INTERNET EFFECT

16.   “INTERNET (GOOGLE) EFFECT”

“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men;

No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”

-- Elbert Hubbard

         The two extraordinary men, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded the ‘Google’ are having a second look at their ‘machines’ and now (2015) reorganising the ‘Google’  into ‘Alphabet’ (a bag of companies which includes ‘Google’) to cope with the future competition as otherwise they would go the way of the dinosaurs.  If they do not unleash their brain network their Internet would be a toast.  Machines only do what the men command.  The India-born Sundar Pitchai who is the new CEO of ‘Google’, and others at ‘Alphabet’ may be commanding the machines to create products like ‘Driverless cars’, ‘Google glass’, ‘Longevity solutions’, etc. which represent a push towards the holy grail of all technological research. That is how things are going on at the centre.  In contrast, at the periphery we are letting the machines  command us – that’s part of the ‘Google effect’.   My article titled “The ‘Google effect:’  may be good,  may be bad”  (published in THE HINDU of April 22, 2012)  may be accessed at:  http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article3340116.ece.

ANATHEMA

         For some, technology is anathema to any authentic experience of nature.  They may say that the technology and gizmos which are “bad masters though  good servants” have destroyed the fabric of our families.

“These days it is fashionable to lament about the internet generation, to wring hands about their attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorders. To declare that their incessant scrolling, typing, texting is the sure and certain route to imbecility. They have not the patience to read War and Peace, so can never be worthy citizens of our republic. And the Internet came up with zilch.”

“But you know what — it is high time we kept down our gavel of snobbery and dismounted our literary high horse. I am weary of all those authors, critics and Luddites who vilify the blue glow on our faces and lament the demise of deep reading, while propagating something called — slow reading.”                                                      ( http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/blink/read/the-modern-flneur/article6130376.ece  )

DOCTORS  NOT  COMPUTER  SAVVY

Fortunately or unfortunately, it looks that a majority of the medical practitioners are not computer trained.  According to a recent study on “Information needs and seeking behaviour of medical practitioners in Tamil Nadu,”  which is presented in the Ph.D. thesis (page 240) of Dr. BO. Sathivel Murugan, Ph.D., Librarian, Perundurai Medical College & Research Centre,  it is found that 62 per cent of the medical practitioners have a “barrier to obtaining Information Sources”  due to lack of computer training. Of course, the computer literacy will improve in course of time just as the general literacy in India improved from 12 per cent in 1947 to 74 percent in 2013.

MARVEL  OF  TECHNOLOGY

The Net has become the fount of all knowledge, and a quick swig from the fount provides satiety to the brain on almost any subject.  The unimaginable algorithms and the virtually unlimited information provided by computers are simply mind-boggling and incredible indeed.

There is good and bad of everything.  Technology is a great leveller, though it is a double-edged sword.   I think there is room for both at the table. Due to road accidents, 142,485 people died in India in one year alone (2011 – Ministry of Road Transport & Highways).  Should we give up roads and vehicles and walk the distances ?  The same is the case with the good and bad of the Net.  We just can’t give it up.  We just can’t deride modern technology outright. Imagine life without the convenience of  ‘smart phones’.  To a great extent, we have embraced technology as a force for good.  The sheer amount of information which now resides online – indexed in databases, publications, personal blogs and others – seems to only be limited by our imagination.  Just at the swish of a finger, we can access 4.5 million articles currently on Wikipedia. And there are gizmos like iPads, e-Readers, smart phones and tablets.

There doesn’t seem to be a nook and cranny nowhere you can turn to and not hear something about Internet activity.  Brains with extraordinary memory are becoming ordinary with the advent of Internet (Net) !   It seems that the human cortex is undergoing an evolutionary change by remapping the neural circuitry and re-organizing the way we remember things.  In the earlier decades, we used to remember lots of information, necessarily, as we didn't have search engines like Google and databases such as Amazon.com, IMDb.com, etc., which serve as external memory where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.  The focus now is to remember only the access to information on the Net rather than the contents, thus saving ourselves a lot of 'brain power' for doing something other than the mundane activity of rote or memorising.

LOSING PERSONAL TOUCH  

          Recent studies indicate that people are getting more and more primed to click on a computer rather than engaging in interpersonal intellectual communication with colleagues or friends.  They are getting more cocooned.  They would rather revel in solitary entertainment than sharing with ‘real physical’ people; they would rather use their QWERTY- trained fingers than their voice box;  they would rather spend time to use Internet to catch up via websites such as iPlayer and Channel40D rather than catching up with someone in reality.  While the world is getting technologically connected, it is getting more and more disconnected personally. 

“DIGITAL  LOVE”

            By and large, social networking sites which have become very popular are providing innocuous friendships without the restrictions of physical geography.  But, sometimes they mask the real from the fake.  There are criminals in the cyberspace.  Digital infidelity on social media is noticeable. Umpteen number of people lost money in the game of ‘digital love’.  A 67-year-old Bengaluru-based widow lost Rs. 11 lakh to a man connected through Facebook whom she loved.  A doctor claiming to be practising in the UK cheated a Hyderabad-based lady doctor to the tune of Rs. 48 lakh promising to marry her who got introduced through a matrimonial website.  Issues of communal tensions and violence cropped up following comments or posts on social media.  Like a knife or a gun, the media are not inherently bad,  but personal temperance and restraint are the only protection.

The ‘Ofcom’s Communications Market Report’ indicates that adults favour text messages over phone calls.  Come to think of it, people in future would be talking more with machines than real people, as it may happen with wide use of personal assistant ‘Siri’ (‘Siri’ is a facility which provides conversational interaction with many applications. We can directly talk to the gadget and by voice recognition it can give us the required information on business centres, restaurants, weather, traffic, stocks, music, reminders, etc.  It is available on iPhone 4S, iPad 3^rd generation, iPhone 5 and other ‘smart’ devices).  In course of time we may be widely using robots for various purposes.  And rogue robots may step in to cause disaster.

These artificially intelligent machines may now be cute and innocent but future developments may spell disaster when they are applied in warfare to kill countries, as the devices may automatically make crucial decisions without moral thinking.  Silicon Valley’s resident futurist, Elon Musk, said that artificial intelligence is “potentially more dangerous than nukes.”  The Google and the DeepMind have together constituted an artificial intelligence safety  and ethics board (2014) to ensure safe development of these technologies.

DIGITAL  PUBLICATIONS

The great pleasure of holding the morning newspaper in one hand and a cup of coffee/tea/milk/juice in the other has become a thing of the past in some zones of the globe where  life is digitalised.  A few NRIs who visited us recently said that they don’t read physical newspapers in the US.   How sad !    But the virtual pixel screen can never (as of this moment of time) replace  One derives great pleasure from a physical newspaper or a book by handling them,  flipping through the pages, hearing the rustling sound, smelling the odd odours emanating from the new books, seeing the movement of the papers, neatly keeping them in  book shelf and  pulling them out and showing to  guests.   And imagine the real pleasure of the physical experiences of buying books  for a song from the second-hand book vendors on the pavements where an odd mix of William Shakespeare and Sidney Sheldon, Charles Dickens and J.K. Rowling exist.  A great mix of old worn out books of P.G. Woodhouse, Mark Twain, Harrold Robbins and Jackie Collins have a time perspective and even odd smells which the electronic screens can’t enchant us with.  This is what we who grew up in the ‘print only’ world feel.  But times are changing fast.  Crèches are replacing mothers.  Elevators are replacing stairs.  Kindle is replacing books and libraries.  Pixel screens are replacing printed pages.  In the ‘pixel-only’ world of the future when people become ‘programmed machines’ the human feelings would take the back seat.   That ‘Apple’ was just a fruit would be a nostalgic reverie !

But  the E-papers and E-books have their own niche – instant accessibility, huge storage facility, portability and instant sharing facility.  Just think about the space that paper books require and the cost involved to buy and store them.  While the e-reader holds hundreds of books, ‘Cloud storage’ gives room for even more -- holding a library in a tote.  It looks that we are hooked to e-reading field with applications like Kindle, Nook, BeBook, Cybook, etc. which lope towards us like expensive wolves !  And, of course, we have to reduce consumption and carbon footprints for the sake of future generations.

But many feel that holding and reading a real book or a newspaper has its own pleasures.  The virtual pixel screen can never (as of this moment of time) wipe out printed pages. And it has been estimated that computers already consume around five per cent of the world’s power and that the electronic devices are not bio-degradable and hard to recycle.  Of course, to expect the feel and smell of the paper entirely would be a little over the top. Though the newspaper sales have not been robust in some countries, the jury is not yet out on this matter.

The latest (2012) notable episode of dominance of the digital publishing market is the moving of Encyclopaedia Britannica solely into the digital age. The flagship 33 volume printed edition priced at $1400 which was first published in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1768 will no more be printed on paper !  The current thinking is that the real paper books are toxically bad – pollution, enormous cost, consumption of trees and energy. 

More than 70 philologists, including lexicographers and etymologists are working to bring out the next edition of a 40 volume of The Oxford English Dictionary which is likely to be available only in the digital format because of its gargantuan size and the implied economics.  The work, ‘OED3’ version (more than 800,000 words), is so enormous that it may be ready only after 20 years (2034) !

BLAME  NOT  THE  NET

            With all this, who has the time to savour leisurely the hardcopies of "Romeo and Juliet" and  "War and Peace"? We just shouldn't blame Internet or Google for its "side effects."  The advantages are too many to condemn them. It is just a need-based evolution and we should be prudent to have in our limited human memory a balanced and need-based information tempered with wisdomwhich is the ultimate asset.

Nowadays, employers are looking for people with knowledge and the wisdom to apply it rather than the capacity to store maximal information in their brains.  It is essential that while we blame the Net for certain deleterious effects we should not belittle the tremendous advantages provided by it.  We have witnessed mind-blowing technological advancement over the past few decades and we are trying to create a robot with a mind.  Technology is accused of providing information without insight.  The internet is as useful as it is dangerous.

EVOLUTION  OF  BRAIN

            By the by, evolution makes a great change like what it did for the small brain (28 billion brain cells or neurons) in great apes to transform into a big (86 billion neurons) one in man – homo erectus to homo sapiens.  The energy of 20 per cent of our food goes to the brain which is only 2 per cent of the total body mass.  It looks that the development of cooking habit of man increased the brain size in the process of evolution of man  (Proc. Natl, Acad, Sci,US(PNAS),Oct.22,2012).

GOOGLE  EFFECT

           There is a sea change brought about by the "Internet effect," if it may be called so. Researchers, led by psychologist, Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University, have studied this paradigm shift in memory, called "Google effect", and indicated that people have a poor recall of knowledge from their memory if they knew where that knowledge could easily be found on the Internet, but at the same time they are more adept at remembering information on how to get access to knowledge on the Net through links, hyperlinks, etc.  Internet search engines are making people 'lose their memory of details', as the information could easily be retrieved from the Internet. The trend is not to memorise data which are readily accessible on the Net but to utilise the blank brain for something more worthwhile.

DIFFERENT  ORIENTATION

The new balance that the Net has brought has been making people to think, read and memorize differently which some refer to as "Google effect." Some aver that the easy availability of information on the Net leads to 'intellectual laziness' making them less 'memory oriented' in certain aspects.  The studies have revealed a declining trend in memorising textual information which, anyway, is just a click away. 

Thus the Net is playing the part of external or ‘transactive’ memory stored outside our bodies, relegating the brains to act as index pages. But we may use the spare capacity of the brain for a myriad of other purposes. And it is neither necessary nor possible to memorise detailed texts of information pertaining even to the narrow field of specialisation of an individual. It would be profitable to utilise the memory power for something more creative and innovative. Moreover, we have developed a tendency to forage into the Web's info-thickets and to get lost in e-reading, scanning highlights and blog-spots, zooming on videos and listening to podcasts, jumping from link to link to hyperlink and zipping on the Net surface on a Jet Ski --  all of which robs us of some memory reserve and time. And these days, we have to skim through the vast amount of information to keep ourselves updated on multiple fronts. 

            In the past, people used to gather information from friends and co-workers or classmates.  Now, with this ‘Google effect’,  people can increasingly bypass discussions with friends and colleagues.  They have become more dependent on computers and getting isolated from personal dialogues.  Another recent phenomenon is to mail (forward) lot of information, authenticated and unauthenticated, to friends and colleagues.  Unauthenticated information misleads and confuses the reader.  In this connection, one may read the very humorous article entitled “World Wide Wisdom, is it so ?” (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/world-wide-wisdom-is-it-so/article3340121.ece)ione i  

I quote a couple of sentences loaded with humour from that article: “ … The most useful one (unsolicited E-mail) narrated how a simple preparation with ladies' finger cures chronic diabetes in a few weeks. When I forwarded that particular mail to all diabetic and non-diabetic friends, I could visualise the big diabetic specialty hospital in our area closing down for want of patients and the doctor opening vegetable shops to make a living!....”

NOVELTY  NOT  WELCOME

                This phenomenon is replacing a person’s circle of friends with the Internet.  People are relying more on their computers as a form of ‘external memory’ as online information libraries ‘wired’ human brains.  Some say that this state of being so ‘wired’ may have deleterious effects on society over the coming decades. Any novelty is met with suspicion, derision and resistance. While there is always a tendency to glorify a new tool, there is also a counter-tendency to decry it.  Did not Socrates, in Plato's Phaedrus, bemoan the development of writing, fearing that it would make people forgetful due to a lack of exercise to memorize ?  When the Gutenberg's printing press arrived in the 15th century, did not the Italian humanist, Hieronimo Squarciafico, express concern that print material would weaken the minds through intellectual laziness ?

BEWARE  OF  THE  DANGERS

But, beware of the dangers.  Whatever you post online is permanent.  Someone may dig out the contents at a later date and land you in heaps of trouble.  Youngsters must be very wary of this, particularly when cybercrime is on the increase.   And there seems to be a huge health hazard to the younger generations caused by electronic gadgets and junk food which have become the fad and the flavour of the day.   You may read the scribblings on "TV (and other electronic gadgets) related asthma, eye disorders, obesity, head ache, neck pain, introversion, neurosis and the like" on this website.  A few of them are cited below.

COMPUTER  VISION  SYNDROME

         Many people who work on computer / electronic screens for long periods suffer from ‘Computer Vision Syndrome’ (CVS).   It is a new morbidity presenting with a cluster of symptoms – eyestrain, dryness and burning sensation in eyes, reddish eyes, tears, fatigue, blurred vision, double vision, head ache, neck pain, shoulder pain, back ache, etc.  Only some symptoms may be present in an individual case.  At present this doesn’t look like a permanent morbidity.

Prevention:  1. Take your eyes off the electronic screens for 20 seconds every 20 minutes and see at objects beyond 20 metres (20/20/20 formula).  2.  Blink the eyes fully and frequently while working on electronic screens.  3.  Use correct furniture, posture and spectacles (anti-reflection) if advised by eye specialist.  Sit as straight as comfortable with ergonomically desirable back support.  Keep the screen about 20 inches away at about 20 degrees angle below the horizontal eye level.  Move the eye balls up & down and side to side, now and then, as an exercise for the external muscles of the eye.  4.  Use larger screens and magnify images to a comfortable extent.  Avoid bright light falling on the screen from your behind to avoid reflection from the screen.  General bounce lighting may be better.  Set the brightness on the gadget to an optimum and comfortable level.  It would be a less strain to the eyes to see dark letters on a light background.  5.  Consult eye specialist for advice.  6.  You may conveniently extend this 20 seconds break to include  the break for physical exercise while working in offices as mentioned in my ‘scribbling’ titled ‘Diet, exercise and sleep’.

TEXT  NECK  SYNDROME

It is a common scene to see people texting over mobile phones with their heads bent down for long periods.  This habit may result in neck joint problems – neck pain, shoulder pain, head ache, etc.  This is another technology-related morbidity – ‘Text Neck Syndrome’.  Prevention:  Avoid ‘texting’ for long periods and keep head straight up while doing it (http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/text-alert/article4633242.ece ).  I wrote elsewhere about other hazards of using cell-phones which include cancer.

SMARTPHONE  THUMB

Researchers at Mayo Clinic (US) said that too much texting can give rise to ‘Smartphone Thumb’ --  a painful condition caused by awkward repetitive movements of typing on smartphones resulting from  arthritis / tendinitis.

INTERNET  WITHDRAWAL  SYNDROME

Studies at Swansea University and Milan University showed that there was a significant increase in heart rate and blood pressure when persons active on digital devices are deprived of digital connectivity, similar to withdrawal symptoms seen in drug addict.  The withdrawal is known to be associated with anxiety, tension and even depression.  Hormonal system may also be affected resulting in reduced immune responses.

SMARTPHONE  & VIDEO GAMES  ADDICTION

“When you start handing digital devices, including video games, to young children, you can be sure they are distracted by the movement, the colour and sound coming from the devices that is mesmerising enough that they will override all those natural instincts that children actually have for movement, exploration and social interaction,” said Dr. Hilarie Cash, the founder of the ‘digital de-addiction’ centre by the name “reSTART Life Center” in the US.  A study conducted by State University of New York found that about 20 per cent of the college students are ‘addicts’ or ‘fanatics’ to phones, suffering from personal, social and workplace problems due to a compulsive need for smart phones which ‘fire’ neurons and release dopamine.  “Our smartphones and video games have turned into a tool that provides short, quick and immediate satisfaction, which is very triggering,” said Isaac Vaghefi of Binghamton University-State University of New York. This process may lead to shorter attention spans,  boredom, depression, social isolation, social anxiety, shyness, impulsivity and low self-esteem.  Females are more prone for the digital addiction.  The treatment for de-addiction may last up to one year.

BLUE   WHALE   CHALLENGE         August 22, 2017

  Such of these psychologically vulnerable persons, especially the youngsters,  fall an easy prey for 'suicidal games' such as the"Blue Whale Challenge"and end up in tragedies -- 130 deaths in Russia alone.  This psychopathic 'Blue Whale Challenge' game is said to have started in Russia in 2013 on a popular site called 'VKontakte'  and spread across the globe.  On May11, 2017, Russian media reported that Philipp Budeikin pleaded guilty of inciting teenagers to suicide - at least 16 teenage girls.   Depressed and psychologically abnormal persons seek to play the game to end their lives 'with the fun' of the game.

It is an Internet game wherein a player is given a task a day for 50 days -- starting with music, terrifying videos, waking up at odd times and inflicting injuries on oneself and so on up to the 50th day when the task is to commit suicide.   Many youngsters are reported to have taken their lives in various countries.  There are unconfirmed reports of such incidents in India too. It is reported that in August 2017, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of Government of India directed several Internet companies (including Google, Facebook and Yahoo) to remove all links which direct users to this game.  Schools abroad and in India had issued advisories to prevent children from participating in this 'suicidal game'. "Human Embroidery" is one more of such a game.

In India,  some parents, unwittingly and obsessively introduce all the digital devices to their children at a very young age and make them tech-savvy very early in life,  with the hope that they would fare better in academics and stand a better chance in competitive examinations.       In these days of intense competition, stress starts at LKG and ends only at the graveyard.  Eventually,  some of them, both parents and children, may have to turn to therapy centres.   And parents have little control over children in the changed cultural milieu  of   'Hi, dad ..  Hi, mom ..  You old hat .. " !!!

“ELECTRONIC  DIABETES” !

“Most people are familiar with type-1 diabetesand type-2 diabetes, but do you know that researchers have discovered a third type of diabetes? ‘Type-3 diabetes’, as they are calling it, affects people who are extra sensitive to electrical devices that emit "dirty" electricity.
Type-3 diabetics actually experience spikes in blood sugar and an increased heart rate when exposed to electrical pollution ("electropollution") from things like computers, televisions, cordless and mobile phones, and even compact fluorescent light bulbs. For more on electropollution, go to http://www.naturalnews.com/028967_electropollution_diabetes.html .

Dr. Magda Havas, a PhD from Trent University in Canada, recently published the results of a study she conducted on the relationship between electromagnetic fields and diabetes in Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine”
( http://www.naturalnews.com/028967_electropollution_diabetes.html#ixzz2U3BQfl1N ).

The label of ‘Type-3 diabetes’ is also given to a deficient state of insulin release from brain in known conventional diabetics who may be having symptoms related to Alzheimer’s disease.  It is documented that brain also produces insulin for its own use (http://www.opposingviews.com/i/a-look-at-diabetes-type-3-symptoms ).

ELECTRONIC  WASTE

The Central Pollution Control Board will this year (2018) begin Radom checks on mobile phones, laptops and other electronic goods to know whether their constituent metals exceed safety norms -- lead, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, mercury, polybrominated biphenyl ethers, etc.  It is said that Chinese phones will be tested first.

COMPUTER  KUMAR’S  WISDOM

Though most of what is on the Net is authentic,  we do come across unreliable information.  Did not Wikipedia remove the hoax article on India-Portugal war (with 17 ghost references and a host of imaginary historical events) from its site after five long years) (TNIE, Jan. 7, 2013)?  In the field of medical treatment, the Net provides exhaustive information but not specifically what is to be done in an individual case.

           All the same, people have come to be dependent more on computers and to rely more on the Internet than human beings –even doctors for treatment.  In this context, I cite the case of Kumar – it is his pseudonym.  He came to me for cough and fever of two months’ duration.  I examined him thoroughly and did a few basic investigations.  I concluded that he was suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) and prescribed medicines. He looked askance when I pronounced that the problem was TB, perhaps thinking that I made a rash diagnosis.

            He returned after a week and said that he had not started taking the medicines.  I found that Kumar ‘learnt’ a lot about tuberculosis by browsing on the Net during the previous week.  The diagnosis of TB was not acceptable to him.    He said that he read about more tests for TB and wished that those tests be done.  He got them done – Tuberculin Test, IgG, IgA, IgM, sputum studies, PCR, Quanti FERON–TB Gold, CT scan, etc.  Some of them came out to be negative for TB which further confounded him. 

            I tried to convince him saying that recently (2011) the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended against going by blood tests based on antibody response for diagnosing active TB and that these expensive tests are intensively promoted by vested interests.  It didn’t cut ice with him.  He said that he wanted to wait for the results of  culture and sensitivity tests as he gathered information on the Google about the ‘disastrous’ side-effects caused by the drugs and the dangers of drug resistance !  And he asked me about taking the medicine Imitanib (Gleevec) which has just (2011) been suggested to be used in TB.  While this tech-savvy patient knows a lot about this drug, many of the doctors never even heard of it!  He let the precious time pass by, thanks to the Net for the overload of information.  Consequently, due to delay in commencing treatment, Kumar had a bout of haemoptysis (coughing out blood) and landed in an Intensive Care Unit, fighting for life.  This is another kind of "Internet (Google) effect !"

“KALIYUGA  EFFECT”

Comments on my article titled “The ‘Google effect:’  may be good,  may be bad,”  published in THE HINDU of April 22, 2012, may be seen on the link: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article3340116.ece

More interestingly,  you may see an extraordinary comment, connecting the ‘Google effect’ to ‘Kali Yuga Prophecies,’  by  Pritam Bhattacharjee, Editor-at-Large of  Pentasect  and Founder & Chief ofWordsmith at Wordsmith Communications on the link:   http://wordsmithofbengal.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/google-effect-and-kali-yuga-prophecies/      You may please write your comment in the Comment Box at the end of this link.  It would be a feast to read the innumerable writings of Pritam Bhattacharjee who is an iconic giant in the field of communications , a versatile teacher, a profound writer and an astute business innovator,  all rolled into one.

              Teacher:  Show me the homework done yesterday.

             Student:  Sir, I uploaded it on Facebook and tagged you !

THIS  IS  AN  ABRIDGED  TEXT  OF  MY    'SCRIBBLING'.      CLICK  HERE  TO  SEE  THE  FULL  TEXT.   --  T. Rama Prasad