A continuation on the topic posted about burned out, young e-journalists, this is an article examining how screens and all of the immediate information available to us are affecting our creativity. An alarming quote from Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and, as the article mentions, one of the world’s leading brain scientists,“The technology is rewiring our brains.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html
In a previous article, the Boston Globe covered a story similar to the Times, back in 2008. According to the Boston Globe, this digital squelching of creativity is not good. For, it is in this downtime where creativity and daydreaming exists.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/08/31/daydream_achiever/?page=1
Both articles approach the topic of creativity from different angles, both citing recent research on creativity.
In the Globe article, Teresa Belton, a research associate at East Anglia University in England, studied creations of children and deemed their 'creativity' slightly void of the vivid creativity of children of past generations. The NY Times article focuses more on creativity's affect on interpersonal relationships.
Both articles cite researchers from neuroscientists, research assistants and professionals. I feel that including an expert on addiction studies, such in the NY Times article, helps make the article more haunting.
And, an unrelated point, I like the title of the Boston Globe article. :)
I enjoyed both of these articles! You know, the idea of addiction to technology reminded me of a story a while back on (I think) 60 Minutes.
ReplyDeleteThey were covering online gamer addicts. There was this one guy who stopped answering his family's phone calls. Finally, they drove to his house to discover he had stopped going to work and had not left the house for 30 days. There were pizza boxes stacked high and garbage everywhere. He'd been playing on online game, Everquest, which is similar to World of Warcraft.
I know that's somewhat different than what's discussed in those articles, but it's a digital addiction nonetheless.
Both articles did a great job showing multiple examples of these types of addictions, expert quotes and common-folk quotes, but I see the differences you pointed out, too. Good find!