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As i've written before, i'm not that interested in books that talk about how the internet or technology is having an adverse effect on our thinking \\\ although I did buy and read part of one such book recently, just because i'm really interested these days in views that i don't agree with. i like to know what they have to say. 

I'm very interested though, in how technology affects the ways we think and communicate. word processing and email have had a huge impact on the way we write. 

and I suppose, in some ways, it has been an adverse effect....i'm just not interested in focusing on that alone. 

I always think it's funny/ interesting that Wordsworth wrote this 220 years ago: 

For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves. The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.— from 'Preface to Lyrical Ballads'

It's so right and yet so wrong. and it just goes to show that, if you want to see adverse influences on the quality of people's thinking, you're going to see it. You don't need computers and the internet, for the powers of the mind to be blunted. that can be achieved by telegrams and newspapers. 

or, another way to put it is that at times writers and other intellectuals have always prognosticated that technology is going to cause our minds to atrophe. i think it's always a mistake to just see the negative, or to focus too much on it. Like for example, Wordsworth talks about 'the uniformity of their occupations' and that was true in the early days of the industrial revolution, but because of technological, social and legal developments, working conditions now are generally better and work is more rewarding and interesting....not always, but in general I think that's the case. The point is that things changed, and it was a mix of positive and negative, and that's the way it always is.