互聯(lián)網(wǎng)似無邊無際又魔力無窮的信息宇宙，人類幾千年的文明成果輕而易舉地就被囊括其中。而網(wǎng)絡(luò)搜索引擎就如通向這個(gè)宇宙的“時(shí)空機(jī)器”——簡單的關(guān)鍵字，輕輕的點(diǎn)擊，便可讓它載著你的思維到達(dá)任何你想去的理想之地。但就像大多數(shù)科技成果都是雙刃劍一樣，網(wǎng)絡(luò)科技的飛速發(fā)展在解放我們腦細(xì)胞的同時(shí)，也在悄無聲息但卻根本性地改變著我們的思維方式:你是否覺得越來越難以集中注意力?你是否覺得讀一本書甚至是一篇長點(diǎn)的文章都變得越來越吃力?你是否覺得離開了Google，單憑自己，干什么都不容易?小心!網(wǎng)絡(luò)正在以你無法想象的方式改變著你……

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone， or something， has been tinkering1) with my brain， remapping the neural circuitry， reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going， but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument， and I’d spend hours strolling2) through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety3)， lose the thread4)， begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward5) brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

Who Stole My Concentration? 誰“偷”走了我的專注力?

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now， I’ve been spending a lot of time online， searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend6) to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches， some quick clicks on hyperlinks， and I’ve got the telltale7) fact or pithy quote I was after.

For me， as for others， the Net is becoming a universal medium， the conduit8) for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many. But they come at a price. Media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought， but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping9) away my capacity for concentration and contemplation10). My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver11) in the sea of words. Now I zip12) along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski13).

We Are How We Read如何閱讀決定著我們?nèi)绾嗡季S

Thanks to the ubiquity14) of text on the Internet， we may well be reading more today than we did in the past. But it’s a different kind of reading， and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read，” says Maryanne Wolf， a developmental psychologist at Tufts University. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net， a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy15)” above all else， may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology， the printing press， made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online， she says， we tend to become “mere decoders of information”. Our ability to interpret text， to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction， remains largely disengaged16).

Reading， explains Wolf， is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched17) into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains.

The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition. In a paper published in 1936， the British mathematician Alan Turing proved that a digital computer could be programmed to perform the function of any other information-processing device. And that’s what we’re seeing today. The Internet， an immeasurably powerful computing system， is subsuming18) most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock， our printing press and our typewriter， our calculator and our telephone， and our radio and TV.

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet， for all that’s been written about the Net， there’s been little consideration of how， exactly， it’s reprogramming us.

Google’s Mission Vs Our ChoiceGoogle的使命Vs我們的選擇

The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection， transmission， and manipulation of information， and its legions19) of programmers are intent20) on finding the “one best method” to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.”

Google has declared that its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It seeks to develop “the perfect search engine”， which it defines as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” In Google’s view， information is a kind of commodity， a utilitarian21) resource that can be mined and processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist22)， the more productive we become as thinkers.

Where does it end? Sergey Brin and Larry Page， the gifted young men who founded Google， speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence， a machine that might be connected directly to our brains. In a 2004 interview with Newsweek， Brin said， “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain， or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain， you’d be better off23).”

Still， their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented， or even replaced， by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process， a series of discrete24) steps that can be isolated， measured， and optimized. In Google’s world， the world we enter when we go online， there’s little place for the fuzziness25) of contemplation. Ambiguity26) is not an opening for insight but a bug27) to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.

The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet， it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake28) in collecting the crumbs29) of data we leave behind as we flit30) from link to link—the more crumbs， the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow， concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.

Human Intelligence—What We Can’t Sacrifice智能無法取代智慧

Maybe I’m just a worrywart31). Just as there’s a tendency to glorify32) technological progress， there’s a countertendency33) to expect the worst of every new tool or machine. In Plato’s Phaedrus， Socrates bemoaned34) the development of writing. He feared that， as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads， they would “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction，” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong， but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information， spur fresh ideas， and expand human knowledge (if not35) wisdom).

So， yes， you should be skeptical of my skepticism. Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites36) or nostalgists37) will be proved correct， and from our hyperactive， data-stoked38) minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. But the Net isn’t the alphabet， and although it may replace the printing press， it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off39) within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained， undistracted reading of a book， or by any other act of contemplation， for that matter， we make our own associations， draw our own inferences and analogies， foster our own ideas. Deep reading， as Maryanne Wolf argues， is indistinguishable from deep thinking.

If we lose those quiet spaces， or fill them up with “content”， we will sacrifice something important not only in ourselves but in our culture. And as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world， it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

在過去的幾年里，我總有一種坐立不安的感覺，覺得好像有什么人或什么東西一直在鼓搗我的大腦，將我的神經(jīng)回路重新布了一下局，然后重新安排了我的記憶。我的思考力并沒有消失，但卻在發(fā)生變化。我不再像過去那樣思考了。這種感覺在我讀書時(shí)尤為強(qiáng)烈。過去，埋頭于一本書或一篇長文章是輕而易舉的事。我的思維會(huì)為文章的敘事描寫與論證的峰回路轉(zhuǎn)所吸引，我會(huì)連續(xù)幾個(gè)小時(shí)沉浸在長篇的散文中流連忘返。然而，這樣的經(jīng)歷卻越來越少了。如今，剛翻兩三頁書，我就開始心不在焉。我變得煩躁不安，找不到頭緒，開始四處張望，總想干點(diǎn)別的什么。我感覺自己好像總是得把不聽話的大腦強(qiáng)行拉回到書本中。以往自然而然的靜心潛讀已經(jīng)變成了一種掙扎。

我想我知道這是怎么回事兒。在過去的十多年里，我在網(wǎng)上花費(fèi)的時(shí)間很多，搜索、沖浪，有時(shí)還為互聯(lián)網(wǎng)龐大的數(shù)據(jù)庫貢獻(xiàn)點(diǎn)一己之力。對(duì)我這個(gè)作家而言，網(wǎng)絡(luò)簡直是天賜之物。過去需要在圖書館或期刊室里花上數(shù)天做的研究，如今只要幾分鐘便可搞定。稍微試幾個(gè)Google搜索，輕松點(diǎn)幾個(gè)超級(jí)鏈接——我想要的八卦新聞或經(jīng)典格言便唾手可得。

對(duì)我來說(對(duì)其他人也一樣)，網(wǎng)絡(luò)正在成為一個(gè)全球性的媒體，它就像是一個(gè)運(yùn)送信息的管道，絕大多數(shù)信息經(jīng)由它進(jìn)入我的眼睛和耳朵，最后進(jìn)入我的大腦。在轉(zhuǎn)瞬間獲得如此令人難以置信的海量信息，其優(yōu)勢不勝枚舉，但代價(jià)也隨之而來。媒體可不只是被動(dòng)的信息渠道，它們提供思想內(nèi)容，但同時(shí)也塑造思維模式。網(wǎng)絡(luò)現(xiàn)在正在做的，就是削弱我的專注力和思考力?，F(xiàn)在，我的大腦在獲取信息時(shí)，正是按照網(wǎng)絡(luò)傳播信息的方式來進(jìn)行的:快速移動(dòng)，就像粒子流。過去，我像個(gè)潛水者，在文字的海洋里潛游;而現(xiàn)在，我就像一個(gè)騎著摩托艇的家伙，在海面上呼嘯著前行。

得益于網(wǎng)絡(luò)上無處不在的文字，我們今天的閱讀量與過去不可同日而語。但這是不一樣的閱讀，隱藏在這種閱讀之后的又是不一樣的思維——甚至可能是對(duì)自我的一種新認(rèn)識(shí)。“塑造我們的不僅僅是閱讀的內(nèi)容，”塔夫斯大學(xué)的發(fā)展心理學(xué)家瑪麗安娜·沃爾夫說，“還有閱讀的方式。”沃爾夫擔(dān)心，網(wǎng)絡(luò)所推崇的將“效率”和“直觀”置于一切之上的閱讀方式可能會(huì)削弱我們深度閱讀的能力，這種能力隨印刷這種早期技術(shù)的產(chǎn)生而形成，而正是印刷技術(shù)將長篇、復(fù)雜的作品變得日漸普及。她說，當(dāng)我們?cè)诰W(wǎng)上閱讀時(shí)，我們更像是“純粹的信息解碼者”。而我們理解文字的能力——那種潛心深讀時(shí)思如泉涌的能力——大部分都沒派上用場。

沃爾夫解釋說，閱讀不是人類與生俱來的一種技能。它不像說話一樣是天生就融進(jìn)我們的基因里的。我們必須教會(huì)我們的大腦如何將我們看到的符號(hào)轉(zhuǎn)化為可以理解的語言。而我們平時(shí)用來學(xué)習(xí)和練習(xí)閱讀技巧的媒體和其他技術(shù)，對(duì)于我們塑造我們大腦里的神經(jīng)回路發(fā)揮著重要作用。

因特網(wǎng)很有可能對(duì)我們的認(rèn)知能力產(chǎn)生意義深遠(yuǎn)的影響。1936年，英國數(shù)學(xué)家艾倫·圖林在他發(fā)表的論文中證明，只要編程得當(dāng)，數(shù)字電腦可以發(fā)揮其他任何信息處理設(shè)備所具備的功能。而這正是我們今天所看到的。因特網(wǎng)，一個(gè)無比強(qiáng)大的計(jì)算系統(tǒng)，正將我們這個(gè)時(shí)代其他大部分的智能工具吸納進(jìn)來，與自身融為一體。它正成為我們的地圖和時(shí)鐘，我們的印刷術(shù)和打字機(jī)，我們的計(jì)算器和電話，以及我們的收音機(jī)和電視機(jī)。

從沒有一個(gè)通信系統(tǒng)像今天的網(wǎng)絡(luò)一樣在我們的生活中扮演著如此眾多的角色——或?qū)ξ覀兊乃枷胧┘又绱藦V泛的影響。然而，盡管有很多人就網(wǎng)絡(luò)這個(gè)話題著書立說，卻很少有人考慮過因特網(wǎng)到底會(huì)怎樣改變我們。

因特網(wǎng)是一個(gè)為迅速、自動(dòng)地收集、傳輸和處理信息而設(shè)計(jì)的機(jī)器。它的眾多編程人員專注于尋找“一種最好的方式”來執(zhí)行每一件腦力勞動(dòng)，也就是我們所形容的“智力工作”。

Google就宣布說它的使命是“組織全世界的信息，并使其成為人人都能獲得的、有用的信息”。它致力于打造一個(gè)“完美的搜索引擎”，用它自己的話說，就是“準(zhǔn)確領(lǐng)會(huì)你的意圖，精確反饋你想要的信息”。在Google看來，信息也是一種商品，是一種可以以工業(yè)的高效方式進(jìn)行采掘和加工的有用資源。我們獲得的信息越多，提取其精華的速度越快，就會(huì)成為越高產(chǎn)的思想者。

那何處是盡頭?Google的創(chuàng)始人謝爾蓋·布林和拉里·佩奇，兩個(gè)天資聰穎的年輕人，暢談著他們將把他們的搜索引擎打造成人工智能的引擎，一個(gè)也許可以直接和大腦相聯(lián)接的機(jī)器。2004年，在接受《新聞周刊》采訪時(shí)，布林說:“當(dāng)然，如果你能讓世界上所有的信息和你的大腦相聯(lián)接，或擁有一個(gè)比你的大腦還聰明的人工大腦的話，你就會(huì)變得更加富有?！?/p>

然而，這樣的輕松假設(shè)——如果我們的大腦得到人工智能的補(bǔ)充甚至被人工智能取代的話，我們將“更加富有”的假設(shè)——很是令人不安。這種想法反映了一種思維，即智力只是機(jī)械過程的產(chǎn)物，不過由一系列可分割、可測量和可最優(yōu)化的單獨(dú)步驟組成。在Google的世界——我們上網(wǎng)時(shí)所進(jìn)入的世界——里，基本沒有給深入思考時(shí)的混亂思維留什么空間。模棱兩可不是通向敏銳心智的大門，不過是需要修補(bǔ)的補(bǔ)丁罷了。人類大腦只是一個(gè)過時(shí)的電腦，它需要一個(gè)更快的處理器和一個(gè)更大的硬盤。

人腦應(yīng)當(dāng)像高速運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)的數(shù)據(jù)處理器一樣運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)——這種想法不僅僅根植在因特網(wǎng)工作方式中，而且在整個(gè)網(wǎng)絡(luò)商業(yè)模式中也占有統(tǒng)治地位。我們?cè)诰W(wǎng)上沖浪的速度越快——點(diǎn)擊的鏈接和瀏覽的網(wǎng)頁越多——Google和其他公司收集我們資料并塞給我們廣告的機(jī)會(huì)就越大。絕大多數(shù)商業(yè)網(wǎng)站的經(jīng)營者都會(huì)通過收集我們快速瀏覽頁面后留下的零碎數(shù)據(jù)“痕跡”獲得金融利益——我們留下的數(shù)據(jù)“痕跡”越多越好。這些公司最不鼓勵(lì)的就是休閑閱讀或緩慢、專注的思考。讓我們注意力分散恰好符合他們的經(jīng)濟(jì)利益。

或許我只是庸人自擾。就像是總有擁護(hù)者為科技進(jìn)步歌功頌德一樣，也必然會(huì)有反對(duì)者預(yù)期著每一件新工具或新機(jī)器所帶來的最壞結(jié)果。在柏拉圖的作品《對(duì)話篇·菲德洛斯》中，蘇格拉底為寫作的發(fā)展哀嘆不已。他擔(dān)心當(dāng)人們依賴于書面文字并以此取代他們過去常儲(chǔ)存于大腦中的知識(shí)時(shí)，人們將“不再使用記憶力，并因此而變得健忘”。而且，由于他們“在沒有適當(dāng)指導(dǎo)的情況下接受大量信息”，他們會(huì)“被誤以為知識(shí)淵博，雖然通常情況下一無所知”;他們會(huì)“自以為聰明無比，盡管實(shí)際上毫無智慧”。蘇格拉底說得沒錯(cuò)，但他的確缺乏遠(yuǎn)見。他沒有預(yù)見到寫作和閱讀能以如此眾多的方式推動(dòng)信息傳播，啟發(fā)新的思想，擴(kuò)展人類知識(shí)(甚至是智慧)。

所以，是的，你應(yīng)該對(duì)我的疑慮持懷疑態(tài)度?；蛟S那些將批判網(wǎng)絡(luò)的人斥為反工業(yè)主義或懷舊主義者的人是正確的，或許從我們極度活躍、靠數(shù)據(jù)汲取營養(yǎng)的大腦中會(huì)爆發(fā)出知識(shí)大發(fā)現(xiàn)以及全人類智慧大發(fā)展的黃金時(shí)代。然而，網(wǎng)絡(luò)不是字母表，盡管它可能會(huì)取代印刷機(jī)，但它生產(chǎn)出的畢竟是完全不同的產(chǎn)品。印刷產(chǎn)品所推動(dòng)的深度閱讀彌足珍貴，不僅是因?yàn)槲覀儚淖髡叩奈淖种蝎@取了知識(shí)，還因?yàn)槟切┪淖衷谖覀冾^腦中激起了智慧的共鳴。因此，在一個(gè)由持續(xù)的、不被打擾的閱讀或其他思考活動(dòng)所打開的安靜空間里，我們將建立起我們自己的聯(lián)系，進(jìn)行我們自己的推論和比較，醞釀我們自己的想法。深度閱讀，正如瑪麗安娜·沃爾夫所說，與深度思考密不可分。

如果我們喪失了這些安靜的空間，或在其中填滿所謂的“內(nèi)容”，我們將為此而作出犧牲。而我們犧牲掉的東西，不僅對(duì)我們自己重要，對(duì)我們的文化也極為重要。當(dāng)我們依賴電腦來塑造我們對(duì)世界的理解時(shí)，退化為人工智能的，將是我們自身的智慧。