Brain Decomposition

The most alarming thing to me when reading and thinking over these articles about how the web is changing the way we think and our abilities to multitask was that I came to the realization that it is exactly how I am now. Undoubtedly, my constant internet usage over the past 7 years has warped my brain to process and seek information, to scan paragraphs for what I want and ignore everything else. It's alarming because I never considered this was affecting me in the way it is, and now that I'm conscious of it I want to do everything I can to fight it and revert back to how I used to be.

While my supposed increased ability to scan for information does come in handy for facebook, plundering wikipedia, or scanning message boards, the weakening of my brain's ability to absorb knowledge from what I'm reading is obviously detrimental and scary to me. Philosopher Henryk Skolimowski wrote an essay that addresses the differences between wisdom, knowledge, and information, and how information at its essence is something that not only alienates us, but does not represent knowledge in any way which is exactly where I see our world at today. We are in the "Information Age", which while promising because of unprecedented access to information, the technology and methods of dissecting and examining our information keeps it on the information level. I would venture to say that most people possess no "real" knowledge, nor do they access it- they merely get the information they desire, use it, and forget it (unless of course they use it frequently).