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That's why generations reared on Net technology may need to one day rely on the brain calisthenics being developed and tested by Mike Merzenich, a neuroscientist, software entrepreneur and self-described "applied philosopher."
Merzenich, who has a doctorate in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins, runs a think tank of scientists developing programs to keep your brain in shape. Why not? He's already developed software to help children with dyslexia and other disorders learn how to read, as founding CEO of Scientific Learning. And in the late 1980s, he was on a team that invented the cochlear implant.
For better or worse, high tech is helping shape human intelligence. Also in this News.com series:
As co-founder and lead scientist of San Francisco-based Posit Science--his latest venture--Merzenich oversaw testing programs centered on research he's done for three decades on brain plasticity. A field of neuroscience, brain plasticity deals with the ability of gray matter to adapt and change physically and functionally throughout life. Without invasive surgery or pharmaceuticals, Posit Science is testing programs on the elderly to engage brain plasticity and promote cognitive fitness.
CNET News.com spoke with Merzenich about how technology is affecting human intelligence.
Has intelligence changed at all in the era of the Internet?
Merzenich: Over the past 20 years or so, beginning before the Internet really took hold, the standard measure of "intelligence" (cognitive ability) has risen significantly (well more than 10 points). No one really knows what to pin this on, but it is a well-documented fact.
Are we getting smarter--or more lazily reliant on computers, and therefore, dumber?
Merzenich: Our brains are different from those of all humans before us. Our brain is modified on a substantial scale, physically and functionally, each time we learn a new skill or develop a new ability. Massive changes are associated with our modern cultural specializations.
The Internet is just one of those things that contemporary humans can spend millions of "practice" events at, that the average human a thousand years ago had absolutely no exposure to. Our brains are massively remodeled by this exposure--but so, too, by reading, by television, by video games, by modern electronics, by contemporary music, by contemporary "tools," etc.
When humans first evolved from the chimp line, they were (of course) only slightly more advanced than their relatives. It took them 10,000 to 20,000 years to develop the first useful language; about 40,000 years to figure out how to make a sharp knife; maybe 55,000 years or so to develop a method of writing; another several thousand years before they figured out how to make something sensible and portable to write on; another couple of thousand years to invent punctuation; another thousand years or so to figure out how to make more than one copy of a book; another 200 years before the general populace was taught to read, and then in only some places in the world; another couple of hundred years before the invention of the radio, television, the movies; and so on.
In each stage of cultural development (and hundreds of separate lines of development could be tracked like this), the average human had to learn complex new skills and abilities that all involve massive brain change. Our brains are vastly different, in fine detail, from the brains of our ancestors.
We have this wonderful ability to specialize--so powerful that each one of us can actually learn an incredibly elaborate set of ancestrally developed skills and abilities in our lifetimes, in a sense generating a recreation of this history of cultural evolution via brain plasticity, in a highly abstracted form, in every one of us.
With the Internet and contemporary technology evolving at a lightning pace over the past 40 years, the demands of uploading from our cultural history are incredible, and we're seeing more and more people falling off the boat.
Does this mean that our "intelligence" is greater?
Merzenich: The answer to that depends in part on your definition of "intelligence." In classical studies, it was argued that each one of us has a core ability that is not influenced by our education or culture. This may or may not be true, and it may or may not be the case that it is changing as our cultural resources expand (now almost exponentially).
What is getting better, undeniably, is the amount of information, and our access to
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Affect means to alter due to proximity... "I will be affected by change".
affect = verb, to have an effect upon
When you affect something, you produce an effect on it.
example: "Will the new rules have an effect on me?"
example: "Will the new rules affect me?"
Merzenich seems to suggest our accelerating facility with information tools (manifest by 1000 examples) is in some way genetically passed on. Without connecting this sort of intelligence to Darwinian reproductive fitness (a long shot at best, at least over the last 20 years) we have a problem.
I, however, would not reject Merzenich's Lamarckian proposition out of hand however. Experiments have been done showing memory (encoded in RNA) CAN be passed thru the generations.
Merzenich seems to suggest our accelerating facility with information tools (manifest by 1000 examples) is in some way genetically passed on. Without connecting this sort of intelligence to Darwinian reproductive fitness (a long shot at best, at least over the last 20 years) we have a problem.
I, however, would not reject Merzenich's Lamarckian proposition out of hand however. Experiments have been done showing memory (encoded in RNA) CAN be passed thru the generations.
The real question is: Can you reason things out? Have you the ability to see the differences between things or understand the repercussions? This is what we should emphasize as a people not memory games. It's not "what temperature does water boil at" but knowing that if you stick your body in it, you will burn. That's the important concept. Why not ask: "How many steps to the moon?" Or "do you know the difference between baking powder and baking soda?" Probably not and it does not matter. That's it.