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Introduction
A number of writers in recent times have started up a debate about the harmful impact of digital technologies on our cognitive capacities ([1] Bauerlein, 2008). This debate is couched in terms which are often journalistic and even polemical, but there is a foundation in genuine scholarship. The intention of the debate is to highlight the mental effects of information retrieval via the web, use of the screen-based searching activities, and internet-based social networking, with particular focus on the damage to the intellectual capacities of younger people. In essence, this is a reactive movement, sounding a pessimistic note against the early, unqualified optimism of proponents of the digital revolution. Their counter-argument is that a new generation's immersion in the internet and similar ICTs is not simply creating a new set of competencies, but is also creating a new, disabling set of incompetencies. The most pessimistic of these writers think that the disadvantages of these new ways of thinking and reading outweigh the advantages.
Perhaps the most high-profile recent advocate of this pessimistic school of thought is Nicholas Carr, whose book The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember ([5] Carr, 2010b) has made something of a stir. The author preceded the publication of this work with a summary article in Wired magazine ([4] Carr, 2010a) that aimed to entice readers into buying and reading the full work. For those of us whose attention span has been truncated by too much use of the web, the article is easier to digest than the full book - so let me quote from this shorter of Carr's critiques. Entitled "The web shatters focus, rewires brains", Carr starts by quoting one study by [23] Small (2009) (carried out in 2007 but published in 2009), which showed that internet-searching activity does indeed reshape the neural circuits of the brain. Although this reshaping can in some ways be beneficial - the original research was given a very different spin by the [25] BBC News (2008) for example - Carr emphasises the negative:
When we go online we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information,...