In my last Search Insider, I took you on a neurological tour that gave us a glimpse into how our brains are built to read. Today, let’s dig deeper into how our brains guide us through an online hunt for information. Brain Scans and Searching First, a recap. In Nicholas Carr’s Book, The Shallows, What the Internet is doing to Our Brains, I focused on one passage – and one concept – in particular. It’s likely that our brains have built a short cut for reading. The normal translation from a printed word to a concept usually requires multiple mental steps. But [...]

Posted on 26 August 2010 | 2:47 pm

How do we read? How do we take the arbitrary, human-made code that is the written word and translate into thoughts and images that mean something to our brain, an organ that had it’s basic wiring designed thousands of generations before the appearance of the first written word? What is going on in your skull right now as your eyes scan the black squiggly lines that make up this column? The Reading Short Cut I’m currently reading Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains”, a follow up to Carr’s article in The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us [...]

Posted on 19 August 2010 | 2:12 pm

Funny, how our brains make us hang on to things that make little sense in the new scheme of things. But, for as plastic as the brain is, there are worn grooves that cannot be denied. We are creatures of habit and those habits comfort us – make us feel in control of our environment. Even when there is no ration for our recurring behaviors, habits keep things plowing along, giving us a sense of equilibrium. Every time I cross the Atlantic, where history is the natural state of things, I gain a new appreciation for this clash of the new [...]

Posted on 12 August 2010 | 11:13 am