This is Your Brain on Computers

The Sunday New York Times included this article entitled, "Your Brain on Computers: Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price" and is, in my opinion, one of the most important articles for middle class Americans to read this year. It should not take you long to read and if you cannot hold the attention to finish this article, it's even more important that you soldier through it.

Here are some choice quotes to entice you:

"The nonstop interactivity is one of the most significant shifts ever in the human environment, said Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco.

'We are exposing our brains to an environment and asking them to do things we weren’t necessarily evolved to do,' he said. 'We know already there are consequences.'
...
Mr. Nass at Stanford thinks the ultimate risk of heavy technology use is that it diminishes empathy by limiting how much people engage with one another, even in the same room.

'The way we become more human is by paying attention to each other,' he said. 'It shows how much you care.'

That empathy, Mr. Nass said, is essential to the human condition. 'We are at an inflection point,' he said. 'A significant fraction of people’s experiences are now fragmented.'