The Internet’s Profound Impact on Our Minds and Spirits
In 2008, Nicholas Carr published an essay in The Atlantic that posed a provocative question: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr’s lament for his own mind sparked a revolutionary conclusion – the internet was changing his brain. He argued that the web, as a “universal medium,” was shaping the human brain to be more net-like, particularly through repeated immersion.
The Web’s Formative Power
Carr expanded his argument into a book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, which makes a clear and persuasive case that the web is a neurologically powerful tool for rewiring how human beings learn, feel, and process information. The medium itself, not just the messages it conveys, influences us. As Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the message.”
Neuroplasticity and the Brain’s Adaptability
Carr begins by unpacking cognitive research on the brain’s “plasticity,” its ability to make significant changes to itself. Our brain possesses the capacity to change, and our choices matter in shaping us into a certain kind of person. The neural phenomena associated with one set of attitudes or behaviors can change into a different kind in response to repeated practices or consumption.
The Internet’s Impact on Society and Culture
The web’s influence extends beyond individual minds to shape societies and cultures. New technologies create different kinds of societies that end up shaped around the technologies. The web, in particular, is becoming the foundational medium, the superstructure of nearly every other experience. It is immersive, assumed, and physically and psychologically changing us.
A Christian Perspective on Technology and Spirituality
The spiritually formative nature of the web is a profoundly theological issue. Human beings, created in God’s image, are irrevocably physical, and our spiritual lives are bodily lives too. Habits and practices, while carried out externally by physical means, are spiritually significant because they shape us into particular kinds of people. The web’s ability to reshape us as people becomes a spiritual ability.
The Dark Side of the Web’s Influence
While the web has the power to shape us in positive ways, it also has a dark side. Our habits drive certain values deep down in our hearts, changing the kind of people we are. If our habits are not positioning our hearts toward God’s truth but toward something else, what happens to us? What if we are what we scroll?
A Call to Awareness and Intentionality
The web’s impact on our minds and spirits is not neutral. It communicates a vision of what we should
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