Are you operating with Mind 2.0 or are you still slouching around with Yesterday’s Mind?

“Yesterday’s Mind” is actually a pithy phrase from a book called The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. Carr’s viewpoint, as reported by Steven Johnson in the New York Times, is that “the compulsive skimming, linking and multitasking of our screen reading is undermining the deep, immersive focus that has defined book culture for centuries.”

We’ve been saying the same thing in our postings (See Yet More Evidence that Screens=Distraction) but after reading Johnson’s article we’re not quite so cocksure.  Maybe we need to revisit shallow thinking, the kind we presumably do when we’re multitasking or reading a book onscreen, and learn if we’re missing something.

Johnson’s arguments are pretty convincing.  “I have no doubt that I am slightly less focused in these interactions,” he admits “but, frankly, most of what we do during the day doesn’t require our full powers of concentration. Even rocket scientists don’t do rocket science all day long.”

He’s right. Rocket science is not an individual activity but a social one. Though scientists may get their inspiration from solitary hikes in the hills or angling alone in a rowboat on a remote pond, the development of their ideas comes from interaction with colleagues. “Many great ideas that have advanced culture over the past centuries have emerged from a more connective space, in the collision of different worldviews and sensibilities, different metaphors and fields of expertise.”

Perhaps that’s why the old publishing business is stuck: its denizens are saddled with “linear, literary minds” (Carr’s phrase) that are wedded to solitary, immersive reading and learning and they have not noticed that a new generation is more comfortable being part of a group mind that performs a lot of tasks that used to be solitary, like reading books. A good example is a Kindle feature called “popular highlights”, which underlines phrases in a book that fellow readers have highlighted as being particularly meaningful. Now you can see, absorb, and be influenced by what others feel is inspiring. A kind of Zagat’s Guide for your brain.

Johnson’s conclusion? “Yes, we are a little less focused, thanks to the electric stimulus of the screen. Yes, we are reading slightly fewer long-form narratives and arguments than we did 50 years ago, though the Kindle and the iPad may well change that. Those are costs, to be sure. But what of the other side of the ledger? We are reading more text, writing far more often, than we were in the heyday of television. And the speed with which we can follow the trail of an idea, or discover new perspectives on a problem, has increased by several orders of magnitude. We are marginally less focused, and exponentially more connected. That’s a bargain all of us should be happy to make.”

The key word is “marginally”.  We’ll take “marginally” to avoid being ostracized for suffering from YMS – Yesterday’s Mind Syndrome. But if the tradeoff leaves us truly shallow, we’ll simply have to take our linear, literary brain and immerse it in a good, printed, book.

Here’s Johnson’s article in full: Yes, People Still Read, but Now It’s Social

Richard Curtis
Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by The New York Times.