How good software makes us stupid?

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How good software makes us stupid?

科技是怎樣讓人變傻的？

People assume that iPhones, laptops and Netflix are evidence of progress. In some ways, that‘s true. A moderate amount of Googling, for instance,can be good for your brain, and there are apps that can boost brain function and activity. Yet tech advancements also come with some unintended consequences. Our brains being "massively rewired" by tech, says neuroscientist Michael Merzenich in The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, a Pulitzer-nominated 2011 book by Nicholas Carr. Merzenich warns that the effect of technology on human intelligence could be “deadly.” That got us thinking. How exactly is technology messing up our brains?

人們認為 iPhone、筆記本、和網飛公司是科技進步的證據。從某種方面來看，這是對的。比如，適度地網上搜尋對你的大腦是有好處的，也有不少應用程式能夠促進大腦運轉,讓大腦活躍起來。但是科技的進步同樣伴隨著一些無法預料的後果。神經系統科學家Michael Merzenich在《淺薄：互連網如何毒化了我們的大腦》中提出，我們的大腦被科技大規模的重組了，這本書是由Nicholas Carr翻譯的，曾在2011年提名普利策獎。Merzenich發出警告說科技對人類智能的影響將是“致命的”。那麼科技究竟是如何讓我們的頭腦變得一團糟的呢？

1. Tech is screwing up your sleep (科技搞砸了你的睡眠)

Studies have shown that blue-enriched light, which is emitted by gadgets like smartphones, tablets and laptops, can suppress the body‘s release of melatonim at night. Melatonin is a key hormone that helps regulate your internal clock, telling your body when it is nighttime and when to feel sleepy. Blue light can disrupt that process, making it impossible for you to stick to a proper sleep schedule. Losing sleep has a number of negative effects on your brain. If you’re not logging seven or more hours of sleep each night, you might suffer from increasingly bad moods, decreased focus at work and problems with memory, not to mention a loss of actual brain tissue– all of which makes you less than a joy to be around.

有研究表明智能手機、平板電腦以及膝上型電腦發出的藍光，能夠抑制人體在夜間釋放褪黑激素。褪黑激素是調節人體生物鐘的一種關鍵激素，它能讓你的身體保持正常的作息。而藍光會中斷這一過程，讓你沒辦法遵守正常的作息時間。而失眠對你的大腦有一系列負面影響。如果你晚上沒有睡夠7個小時以上，第二天你就有可能情緒不好，也沒辦法集中注意力去工作，還有可能產生記憶問題—所有這些都讓你無精打采。

2. You’re easily distracted (你很容易分心)

You don‘t really need science to know this, but technology makes it much easier to get distracted, whether that’s stepping away from an important project to check your smartphone or flipping between multiple browser tabs without really focusing on any one. It has been proven that toggling between multiple tasks at once doesn’t actually work — in fact, you just wind up performing all your duties even worse.

科技讓你很容易分心，無論是當你在談重要項目的時候去看看你的智能手機，還是在你開啟多個瀏覽頁卻並沒有將注意力集中在任何一個視窗上的時候。事實已經證明，想要一次性完成多個任務是沒用的，這樣你反而什麼事都做不好。

Teens in particular are more distracted than ever. A 2012 Pew Research Center survey of more than 2,400 teachers found that most educators feel students are more distracted than previous generations. Some 87 percent of teachers agreed with the statement, “today’s digital technologies are creating an easily distracted generation with short attention spans,” while 64 percent agreed with the idea that “today’s digital technologies do more to distract students than to help them academically.” Yikes.

尤其是是青少年更容易分心。2012年，皮尤研究中心調查了2400多名教師，結果發現大多數教育者都感覺現在的學生比前幾批更容易分心。87%的老師都贊同這一結果，認為當今的數位科技造成這一代人注意力集中的時間很短暫；有64%的人認為當今的數位科技在學術上幫到學生的很少，只會讓他們分心得更厲害。

3. You can’t remember much… (你沒辦法記太多的東西)

Technology‘s tendency to butt into whatever else you‘re doing makes it more difficult to form new memories. As Nicholas Carr explains in The Shallows, memory comes in two types: transient working memory and long-term memory, which is more permanent. Information needs to pass from working memory into long-term memory in order to be stored. Any break in the processes of working memory — like, say, stopping to check your email or send a text message in the middle of reading an article — can erase information from your mind before that transfer occurs.

無論你在做什麼科技總會參與進去，這讓你很難形成新的記憶。就像 Nicholas Carr 在《淺薄：互連網如何毒害你的大腦》裡面談的那樣，記憶有兩種類型：暫存記憶和長期記憶。資訊要先成為暫存記憶，才能變成長期記憶被大腦儲存。任何暫存記憶的中斷，比如停下來檢查你的電子郵件或者在閱讀文章的中途去看簡訊，都會在你的大腦將其變為長期記憶之前，將這些資訊從大腦中抹掉。

There’s also a limit to how much information your working memory can take in at once. Taking in too much information — which happens a lot online — is like “having water poured into a glass continuously all day long, so whatever was there at the top has to spill out as the new water comes down,” productivity expert Tony Schwartz told the Huffington Post last year.

生產力研究專家 Tony Schwartz 在去年接受赫芬頓郵報的採訪時說道，你的大腦一次效能接收多少暫存記憶也是有限的。一次性接收太多的資訊(這在上網的時候經常發生)，就像“在一天的時間裡面不停地往一個玻璃瓶裡面倒水，在最上面的水在新的水進來的時候會溢出去”。

4. …so you’re relying on the Internet to remember things for you (你在依靠網路為你記事)

People used to be able to retain really vast quantities of knowledge — like reciting entire novels, word for word – but technology has eliminated both the need and the drive to do so. When you know that Google or your smartphone can retain a piece of information for you, you’re less likely to store it in menory, studies have shown. Scientific American last year likened the Internet to an “external hard drive” for our brains, as we outsource an increasing amount of information to the web.

人們以前能夠記住相當大的知識量，比如逐字逐句地背誦一整本小說——但科技使我們喪失了這樣做的需要和動力。有研究表明，當你知道Google或者你的智能手機能為你記下資訊，你就不太會親自來記住它了。去年，《科學美國人》將網路比喻為我們大腦的“外接硬碟”，因為我們利用儲存了海量的資訊。

That’s not the worst thing in the world, Scientific American adds. We’ve always outsourced some of that information to external “hard drives” of sorts, relying on friends rather than technology to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. But these day we‘re "outsourcing" way more.

《科學美國人》還指出，這不是最糟的事情。我們以前一直在利用各種各樣的外部“硬碟”，比如依靠我們的朋友而不是科技來填補我們知識的空缺。但現在我們過分的利用的這種“外部儲存”的功能。

5. And you‘re much more forgetful than you used to be (你比之前更健忘)

Millennials are actually more likely to forget what day it is or where they put their keys than people over the age of 55, according to a 2013 Trending Machine survey. In a press release for the survey, family and occupational therapist Patricia Gutentag called out technology as one of the main culprits: “This is a population that has grown up multitasking using technology, often compounded by lack of sleep, all of which results in high levels of forgetfulness,” she said.

根據2013年的一項調查，“千禧一代”（國外的一個專門的術語：出生於1984-1995年，他們差不多與電腦同時誕生，在互連網的陪伴下長大）比55歲以上的人更容易忘記今天是什麼日子，或者他們把自己的鑰匙放在了哪裡。在該調查的一篇新聞稿裡面，專業家庭治療師Patricia Gutentag將科技稱作罪魁禍首之一。她說：“這一代人多用科技處理工作，經常睡眠不足，其結果就是高度健忘。”

6. You can’t concentrate on what you’re reading （你沒辦法把注意力集中在你正在讀的東西上面）

Even if you’ve shunned all distractions, you still won’t absorb information you read online as well as you would if you’d read it in a book. And you can blame hypertext for that. Those colorful little links scattered throughout online articles (including this one) make your brain work harder than it would otherwise, leaving less brain power to process what you’re reading. Even just reading on screens, like a laptop or iPad — links or no links — has been shown to diminish comprehension.

即使避開了所有的幹擾因素，你仍然不能像看書一樣消化你從網上看到的資訊，這都是超文本的罪過。這些線上文章（包括你正在看的這篇文章）裡面彩色的小連結會讓你的大腦工作的更艱辛，因此沒什麼腦力來理解你正在讀的文章。即使是在螢幕上，比如膝上型電腦和平板電腦—不管有沒有連網—同樣會干擾你的理解力。

Research has shown that reading linked text “entails a lot of mental calisthenics — evaluating hyperlinks, deciding whether to click, adjusting to different formats — that are extraneous to the process of reading,” Carr wrote in “The Shallows.” And giving your brain more work to do makes it harder to absorb information. Text that’s peppered with photos, videos and ads is even worse.

Carr在《淺薄》中寫道：研究顯示，閱讀連結文本“包含一些腦力運動—判斷超連結，決定是否點擊，調整格式—這些都跟閱讀本身無關”，這讓你的大腦負荷太重而無法吸收資訊。布滿了圖片，視頻和廣告的文本更是如此。

7. You can’t find your way around without GPS （沒有GPS你就找不到路了）

People who rely on GPS to get around have less activity in the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in both memory and navigation, according to a series of studies presented in 2010. Using spatial memory — which involves using visual cues to develop "cognitive maps" that remember routes — instead of operating on GPS-induced autopilot can help avert memory problems later in life, the studies found.

2010年的一系列研究都表明那些依賴GPS導航的人，其海馬體(大腦裡面與記憶和導航有關的地區)較那些不那麼依賴GPS的人活躍度要低一些。研究發現，用空間記憶而不是依賴GPS導航能防止今後生活中的記憶問題。

A 2008 study from the University of London even found that taxi drivers had more developed hippocamp than non-taxi drivers — perhaps because they are so accustomed to navigating cities using spatial memory, rather than relying on GPS (though that may no longer be true of smartphone-equipped taxi drivers).

2008年，倫敦大學的一項研究甚至表明出租車司機的海馬體比非出租車司機要發達一些，可能是因為出租車司機習慣於自己記路線而不是依賴GPS(對於那些利用智能手機的出租車司機來說也許已經不是這樣了)。

8. You have the brain of a drug addict （你有一個癮君子的大腦）

No, “Internet addiction” isn’t just some BS term parents throw around to terrify youngsters who spend too much time playing Candy Crush. Spending too much time on the Internet can actually cause changes in the brain that mimic those caused by drug and alcohol dependence, according to a 2012 study.

不，“網路成癮”已經不僅僅是家長們用來嚇唬那些花太多時間玩“糖果大爆險”（一款網路遊戲）的小孩們的一個BS術語了。2012年的一份研究表明，上網過多的人大腦真的會發生改變，就像吸毒者以及酗酒者那樣。

Internet addicts — most notably gamers who shun food, school and sleep to play for days on end — have abnormal white and grey matter in their brains, which disrupts and cripples the regions involved in processing emotion and regulating attention and decision-making. Alcoholics and drug addicts have strikingly similar brain abnormalities, the study found.

網路成癮者—尤其是一些接連幾天廢寢忘食，甚至逃學的遊戲玩家—大腦裡面的白質和灰質不正常，這會讓網癮者難以表達情緒，不容易調節注意力，還會產生選擇恐懼症。研究表明，酗酒者和癮君子大腦也有相似的不正常現象。

“I have seen people who stopped attending university lectures, failed their degrees or their marriages broke down” because of Internet gaming addiction, Dr. Henriette Bowden Jones, who runs a British clinic for Internet addicts,told The Independent.

經營一家治療網路成癮的英國診所的Henriette Bowden Jones醫生告訴《獨立報》，“我見過一些人不再參與大學裡的課程，拿不到學位或者婚姻破裂”，原因是對網路遊戲的沉迷。

Now that you‘re properly terrified of the effects of technology on the old noggin, let us remind you that you do have the power to prevent brain drain and time-suck. Just log off every once in a while!

相信你已經被這些危害嚇住了吧，你一定要有防止對腦力和時間的浪費。時不時的登出一下你的電腦吧。(英文來源：huffingtonpost 翻譯：桃子@煎蛋網)