He wrote Hermes Trismegisto in his Kybalioneverything in creation has its rhythm and that rhythm, if we follow it, always takes us back to the beginning. It takes us to the world as will and representation, in the way Zaratrusta spoke, to the recurrence theorem of Poincaré … and, of course, to the discussion of whether the technology is leaving us fried by the brain.
Or, rather, what, how and why it is affecting our cognitive ability.
Because the fact that something is changing nobody discusses it. And how to discuss it? Of course something It is changing. And not only functionally, the changes are structural and all levels. The simple presence of screens It has substantially modified our somatosensory cortex; That is, they have changed the way we touch the world. There is nothing.
But the situation goes further: how Manuel Sebastián explained years agoresearcher at the Cerebral Cartography Unit of the Complutense University, “we know that the text that includes links (hypertext) seems to remember worse in general, which is totally logical because they constitute distractors and the role of attention is critical in memory.”
We knew that, but we didn’t know what it meant. “The fact that information is processed differently is not necessarily bad,” Sebastián told us. In the background, our brain Life is reorganizing And historically, that has been a good news.
The question is, therefore, if it will continue to be in the future.
And there are many experts who believe no. Data are not lacking. As John Burn-Murnoch explained in the Financial Timesalthough in recent years we have lent a lot of interest in the impact of pandemic on the cognitive and emotional development of young people, there are more and more experts who think we are not seeing it in perspective.
Both the scores of most standardized tests of the world (as the PISA report) and Some specialized surveysThey point out that the problem began to appear in the mid -2010. And that problem It has many faces: From the difficulty to concentrate on the problems to learn new things.
It is a bit complicated. Because, the truth is that, if we look at things like the time of use of screens and cognitive or emotional problems, we discover that There is nothing problematic. The traditional explanation has been that the important thing is not that we use new technologies, the important thing is what we do with them.
And that’s where the algorithm enters. Because, As Burn-Murdoch saysthere is a change perhaps more fundamental than mobiles and networks: “the change in our relationship with information.”
We have gone from web pages limited to infinite and constantly updated feeds, with a constant notifications bombardment. We no longer spend so long navigating the web or interacting with acquaintances, but we find a content torrent. This represents a transition from self -directed behavior to passive consumption and the constant alternation of context.
And that’s where the problems may be. Unfortunately, There is still little research on this And, to the extent that everyone has launched this type of technologies and algorithms, we find a very difficult area to investigate.
The good news is that, little by little, we are clearing the issue. The bad is that there is still much to know, even, the impact of all this. And, despite everything, as we usually check Every time an extensive study is published On our relationship with technology, there are no great alarm signs.
Anyway, it seems that the plasticity of the human brain Find the way of “returning home”to overcome possible obstacles and catch up. Hopefully let’s know how we can eliminate those obstacles.
Image | Luis Villasmil | Ben White
In Xataka | Alone and connected, the paradox of loneliness at the time of the thousand “friends” in networks
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings