We Are All Changing Our Minds Patricia Buoncristiani International Conference on Thinking

1. We Are All Changing Our Minds Patricia Buoncristiani International Conference on Thinking Wellington New Zealand January 2013

2. The invention of the printing press changed society and our brains.

3. Printed language is linear T+h+i+n+k+i+n+g = thinking Effective + thinking + is + characterized + by + a + logical + sequence + of + thoughts “I don’t follow you” Paragraphs are made of sequences of sentences. Chapters are made of sequences of paragraphs. Books are made of sequences of chapters. Libraries are made of orderly, sequences of books

4. Pose a question, gather the raw data, analyze it and come up with an answer.

6. The single point of view - The School of Athens Raphael 1510

7. Literature

9. Individualism

10. Assembly lines

11. Electronic media is changing the world and the ways in which we think.

12. The Internet "Visualization of the various routes through a portion of the Internet.

13. Air travel

16. The Arab Spring

17. Global Financial Crisis

18. Published in 1961 No simple linear plot A spiral

19. Visual Arts

20. No single, individual point of view.

21. Movies Flash backs Time leaps Multiple view points No resolution

23. Communal responsibilty

24. Mysticism/Science Anti vaccination Barter & gifting societies Rejection of capitalism Crystals, alternative healing

25. Concert audience

26. The mosh pit

27. Connected thinking in schools

28. Our brains are changing

29. Young people engage in continuous partial attention – always attentive but what they are attentive to is rapidly and continually changing.

30. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—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 strolling 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 fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. 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 godsend 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 telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets’reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. Nicholas G. Carr | Nov 11, 2011 The Creativity Post

31. Superficial thinking “This picture went so wild on my Facebook yesterday that I thought it was deserving of a post. I took it in Singapore in one of the many underground malls. I happen to think it is genius and very savvy. Reminds me of Diesel’s Be Stupidcampaign (which is really targeted at smart people). Because we need congruence, everyone has an internal dialogue that justifies their actions. This campaign speaks to that person– the one who is smart and that knows that they’re giving in to consumerism, but accepts it. It speaks to the same part of you that loves your Apple products and will overpay, or even wait in line, for them.”

32. We need to keep up