the brain tended to be. The human brain remains plastic, which is to say malleable, throughout our adult lives, meaning that new connections between neural cells are continually being forged. Neuroplasticity is the process by which the brain changes in response to experience. In the meantime, youвЂ™re waiting for two or three important emails, and itвЂ™s been a few minutes since you last checked Twitter or Facebook, and whatвЂ™s the weather supposed to be like later? Your brain is constantly switching tasks. Even if one of those infernal pop-ups doesnвЂ™t float across your screen and demand your attention, even if there arenвЂ™t two or three animated banner ads flashing their messages above and to the side of the text youвЂ™re reading, there are usually links embedded in the text itself, and the second or two it takes to evaluate whether or not the linkвЂ™s worth following forces a break in your concentration. The Web is designed to allow you to move rapidly between interlinked pages, but even if you donвЂ™t click a link every few minutes, this is an arena of constant distractions. Reading on the Internet is a different matter. ThereвЂ™s nothing in that medium but the text itself. When youвЂ™re reading a book itвЂ™s easy to sink into the text-what Carr calls deep reading-for long periods. The Internet, he writes, is a system that might as well have been designed to foster distractedness. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. I feel like IвЂ™m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I used to find it easy to immerse myself in a book or lengthy articleвЂ¦ Now my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. I feel it most strongly when IвЂ™m reading. IвЂ™m not thinking the way I used to think.

My mind isnвЂ™t going-so far as I can tell-but itвЂ™s changing. That someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. вЂњOver the last few years IвЂ™ve had an uncomfortable sense,вЂќ he writes, Carr describes the same phenomenon in his own life. I only occasionally read non-fiction, but I was struck by Nicholas CarrвЂ™s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains from the moment I saw the title on a bookstore shelf. Concentrating on a single task for an extended period of time-as is required when oneвЂ™s reading a book, for instance, or writing one-had become unsettlingly difficult. After a short period of concentration on a given task, my brain would do what IвЂ™d trained it to do: it would turn its attention to something else. I began to realize that after all this time on the Internet, IвЂ™d trained my brain to expect a new stimulation every few minutes. I have a visceral memory of exactly what a triple pirouette feels like, the precise coordination and timing required, although I doubt very much that I could execute one anymore. After all these years away from dance I can still assume a perfect arabesque line. After a certain amount of physical training, either in dance or in athletics, certain actions become almost unconscious.

I used to be a dancer, and my training was intense. The problem reminded me of muscle memory. It was as if my brain, craving stimulation beyond the meticulous working out of plot issues, had jumped to a new task of its own accord. I would be at my desk writing and then IвЂ™d be on Twitter or Gmail or CNN, with no clear recollection of having decided to drop one task and switch to another. But a few months back, I found myself a bit troubled by what I perceived to be a difference in the way my mind was working. IвЂ™ve been on the Internet since I was fourteen years old.