Lobotomy. It is a scary word. It has a medical sound to it, with Greek origins. On hearing this word, a strange image conjures. A thin bespectacled man dressed in white, patiently drilling a hole in my skull with surgical precision. I do not fear the man in the white. He does not look scary. I don’t fear surgeries. They are useful, and often necessary. What terrifies me is the possibility of losing a part of my brain, consequently my self. Descartes could delude, or comfort, himself with the Mind-Body dualism. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I cannot. My brain is, therefore I am. In fact, I am what my brain is. Any changes to my brain will change my identity. And I shudder at the possibility of this happening involuntarily. Fortunately, this barbaric practice has long been relegated to the history. I need not fear. My brain and my self are safe.
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More precisely, can my brain be changed, with me unaware, without drilling into it? Yes. Nicolas Carr claims, in his book “The Shallows.” Our brains have been changed, without our knowledge, over the past decade. It is still happening. At this very moment. Curiously, we are welcoming the agent of this transformation. It is the Internet. Yes, the Internet. The most seductive, the most effective tool for changing our brains, since the invention of language. It is making us shallow. Is Carr’s assertion true? And if so, can we do anything about
More precisely, can my brain be changed, with me unaware, without drilling into it? Yes. Nicolas Carr claims, in his book “The Shallows.” Our brains have been changed, without our knowledge, over the past decade. It is still happening. At this very moment. Curiously, we are welcoming the agent of this transformation. It is the Internet. Yes, the Internet. The most seductive, the most effective tool for changing our brains, since the invention of language. It is making us shallow. Is Carr’s assertion true? And if so, can we do anything about