Newsletter #127 Is the Net Changing Us?

Created on Oct 29 2008 12:00AM

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Our last newsletter (30th September, 2008) was "Why Bounce Rates Matter".

Feature Article

As Marshall McLuhan noted in the 1960s, “The medium is the message”. Media are not just passive channels of information, they supply the content but they also shape the process of thought. The Internet is becoming, and already is for many people, the universal medium for almost all information that flows to us.

When we use, what sociologist Daniel Bell has called our “intellectual technologies”, the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities, we begin to take on the qualities of those technologies. As Nicholas Carr* points out “The mechanical clock, which came into common use in the 14th century, provides a compelling example. In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.”

A recently published study by the University College London, confirms what many usability experts also find. Online information seeking behaviour is characterized by skimming activity “where people view just one or two pages from an academic site and then ‘bounce’ out, perhaps never to return…. around 60 per cent of e-journal users view no more than three pages and a majority (up to 65 per cent) never return.”

Way back in October 1997, usability guru Jakob Nielsen found that 79 per cent of test users always scanned any new page they found; only 16 per cent read word-by-word. In a 2006 study he also found that only 19% of test readers fully read email newsletters.

The question is: As the Internet becomes all-consuming and more influential on our lives – is it changing the way we read?

According to Maryanne Wolf, Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University, reading is not an instinctive skill for humans. We have to teach our brains to read. The Sumerian cuneiform is one of the earliest forms of written expression and evolved from pictorial to abstract characters. “The brain’s design made reading possible, and reading’s design changed the brain in multiple, critical, still evolving ways.” So according to Wolf the media we use in learning and reading can influence the shaping of neural circuits in our brain.

Neuroscientists now believe that the adult mind is far more malleable than previously thought. Researchers from the Brain Mind Institute of the EPFL in France found that the brain rewires itself following an experience. Researchers Henry Markram and Jean-Vincent Le Be found that connections between neurons switch rapidly on and off, leading to a form of adaptive rewiring in which the brain is engaged in a continuous process of changing, strengthening and pruning its circuitry (ScienceDaily.com).

The continual exposure to the Internet and our brain’s adaption to it may be changing the way that we consume all media. Maybe it explains the lack of attention of today’s youth – or is that just an observation coloured by being in an older generation?

*Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” in the July/August Atlantic magazine provided background for this piece.

Hot Tips

Newbies

Quite often you may want to search for an individual word or phrase on a Webpage. Press "Ctrl+F" to launch the Find dialog box. If you want to search a portion of the page, first click it with the mouse. Then choose Up or Down in the Direction area of the dialog box. This works with Internet Explorer, Firefox and most Windows-based applications.

Power Users

Google Calculator: To use Google's built-in calculator function, simply enter the expression you'd like evaluated in the search box and hit the Enter key. The calculator can evaluate mathematical expressions involving basic arithmetic, more complicated mathematics, units of measure and conversions and physical constants. Try [5*15-10], [10 miles in kilometres] or [sqrt 225]. Google also does heaps of other stuff - see here: http://www.google.com/help/features.html

Interesting Sites

Around the Web world you've probably seen many news stories that allow you to "Digg" it. The more people who Digg the same story, the higher it rises in the popularity ranking on Digg.com, where other Diggers can read and comment on it. A great way to view what issues Web surfers are particularly interested in at any time.

InsiteFul Quotes

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." Confucius

You can see our other Quick Quotes on the front page of www.netinsites.com; just refresh the page to see another one randomly selected from our database. Great for presentations or times when you want to appear to be a techno-dude(ss)!

Archives

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Best wishes

Alex Garden

Internet Strategy | Website Design | Website Promotion | Web Text Messaging | Email Newsletters | Online Sports Games | Content Management