In the spirit of Old Wine, a reprise of an old post that had been prompted by the Edge question of 2007, consider a new question: HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?

I've read a couple of reponses so far and not found much of interest. But consider this:

my experience is that real, creative, insights or breakthroughs require prolonged and concentrated time in the 'wilderness.' There are lots of things I don't know, but personally I start to get excited when I uncover something that I don't know because it really is mysterious. I've come think that it is important to cultivate a 'don't know' mind: one that perceives a real and interesting enigma, and is willing to dwell in that perplexity and confusion. A sense of playful delight in that confusion, and a willingness to make mistakes — many mistakes — while floundering about, is a key part of what makes insight possible for me. And the Internet? The Internet does not like this sort of mind. The Internet wants us to know, and it wants us to know RIGHT NOW: its essential structure is to produce knowing on demand. I don't just worry that the Internet goads us to trade understanding for information (it surely does), but that it makes us too accustomed to to instant informational gratification. Its bright light deprives us of spending any time in the fertile mystery of the dark.

Others might, of course, have quite different experiences of the causes and conditions of insight, and also of the Internet. But I'd bet that my experiences with both are not uncommon. So what should be done? A first reaction — to largely banish the Internet from my intellectual life — feels both difficult (like most I am at least a low-level addict) and counterproductive: information is, after all, crucially important, and the Internet is a unsurpassable tool for discovering and assembling it.

But the exercise suggests to me that this tool should be used in its own rightful place and time, and with a bit more of a separation from the creative acts of thinking, deeply conversing, working through ideas, or writing. That is, it may be better to think of the Internet not as an extra bit of our brain, but as a library: somewhere we occasionally go to gather raw materials that we can take away, somewhere else, where we have time and space to be bored, to be forced into non-distraction, and to be bewildered, so that we can create an opportunity for something really interesting to happen.

My experience is utterly different. Easier and faster access to information hugely increases the amount of time spent in a 'don't know' mind state. The internet doesn't "want us to know" anything and it never, ever, ever produces "knowing on demand".

I suspect that the real issue here is that the author, Anthony Aguirre, has an authoritarian mindset, a character defect that impedes understanding. As I see it, no one in their right mind would ever accept something read on the nets as being true, or confuse information for knowledge much less understanding. Information is merely data, a necessary part of knowledge but only a part.

You have to think while you read, not just absorb words. You have to assume that the writer is human, error prone, intellectually and emotionally damaged, and of really quite modest ability when the spectrum of possibility is considered. Expect defect. You may not have the time, energy or talent to do this in all cases but you need the integrity to admit this to youself and not just fake it. Having done so you are caught, infected if you will, and will have difficulty evading subsequent thoughts while you are somewhere else, even if the "somwhere else" happens to be sitting in the same spot doing the same things.

Unsurprisingly, a livestock analogy comes to mind. Many herbivores - from horses to elephants - digest inefficiently. Half of what they eat or more passes right through them yielding no nutritional benefit. They bolt their food and don't chew much before swallowing - like the internet skim reader who fails to give due consideration to the words and images that they consume. However, ruminants ruminate, they work their food over very well and wring much more nutrition from it. And so, they eat less to get more benefit than the more hasty and incontinent herbivores.

The internet doesn't really change any of that. By analogy it's a lush, irrigated pasture rather than a semi-arid and sparsely vegetated open range. But the herbivore that grazes it still has to chew and digest just as much, it's just faster and easier to get a belly full. The problem for the range cow is getting enough to eat and spending so much energy to get it. That's the difference, and that is significant, but it doesn't eliminate the need to process the material.

There is a danger. An animal switched from poor forage to rich forage can eat itself to death. It takes time to adapt to plenty, to moderate appetites to match inputs, and actually get better at handling larger inputs. So too with net.info. The fully adapted result will be some improvement in performance, a more perfect realization of genetic possibility. Young stock raised in lush surrounds and so have never experienced want will have no trouble. It's only the old stock in transition that faces challenges.