Essay 4- Where is our concentraion?

Excessive Internet usage has led us to a new world that is being built now on this planet. The way we communicate, influences the way we think and this would lead to changing way of acting and behavior and finally may lead us to a world –the whole sets of humans- totally different from the one that we know until now.

Internet as a new medium has been the most influential media ever and is affecting our societies gradually in a way that we don’t understand or even notice. But if we want to focus on only of the potential harmful consequences of internet, we can consider the way we perform our daily tasks. Let me tell you a scenario which happens to me almost everyday:

I am studying at my desk in front of computer. It doesn’t matter if you are studying a print material or do it by your laptop because you need your laptop anyway because of for instance, using online dictionaries. Suddenly, one of my friends sends me a link by MSN Messenger and distracts my mind to something that she has found interesting or funny. I try to prevent myself clicking on that link, but finally I will check it as soon as possible. But it is not the end of the story, I will find another issue in that link which sounds interesting for me and of course I think that my friends will like it, so I will send that link to all the people in my friends list and causing them distracting from their ordinary tasks. This impaired cycle repeats and repeats until it comes back to me again maybe two hours later.

This is the way that we perform our tasks everyday, even if we go to library to concentrate on our studying, but we take our laptops over there and unfortunately there is a wireless connection over there in order to not allowing us being away from this ubiquitous entity called “Internet”. It is like a situation that we are addicted to drugs and everywhere you find it and use it almost free, then the result is obvious you cannot go back to your normal life or get rid of your addiction. You will go to the end non-stop.

Everyday, every hour, every minute, we are encountering to massive amount of information which bombards us aggressively without any kind consideration. I think I have learnt 2 times more than what I had learnt in whole of my life in last 4 years which I became addicted to internet but what the result is. I cannot explain -or maybe use- any of these information that I have learnt recently because they are just attack my mind and go out quickly, replaced by new intruders. This kind of information just fills up your memory without any actual usage in your life, maybe just changing your point of view but at what price?!! It is very difficult now to read a scientific article or a journal paper. We can not concentrate on our tasks anymore.

Maybe, this is one of the reasons that “science” does not progress anymore. The only think which is progressing is technology not the pure science and that’s because of companies’ interests nothing else. We cannot see any new Einstein or Newton, because this system doesn’t allow us to flourish in that way. We have become like robots which do what is programmed to, not any innovation or creation. Or maybe worse than a robot, because we do not use any artificial intelligence, instead, Google thinks instead of us, defining the way for us and we just go in that way without any resistance. But where are we going?