August 13, 2009
How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting
Emily Yoffe in Slate:
Seeking. You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble. Google searches are becoming a cause of mistrials as jurors, after hearing testimony, ignore judges' instructions and go look up facts for themselves. We search for information we don't even care about. Nina Shen Rastogi confessed in Double X, "My boyfriend has threatened to break up with me if I keep whipping out my iPhone to look up random facts about celebrities when we're out to dinner." We reach the point that we wonder about our sanity. Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times said she became so obsessed with Twitter posts about the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest that she spent days "refreshing my search like a drugged monkey."
We actually resemble nothing so much as those legendary lab rats that endlessly pressed a lever to give themselves a little electrical jolt to the brain. While we tap, tap away at our search engines, it appears we are stimulating the same system in our brains that scientists accidentally discovered more than 50 years ago when probing rat skulls.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 05:38 PM | Permalink
Comments
There are a wide variety of possible reasons why people participate in social networks, including (1) the fact that we're inherently social animals (that's why we have solitary confinement as a punishment); (2) need for social stature and power; (3) to leave a mark in the world (as you said); (4) possible advantages in acquiring further wealth based on reputation; (5) fame; (6) sex. I think for different social networks people participate for different reasons. Facebook, started as a social dating site, for instance, but now it has become a place for people to communication and to gain reputation in your friendship circle.
Posted by: mariana | Aug 14, 2009 3:26:02 AM
I agree with the previous comment. I can't see why there is this craze for evo-reductionism for everything. Evolution, inherited physical traits, 'brain wiring' etc is only ONE possible explanation for complex social phenomena (and it's often a pretty poor one).
Posted by: Chris Horner | Aug 14, 2009 5:35:54 AM
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