Is the Internet microsizing me?

I've been thinking a lot about microsizing lately. In an Atlantic Monthly article by Nicholas Carr, the writer/blogger explains how the Internet has shaped our process of thought, "chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation," he says.

I think there's an engulfing effect that occurs with a book or while discussing a topic at a coffee shop, an ocean of thought that permeates within us in ways we don't really understand; the Internet is more like a million water balloons hitting our synapses all at the same time, and yet we keep craving the next hit. In many ways, the Internet is vastly deeper than any ocean, but it also takes up an area the size of a small galaxy.

Carr says this new media is actually changing our brains - we're all being reprogrammed. He makes the point that the tools we use for research and information consumption change how we process that information. For me, the example is fairly sanguine: I tend to write differently on a Mac at a coffee shop than I do in my office with a PC desktop, but it's a good thing: both environments inspire me in different ways.

Carr also talks about how society changed when we "stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock." It's a physiological change, and Carr says it occurs at the computer screen and when we are not on the Net. The perfect example for me is when I am crawling into bed and I sometimes think of a brilliant Google search term I could use that leads me to exactly the right information (I hope).

Still, I'm not as concerned with how the Web has changed our ability to consume information, and that it has influenced our lives in all the ways Carr surmises (some, we don't even know yet). My concern is: now that we have microsized our information, where does that really leave us in the long run? Meaning, I may consume information differently, and that may change how I learn (as it changes my brain's capacity to learn), but what I really want to know is how is it changing me in other ways? How is the Internet changing my personality?

I'm also a print journalist, and this shift in how we read and consume information is itself evolving, sometimes right between blog posts and feature stories I'm writing. It's a different kind of conversation. The print world craves depth (people buy magazines because they are interested in the act -- the process -- of reading, in reclining with a lemonade) whereas a blog post like this is more about information dissemination (people read blogs to get the information they want). It's supposed to be tangential. What I worry about is that the microsizing of information is lessening my ability to let information germinate. It's like I have gone from being an oven to a microwave: I worry about how the food will taste.

One of my editors recently noted how there was a shift some time ago: computers don't work for us, we work for them. Sites like Mechanical Turk and SerebraConnect allow you to connect into the neural gateways of the Internet for pennies on the dollar, making your work a percentage contribution to what Carr calls the great database of the Internet. What kind of worker am I? Am I just throwing more water balloons, or am I still swimming in an ocean of permanence and not wallowing in a million vestiges? Thankfully, I still read about three books a week, so something about my brain is still spong-like.

Over the past few weeks, I've tried to keep pace with Twitter and FaceBook, but I'm what Gartner calls an immigrant, not a native. I still use e-mail. The "immediate social connect" is occurring all around me, but I'm still a bit of a spectator. It's daunting. I can imagine what it's like to follow the daily activities of 40 friends on Twitter; I can't imagine what it would be like to follow 400. FaceBook, that "100 year" invention of social connection, is perhaps the best example of what microsizing has done to me. I care about what a friend of mine named Nathan does for all of about four seconds per day. What if, in 20 years from now, I care about all of my friends for four seconds each? Apart from how the Internet changes my consumption habits - how it replaces the printing press - I want to know how those four seconds of connection per friend will change me, and I think the prognosis is not good. I can't believe that four seconds of anything can have anything but a detrimental effect on anything I do (meaning, if all I did was eat 1/80th of an Apple every day, I woudl die), and might leave me like nothing more than the entrails of a broken water balloon. Blah, pick me up when you leave, okay?