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Get lost, Google.

“What is the second sister of Kan’s wife?”

Google.

Search engines such as Google are quietly changing people’s thinking processes, and people find it increasingly difficult to think outside the search engine.

Search engines first have an impact on attention, and it is difficult for people to concentrate. Even when using the Internet, people can’t help switching back and forth between different media. Second, search engines make people’s memory degenerate, and it’s getting harder and harder to remember new learning.

This article attempts to find out the reasons behind people’s distraction and memory loss by exploring neuroscience and analyzing memory types, and proposes possible solutions by interviewing artists and related scholars.

At the end of October, I rode a small bicycle alone in a city that was temporarily built by the Fireman’s Day. The same military tents extend along the sides of the “street” into the darkness of the Nevada desert. The neon flashes in four times. I’m lost.

My brain is full of whimsical brains that instruct me to view Google Maps.

The voice in my mind said, “No, the brain, there is no signal in the desert.”

My brain responded and said, “That is of course, but have you looked at Google Maps?”, it keeps repeating, just like in my brain.The inner loop plays the song “Mambo No. 5” by German singer Lou Bega.

I really took out my phone. “Think of beauty, brain! But there is still no signal.”

“Oh yeah. Maybe you should… check out Google Maps?”

I said aloud: “No, brain, go to his Google Maps!” These are the whole process of wearing a strappy bikini and quarreling with myself in the desert.

I dare say that you must have a similar experience in 2019. Maybe you took out your mobile phone and used the map to navigate to your friend’s house, even if you have traveled dozens of times on this road; or calculate the square root of 4; or look for your mother’s Italian bolognese.

Maybe, in the conversation, you searched and verbatim repeated Wikipedia’s definition of something superficial, such as “rice” (I guess, I don’t know your life). At the very least, you are familiar with the superficial, purposeless approach of thinking about the Internet instead of thinking about it. People have long worried that technology will make us stupid.

What is the way of thinking in the electronic age? For most of the past decade, scientists have not provided any insights. Apart from the boring headlines of science, there is only one sentence: “We really don’t know what happened.” Now, a group of highly respected researchers have reviewed the international study on this topic for the first time. Their conclusion is: We really don’t know what happened.

John Torous, a psychiatrist and research author at Harvard Medical School, said: “It is too early to know its benefits, harms, and when it will not cause people. Impact.”

Although scientists have yet to prove that the Internet is changing the structure of people’s brains and (or) reducing IQ, it is clear that some of our thinking processes and habits are worth studying. Is there a problem in this regard? If so, is there any other solution besides throwing the phone into the darkness of the Nevada desert and spending hours looking in the dark?

Maybe not. But it’s worth remembering that people only had a physical brain before the emergence of a shiny, embarrassing large-scale Internet. The brain has limited capacity but amazing ability. They don’t need access to the power supply like the Internet, and they work better.

Time to calm down, listen to your heart, and think deeply is the best way to reverse the negative impact of online life on the brain.

But the use of the Internet is not a solution. Toros said: “We have passed the period of refusing to use a technology.” A recent survey by US think tank Pew found that 81% of American adults have smartphones. In today’s world, whether it’s trying to get a completely out of smartphoneLife, or compromises to adapt to the trend of electronic technology, is equally challenging for the brain.

Let’s talk about cognitive thinking when cognitive psychologists try to explore how the Internet changes people’s way of thinking: first, attention, scientists define it as selective Focus on some information while ignoring others. The other is memory, which you should be able to define yourself. (There are some weird studies about social and sleep, but these are beyond the scope of this article. Be sure to check out, as the results are surprising.)

Then we will try to correct these thought processes.

Why do you feel that you can’t concentrate on anything?

You may be thinking about the attention of the terminology – the teacher blames you for not listening intently in your history class. But in psychology, this concept is much more complicated. For everything you touch, the role of attention is a look-ahead of searchlights—in the environment you are in, choose the elements you perceive, interact, and remember. Some researchers believe that everything in human consciousness is attention. But it also has limitations and will feel tired like muscles.

The Internet is an unnaturally powerful stimulus for attention, just as sugar or cocaine can irritate other parts of the brain. It provides almost unprecedented information, and the requirements for a system designed for small and medium-sized social networks in the natural world are enormous.

In history, information has saved humanity from death caused by poisonous plants, extreme cold and natural disasters (and wedding speeches). So for your brain, it’s natural to want to receive rich, compelling information as much as possible.

Toros said: “When you ask the brain to switch from one option on the desktop to another, or from one screen to another, I think people can feel the pressure of this conversion task.” The two sides try to protect themselves from boredom and on the other hand they are afraid to miss. These two kinds of psychology encourage people to switch tasks frequently, more often than they think. (Look at how many options, programs, or screens you have open now)

In 2014, a team of researchers at Stanford University found that people switched their content on the computer every 19 seconds, and 75% of the screen content was viewed in less than a minute. Young people often do this, spending an average of 7.5 hours a day on the media, 29% of which time switching back and forth across multiple media streams.

The following example demonstrates how serious multi-tasking affects attention: you are working on a work report in depth, but the work is verybored. What is not boring? the Internet. A lot of information and social rewards are calling you, and you start to get excited.

Politics, social invitations, social news sites Reddit’s sub-sections are a bit interesting… you turn on Twitter, comment a gif on a witty tweet, and forward an “important article.” You feel relaxed and lost 15 minutes.

Wait, what did you plan to do?

You pull your attention back to the work report, but soon the desire rises quietly: the shoes you want to buy, the interesting articles, the podcasts…The above process is repeated, but the work report is delayed. Not moving, because your brain is interrupted again and again, there is not enough time and energy to handle the task. A frustrating study shows that no matter how good you think about multitasking, the time lost in a task, and the constant task switching throughout the day, you can quickly destroy the energy you can use.

This spring, Jenny Odell, author of the book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, targets this The problem raised a potential solution. And her way is… crow?

When I interviewed Jenny Odell, she said, “I don’t know if you can hear it. The crow in the background sound is yelling at me. They have a ability to know when I am. Use a cell phone.” Odell found a crow living near her, likes to dive and catch the peanuts she threw on the edge of the balcony. So she paused her work and took a break to make friends with them. She wrote: “They will turn, roll, and fly around. I am like a proud parent, obsessively shooting slow-motion videos for them.”

Similar to O’Dell’s “Crow Method” is her “Night Heron Method”, which is related to her overall philosophy, namely: Resist the Internet with the passion of political protesters Attraction. Odell lives in Auckland and teaches at Stanford University. On one occasion, she categorized the items found in the trash in three months. She appreciates the way her brain thinks in quiet time, and now she occasionally needs to schedule it for a while.

Odell’s theory is that trying to regain attention from the Internet is not entirely against the Internet, but against a society that is realized by the Internet and indulged in inhumane work efficiency.

She said: “Sometimes (work efficiency) can’t see how it is reflected. It seems that getting up and taking a walk can improve work efficiency.” The problem is that when you can sit at your desk, most bosses don’t Will allow you to go for a walk. Odell said: “You accepted this yourself in a weird, bad way.

A single cultural campaign is impossible, but Odell suggests practicing moral resistance: turn off certain tabs, cancel mobile notifications, don’t reply to emails within a few days, don’t listen to podcasts at 1.5x speed Stop trying to maximize your productivity and see if your efficiency is really low.

Like living in the 18th century, I sat in a chair reading newspaper news, accompanied by a cup of tea, and vowed to do the above. Odell loves an extension of Chrome’s “Clear Facebook News Push” feature, which replaces her news feed with a philosophical quote.

Time to calm down, listen to your heart, and think deeply is the best way to reverse the negative impact of online life on the brain. In early functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) functional studies, the researchers noted that as long as the test subjects did not perform the tasks assigned to them, a certain set of regions in the brain would be activated simultaneously.

In the beginning, scientists assumed that this was a neural network responsible for daydreaming or rest, but eventually they realized that the neural network was involved in thinking about themselves, thinking about others, remembering the past, thinking about the future, and making social assessments.

This neural network is now called the “default mode network” and is closely related to creativity and imagination. If you think of it as a switch, it lights up whenever the task-oriented network is turned off. So, if you and the Internet are working “efficiently” at the same time, the lights won’t light up.

This does not mean losing everything. The adaptability of the human brain is so good that stroke patients can use undamaged neurons to perform the functions of certain brain regions they have lost. You can almost refocus your attention, but you must follow the people-oriented speed, which may require courage and effort.

Some researchers believe that meditation can increase attention. Others believe that it is helpful to spend time in nature and green spaces. You must allow yourself to become bored. O’Dell often (even a few weeks in advance) mark “do nothing” on the calendar so she can look forward to that day and be excited. Even simple things like not looking at your phone while walking at a specific time or at lunch can help you refocus.

Why can’t you remember what you feel?

Scientists want to tell you something uncomfortable: Google may change the nature of your entire memory for the sake of fact.

Memory is extremely complicated. First you need to know that it has many subtypes:

-Scenario memory is to remember the “plot” that actually happened to you, such as your wedding, the birth of your child,Or what I ate at lunch.

-Semantic memory is to remember the facts, such as the blue sky, the resignation of US President Richard Nixon in 1974, or my previous study at Greenbriar Elementary School.

-Program memory is to remember how to play the piano or drive.

-Interactive memory is to remember that you can view the spelling of a word in the dictionary, or call your dad to ask how many cups of flour are in his biscuit recipe.

Interactive memory is very important. This is the reason behind most of the progress in human society. For centuries, human society has been based on the preservation of intellectual knowledge of predecessors, which were taught by parents, teachers and books. Today, this large and growing pool of information is not only continuously available, but also easy to search (unless you use Bing).

Creating memory in the brain requires energy. So, since all the information in the world is now in the mobile phone, our brain has reason to convert semantic memory, all these useless facts into interactive memory. In short, Google is becoming an external memory driver. Just remember how to get information on the Internet, you feel like you know something and can provide it effectively.

In the conversation, it looks like this:

“Do you know that Adele is dating a British rapper?”

“Wait…what? Who?”

“Let’s wait, let me check.”

Storing information this way is not good for future retrieval. The international research review of the thinking of the digital age mentioned above found that people who search for facts online and those who search for facts in encyclopedias find that people searching online are faster. But the ability to recall this information is even worse.

Some scholars speculate that it is more difficult to recall the facts learned on the Internet because the way this knowledge is organized in the brain is even worse. In a recent article in Time, “All Facts: History of Information from 1870” (All the Facts: A History of Information James W. Cortada, author of in the United States since 1870, searches the Internet and reads the book index instead of the book itself.Compare:

One of the problems we face (I don’t blame Google, it’s just the essence of the Internet). Many times people just get the data “fragments” just like the light, no matter what you call it, they are like small pieces floating in the ocean. . There is no other connection between the data except the one you want to establish.

In other words, the search box that appears at the top of a Google page makes it easy to find facts at a glance—but remember that you did this because you can’t concentrate. However, these facts are out of context, will only be properly stored in your broad knowledge, and finally become a series of unrelated information that you can hardly remember and use in the future, such as Toronto’s population of 2.93 million, cashew nuts In fact, not nuts, sloth can hold your breath for 40 minutes.

The facts in our brain are sorted out by related concepts, the network of stories, the overall perception, or the “points” of Valerie Reyna (a professor at Cornell University who studies decision-making). Into different themes. When learning a new fact, the brain will embed it into your existing knowledge network. The closer these network connections are weaved, the more likely you are to recall the information you just learned.

So, if you want to better remember the facts, focus your attention and create a situation for this fact to store. Read some background, pause every few minutes, think about what you just read, and think about what you already know: Adele and her gossip lover, London underground music artist Skepta, both UK The top superstars on the singer list, so they are likely to date. It is said that Skepta also dated the model Naomi Campbel. As well, Adele’s best albums always break up the album.

Other options include: Write down or just think about the points you just read; simply draw (maybe Adele and Skepta ride a tandem bike through Buckingham Palace); or practice nights in your mind Telling a story to a friend at a party, this will be fun:

Listen to everyone, Adele is dating a British rapper named Skepta, and obviously he tastes good. I sincerely hope that they will make a joint album, then break up, and then each make a breakup album, and then find someone to repeat the process, so I can always hear great music. Although this is very mean, but he is. Is there a potato salad?

The above is the way to resist the “Google” of memory. This may be the best approach before scientists or technology companies come up with more powerful solutions..