Chapters 19 & 20

Chapters 19 & 20Vale

00:00 / 12:20

Rolf's Points

(What's mentioned in the book)

See Carr, ‘The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains’ in Wired, May 2010.

On London cabbies see Eleanor A. Maguire, Katherine Woollett and Hugo J. Spiers, ‘London Taxi Drivers and Bus Drivers: A Structural MRI and Neuropsychological Analysis’, Hippocampus, 16, 2006, pp.1091–1101.

On the new geometric drawings, see the Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure test. See also Kep-Kee Loh and Ryota Kanai, ‘Higher Media Multi-Tasking Activity Is Associated with Smaller Gray-Matter Density in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex’ in PLOS One, 2014.

On Donald Henderson see Alison F. Takemura, ‘Epidemiologist Who Helped Eradicate Smallpox Dies’ in The Scientist, 22 August 2016

When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.

- Nicholas Carr

Vale's Points

(What's supplemented when Vale was reading)

Perhaps news consumption is the only cause of decline in concentration span and lowering emotional inhibition. Social media, with a focus on short disparate comments, may be partly responsible to this as well.

Impact of Social Media on Our Attention Span and its Drastic Aftermath .

The Kardashians