Live webchat with Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Thurs 2 Sept, 1-2pm

[GeraldineMumsnet]

We're very pleased that Nicholas Carr is coming to Mumsnet to discuss the ideas expounded in his new book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains.

The book expands arguments Nicholas made in a much-discussed article in The Atlantic magazine, Is Google Making Us Stupid?

He's concerned about how the internet is affecting the way we read, think and remember. Are our brains changing in response to our online habits? And what are the implications for ourselves and our children?

Hope you can join Nicholas on Thurs 2 Sept, 1-2pm, to share your views.

thank you for a really though provoking webchat :)

I'm off to take my four dc out to commune with nature on the way to Tesco

@Contra

I am currently struggling to maintain a conversation with my DH, who has had an iPhone for about 3 months. He appears to be addicted to using it (for no discernible goal or good).

He simply cannot put the it down. He attempts to hold conversations and look after our children whilst playing with it and any spare time he gets is immediately filled with iPhone activity.

I think he prefers it to real life. He has always had a short attention span and this new phone has filled the previous gap between his concentration and the demands of real life.

Contra,

Because we have a primitive craving for new information, it's all too easy to become compulsive in checking our BlackBerry or iPhone. The idea that we can have a real conversation with someone while constantly glancing at a gadget is crazy, and yet it seems to be becoming more and more commonplace in society. I wish I had an easy solution to offer you, but I don't.

@WreckOfTheHesperus

Are those of us who have only had the internet for a part of our adult lives going to be at an advantage or disadvantage in today's world, if we retain some of our old-fashioned approaches to reading and thinking?

Wreck,

My own sense is that the net affects people of all ages in similar ways. So I don't think it's necessarily true that older people are more immune to the negative consequences than the young. Indeed, many of the people who seem to suffer from the deepest forms of "BlackBerry addiction" are well into middle age.

@bbee

Isn't the media and government just as much to blame? Media for the way it has changed tv and newspapers by talking down to us more and more over the years and the government for going along with tit-bit method of teaching, ie they have changed childrens learning by saying they can't concentrate for long and have to have floor time and hands-on time all in snippets instead of addressing the real problem of discipline?

I think it's something of a vicious cycle. Media encourage soundbites, then public figures and schools begin to stress soundbites, then media trims the size of the soundbites once again. I suppose we're all implicated in the results.

It sounds like lots of kids are concentrating on there electronic games for long periods of time? Is it more to do with following the path of least resistance?

Thanks mumsnet for my copy of The Shallows. Looking forward to reading it.