I just read The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr, which asserts that our tools change us. One example is the mechanical clock. Pre-Clock, people decided when to eat and sleep based on signals from their bodies. Post-Clock, most of us make those decisions based on the time, usually in order to fit into work schedules. For some of us, that change has led to eating habits and sleep deficits that damage our health.

That doesn’t make the Clock bad or less useful, and it’s certainly not at fault. The point is, all of our tools change us. Each new tool should be evaluated and used in a way that balances what we may lose with what we gain.

I didn’t like this book at first. The author is roughly my age, yet he allowed the World Wide Web (despite the title, he is talking about the Web) to turn him into an attention-challenged, jittery fellow who could hardly finish a paragraph, much less read a book. To research and write this book, he moved his entire family to a remote area of Colorado limited to dial-up access, which seemed a little pathetic. Just turn it off!

Happily, scatterbrain syndrome is reversible, and when he relearns analysis and synthesis, he finds some interesting stuff.

The part of us that the Internet is changing is our brains. Structural changes in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the seat of short-term memory and decision-making, occurred in Internet novices after only five hours of browsing.

The good news is that our brains have essentially infinite long-term memory storage. Learn as many languages as you like, or the life cycle of every invertebrate in the tide pool, or a new song every day: your brain has the storage for that. The bad news is, not only is the short-term storage area much smaller, it impedes formation of long-term memory when it’s overloaded. And if your social media refresh chime is set for one minute, yours is way overloaded.

Long before Tim Berners-Lee, Martin Heidegger posited that calculative thinking, a way of observing something objectively and quantifying it, was rapidly replacing meditative thinking, a way of estimating the value and meaning of something. Our long-term memories should include connections between mind and body, and  experiences that shape our thinking. We should enhance our capacity for empathy and emotion, and recognize tasks that demand wisdom.

Take control back from your tool! Go ahead and check email, just do it when you aren’t doing something more important.