Google zaps brain power
The
Shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains by Nicholas Carr
IS THE internet a good thing or a harmful thing?
If that seems an odd question, it is probably because you are quite certain that the internet has been an enormous advantage to you in so many ways.
You came across my column as you quickly caught up on the latest news. You probably booked last night’s movie tickets online and searched for the critics' opinion of the movie before booking. You quickly found out everything you wanted to know about “existentialism” in a four-minute ‘Web search and skim’.
The title of the book, The Shallows, is Carr’s conclusion of what the Web is doing to how we think, read and remember. The book is an expansion of an essay he wrote for Atlantic magazine entitled “Is Google making us stupid?”.
Think of how you would have had to find information about existentialism before access to the Web was available.
You probably would have gone to a library to read a book on general philosophy as an introduction to the background out of which existentialism grew. Then, perhaps, something more specifically on the existentialists before finally settling into Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.
Consider the difference between these two experiences. Carr suggests that the immediacy of the Web’s answers has turned him (and others) from “ a scuba diver in the sea of words” to someone who rides on the “surface like a guy on a Jet Ski”.
At a meeting at Duke University, Professor Katherine Hayles told Carr: “I cannot get my students to read whole books any more.” The students she is talking of are studying literature!
What makes this book so fascinating is not the observation that we have shorter attention spans but that our brains are being changed to have shorter attention spans. If this is correct, the question that follows is whether this means we are sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply.
My immediate response to this would have been a quick, of course not. I read and think about certain things deeply and others superficially.
Carr takes the reader through a tour of neuroscience and the question of how technologies can change the way your brain works.
Is your brain like your hand? Your hand is limited in the movements it can make. It can only get better at the proscribed movements through practice, or worse through disuse.
There is overwhelming evidence that our experiences and the technologies we use do reconfigure the brain.
In an experiment in the late 1990s, British researchers scanned the brains of 16 London cab drivers. Compared to the scans of the control group from the general public, the taxi drivers’ posterior hippocampus was much larger.
This part of the brain stores and manipulates spatial representations of the world. The longer a cab drivers had been on the job, the larger their posterior hippocampus.
They also discovered that the drivers’ anterior hippocampus was smaller than that of the general public, and that the shrinking of the anterior hippocampus could have reduced the cabbies’ aptitude for other memorisation tasks.
Throughout the ages, the latest technologies have changed both how we think about the world and how our brains process information. Carr demonstrates how “tools of the mind” from the alphabet, to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer have all had their effects.
Words were the aural means of communication until we developed the technology of the alphabet and we turned the aural into the visual representing the aural.
The clock changed not only how we thought about time, but how we thought about the world. The change was so wide spread and profound that we even began describing the world in the same mechanical terms.
It changed how we thought about time. It was no longer slowly evolving changes over which we have no control; rather, it was something that could be measured in minutes and seconds, and controlled. With a clock in ever town square and on every church building, our concept of time changed.
We are constantly reminded of time used, time spent, time wasted, and time lost. Our concepts of everything from achievement to productivity changed.
If the printed book forces us to focus our attention and promotes deep and creative thought, what is the effect of Google? Are we becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming? Are we are losing our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection?
Wired magazines Clive Thompson wrote: “The perfect recall of silicon memory can be an enormous boon to thinking.” What is the price of that boon? The result may be “the shallows” of the title, but that shallows is incredibly wide.
This is a must-read. It is a thought-provoking and fascinating book.
Readability: Light ----+ Serious
Insights: High -+--- Low
Practical: High ----+ Low
IS THE internet a good thing or a harmful thing?
If that seems an odd question, it is probably because you are quite certain that the internet has been an enormous advantage to you in so many ways.
You came across my column as you quickly caught up on the latest news. You probably booked last night’s movie tickets online and searched for the critics' opinion of the movie before booking. You quickly found out everything you wanted to know about “existentialism” in a four-minute ‘Web search and skim’.
The title of the book, The Shallows, is Carr’s conclusion of what the Web is doing to how we think, read and remember. The book is an expansion of an essay he wrote for Atlantic magazine entitled “Is Google making us stupid?”.
Think of how you would have had to find information about existentialism before access to the Web was available.
You probably would have gone to a library to read a book on general philosophy as an introduction to the background out of which existentialism grew. Then, perhaps, something more specifically on the existentialists before finally settling into Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.
Consider the difference between these two experiences. Carr suggests that the immediacy of the Web’s answers has turned him (and others) from “ a scuba diver in the sea of words” to someone who rides on the “surface like a guy on a Jet Ski”.
At a meeting at Duke University, Professor Katherine Hayles told Carr: “I cannot get my students to read whole books any more.” The students she is talking of are studying literature!
What makes this book so fascinating is not the observation that we have shorter attention spans but that our brains are being changed to have shorter attention spans. If this is correct, the question that follows is whether this means we are sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply.
My immediate response to this would have been a quick, of course not. I read and think about certain things deeply and others superficially.
Carr takes the reader through a tour of neuroscience and the question of how technologies can change the way your brain works.
Is your brain like your hand? Your hand is limited in the movements it can make. It can only get better at the proscribed movements through practice, or worse through disuse.
There is overwhelming evidence that our experiences and the technologies we use do reconfigure the brain.
In an experiment in the late 1990s, British researchers scanned the brains of 16 London cab drivers. Compared to the scans of the control group from the general public, the taxi drivers’ posterior hippocampus was much larger.
This part of the brain stores and manipulates spatial representations of the world. The longer a cab drivers had been on the job, the larger their posterior hippocampus.
They also discovered that the drivers’ anterior hippocampus was smaller than that of the general public, and that the shrinking of the anterior hippocampus could have reduced the cabbies’ aptitude for other memorisation tasks.
Throughout the ages, the latest technologies have changed both how we think about the world and how our brains process information. Carr demonstrates how “tools of the mind” from the alphabet, to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer have all had their effects.
Words were the aural means of communication until we developed the technology of the alphabet and we turned the aural into the visual representing the aural.
The clock changed not only how we thought about time, but how we thought about the world. The change was so wide spread and profound that we even began describing the world in the same mechanical terms.
It changed how we thought about time. It was no longer slowly evolving changes over which we have no control; rather, it was something that could be measured in minutes and seconds, and controlled. With a clock in ever town square and on every church building, our concept of time changed.
We are constantly reminded of time used, time spent, time wasted, and time lost. Our concepts of everything from achievement to productivity changed.
If the printed book forces us to focus our attention and promotes deep and creative thought, what is the effect of Google? Are we becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming? Are we are losing our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection?
Wired magazines Clive Thompson wrote: “The perfect recall of silicon memory can be an enormous boon to thinking.” What is the price of that boon? The result may be “the shallows” of the title, but that shallows is incredibly wide.
This is a must-read. It is a thought-provoking and fascinating book.
Readability: Light ----+ Serious
Insights: High -+--- Low
Practical: High ----+ Low
Spies fuel China's fast military build-up
China is using state-sponsored industrial espionage to acquire the technology it needs to forge ahead with a fast-paced military modernisation programme and cut its reliance on foreign arms makers, the Pentagon said in a new report on Monday.
"China continues to leverage foreign investments, commercial joint ventures, academic exchanges, the experience of repatriated Chinese students and researchers, and state-sponsored industrial and technical espionage to increase the level of technologies and expertise available to support military research, development, and acquisition," the US Defence Department said.
The department, in its 83-page annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments, said Beijing's publicly announced defence spending grew at an inflation-adjusted pace of nearly 10% annually over the past decade, but its actual outlays could be much higher.
China announced a 10.7% increase in military spending to $114bn in March, the Pentagon report said. But it estimated that China's actual spending for 2012 could range between $135bn and $215bn. US defence spending is more than double that at over $500bn.
"China continues to engage in activities designed to support military procurement and modernisation," the report said. "These include economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, export control violations, and technology transfer."
Mystery shrouds 'most dangerous neo-Nazi'
The woman prosecutors call Germany's most dangerous neo-Nazi took her place in the dock on Monday at a
landmark trial over a racist killing spree, but despite the high-profile
proceedings remains an enigmatic presence.
Beate Zschaepe, known to a horrified Germany only from a dishevelled mugshot and a handful of holiday snaps, strode into the Munich courtroom looking smart and self-confident in a tailored black trouser suit and large hoop earrings.
It was just one more mysterious turn by the 38-year-old, the last surviving member of the far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) who since her surrender 18 months ago has hidden behind a wall of silence.
When she walked through the door of the police station of Zwickau, a sleepy town in former communist East Germany, on 8 November 2011 to turn herself in, she told officers simply: "I'm the one you're looking for."
Since then, she has refused to divulge any secrets from the previous 14 years which she, according to the authorities, spent underground and on the run as part of a militant trio blamed for 10 murders.
"Everyone in Germany knows her name but no one knows who she is," the daily Die Welt wrote about the woman who has shaken the country's self-image of having learned the lessons of its Nazi past.
Macabre love triangle
Four days before she gave herself up, her two fellow gang members, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, died in an apparent murder-suicide after a bungled bank heist, finally bringing their lethal NSU to light.
Investigators say the three were locked in a macabre love triangle, robbing banks and living comfortably off the proceeds while they carried out their nationwide hunt for immigrant victims.
Zschaepe, the only surviving member of the group, is suspected of involvement in the killing of nine shopkeepers of Turkish or Greek origin across Germany between 2000 and 2006 and of a German policewoman in 2007, as well as 15 armed robberies, arson and attempted murder.
Dubbed "the Nazi moll" by the German tabloids, Zschaepe faces life in prison.
But those who knew her in Zwickau, where she shared a spacious rented flat with Mundlos and Boehnhardt, say she was a "gentle soul" who never revealed her far-right views.
"She was a kind of big sister, someone with a big heart," a shocked neighbour, who gave her name only as Heike K, told German television.
Dominant
She said her friend told her her name was Lisa, one of at least nine aliases Zschaepe used over the years.
Federal prosecutors say that although she likely never pulled the trigger, Zschaepe played a "dominant role" in the NSU, maintaining the delicate "emotional link" between herself and her lovers.
She fell first for Mundlos, the soft-spoken son of a university professor often seen taking care of his wheelchair-bound brother, at the age of 16, and later took up with Boehnhardt, a more volatile type with a weakness for weapons.
"Ms Zschaepe acted like a wife but for two men," one of their alleged accomplices told authorities.
Zschaepe held the purse strings, managing the windfalls from their bank hold-ups, prosecutors say.
She juggled several identities while she did the cooking and took care of their two pet cats, Lilly and Heidi.
Chaotic upbringing
On 4 November 2011, she allegedly blew up their apartment in a bid to destroy evidence after the deaths of the two Uwes - after dropping off the cats with a neighbour.
Zschaepe had a chaotic upbringing. Her mother, Annerose Apel, gave birth to her on 2 January 1975 in the East German city of Jena, purportedly after being unaware she was pregnant.
Her father was believed to be Romanian but refused to acknowledge her as his child.
During the first three years of her life, Beate's last name changed three times until she finally took the surname of her mother's second husband.
The girl spent much of her youth with her grandmother, to whom she has said she is still attached.
Zschaepe was 14 years old when the Berlin Wall fell, sending economic and ideological shockwaves through communities like hers and leading many to the political extremes.
When she finally gave herself up to police, Zschaepe had not seen her mother or grandmother in over a decade. Investigators say she saw Mundlos and Boehnhardt as her only real family.
Beate Zschaepe, known to a horrified Germany only from a dishevelled mugshot and a handful of holiday snaps, strode into the Munich courtroom looking smart and self-confident in a tailored black trouser suit and large hoop earrings.
It was just one more mysterious turn by the 38-year-old, the last surviving member of the far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) who since her surrender 18 months ago has hidden behind a wall of silence.
When she walked through the door of the police station of Zwickau, a sleepy town in former communist East Germany, on 8 November 2011 to turn herself in, she told officers simply: "I'm the one you're looking for."
Since then, she has refused to divulge any secrets from the previous 14 years which she, according to the authorities, spent underground and on the run as part of a militant trio blamed for 10 murders.
"Everyone in Germany knows her name but no one knows who she is," the daily Die Welt wrote about the woman who has shaken the country's self-image of having learned the lessons of its Nazi past.
Macabre love triangle
Four days before she gave herself up, her two fellow gang members, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, died in an apparent murder-suicide after a bungled bank heist, finally bringing their lethal NSU to light.
Investigators say the three were locked in a macabre love triangle, robbing banks and living comfortably off the proceeds while they carried out their nationwide hunt for immigrant victims.
Zschaepe, the only surviving member of the group, is suspected of involvement in the killing of nine shopkeepers of Turkish or Greek origin across Germany between 2000 and 2006 and of a German policewoman in 2007, as well as 15 armed robberies, arson and attempted murder.
Dubbed "the Nazi moll" by the German tabloids, Zschaepe faces life in prison.
But those who knew her in Zwickau, where she shared a spacious rented flat with Mundlos and Boehnhardt, say she was a "gentle soul" who never revealed her far-right views.
"She was a kind of big sister, someone with a big heart," a shocked neighbour, who gave her name only as Heike K, told German television.
Dominant
She said her friend told her her name was Lisa, one of at least nine aliases Zschaepe used over the years.
Federal prosecutors say that although she likely never pulled the trigger, Zschaepe played a "dominant role" in the NSU, maintaining the delicate "emotional link" between herself and her lovers.
She fell first for Mundlos, the soft-spoken son of a university professor often seen taking care of his wheelchair-bound brother, at the age of 16, and later took up with Boehnhardt, a more volatile type with a weakness for weapons.
"Ms Zschaepe acted like a wife but for two men," one of their alleged accomplices told authorities.
Zschaepe held the purse strings, managing the windfalls from their bank hold-ups, prosecutors say.
She juggled several identities while she did the cooking and took care of their two pet cats, Lilly and Heidi.
Chaotic upbringing
On 4 November 2011, she allegedly blew up their apartment in a bid to destroy evidence after the deaths of the two Uwes - after dropping off the cats with a neighbour.
Zschaepe had a chaotic upbringing. Her mother, Annerose Apel, gave birth to her on 2 January 1975 in the East German city of Jena, purportedly after being unaware she was pregnant.
Her father was believed to be Romanian but refused to acknowledge her as his child.
During the first three years of her life, Beate's last name changed three times until she finally took the surname of her mother's second husband.
The girl spent much of her youth with her grandmother, to whom she has said she is still attached.
Zschaepe was 14 years old when the Berlin Wall fell, sending economic and ideological shockwaves through communities like hers and leading many to the political extremes.
When she finally gave herself up to police, Zschaepe had not seen her mother or grandmother in over a decade. Investigators say she saw Mundlos and Boehnhardt as her only real family.
Germany arrests alleged Auschwitz guard
German authorities arrested on Monday a 93-year-old alleged former guard at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz, on charges of complicity in the mass murder of prisoners.
Prosecutors in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg said, the man was believed to have worked at the camp between autumn 1941 and its closure in 1945.
Authorities declined to release the suspect's name, but media reports indicated it was Hans Lipschis, who figures among the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's most-wanted Nazis and is said to have served in the SS "Death's Head" battalion.
The man, who was detained at his home, "appeared before a judge and was taken into custody", the prosecutor's office in the state capital Stuttgart said in a statement.
"The indictment against him is currently being prepared."
Stuttgart prosecutors confirmed to AFP last month that they were working on a probe launched late last year against a suspect, who had worked at Auschwitz.
A cook vs a guard
Lipschis has been living in the Baden-Württemberg town of Aalen and reportedly told the authorities that he worked as a cook, not a guard, in the camp in occupied Poland.
However, prosecutors said the evidence pointed to the fact that the suspect in question had broader responsibilities.
"He took on supervisory duties although he did not only work as a guard," a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office told AFP.
"We will try to determine concretely when and what he did at Auschwitz."
She said the suspect was not believed to have killed prisoners himself but rather "that he abetted the actions of the perpetrators".
Despite his advanced age, the suspect underwent a medical examination and was determined fit to be taken into custody.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, in its 2013 report, lists Lipschis as its fourth most-wanted Nazi, saying he served in the SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann (Death's Head Battalion) from 1941 until 1945 at Auschwitz and "participated in the mass murder and persecution of innocent civilians, primarily Jews".
Lithuanian-born Lipschis was granted "ethnic German" status by the Nazis.
He moved to the US in 1956 but was deported to Germany in 1983, Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported last month.
Nazi Germany
More than one million people, mostly European Jews, perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1940 until it was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on 27 January 1945.
Germany has broadened the scope of its pursuit of Nazi war criminals since the 2011 conviction of Ukraine-born John Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.
In that case, the court ruled that any role at a death camp amounted to accessory to murder, widening culpability from those found to have personally ordered or committed murders and atrocities.
Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years' prison for complicity in about 28 000 murders. He died at a nursing home last year while free awaiting an appeal.
Lipschis is among 50 surviving Auschwitz staff, who are being investigated in Germany under the broadened culpability rules.
Renowned French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld said he had mixed feelings about the news from Germany.
"I am torn between my idea of justice and the necessity to chase down war criminals until they take their last breath," he told AFP.
"You need evidence and documents to incriminate them and I think there won't be any more eyewitnesses to implicate them."
Raid of US home stops 'terror attack'
The FBI says it believes "a terror attack
was disrupted" when authorities raided a US mobile home.
The FBI arrested 24-year-old Buford Rogers on Friday, after a search of
his home in Montevideo turned up Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and firearms.The FBI said in a Monday statement that it believes "the lives of several local residents were potentially saved" by the search and arrest.
The agency says a terror plot was discovered through analysis of intelligence gathered by local, state and federal authorities.
The statement doesn't offer further details about the extent or manner of the alleged plot.
Rogers is in federal custody and is charged with one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. It's not clear if he has an attorney.
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