I received a call from a reader, I’ll call him Doug, (I love calls, you may reach me at 866.335.8054, 9 AM to11 PM Pacific time.) who wanted to know why I kept harping on the need for long-term this and long-term that. He said that he’s 26 and part of “the online generation” and used to “instant gratification.”

We talked for quite awhile and I found him to be intelligent, well-spoken and, in his own way despite what he said, thoughtful—but also impatient.

Influencing others is always stressed as a major trait of leadership—maybe the most important trait. But to lead on any level requires an understanding of the larger picture, along with strategic understanding of what’s coming down the road.

Neither one of those offers much instant anything.

I’m not saying Doug speaks for his entire generation, but in a post last summer I linked to several books and articles discussing changes occurring in brain functions as a result of the digital world.

One of the links is to an essay in the Atlantic Monthly by author Nicholas Carr in which he says, “the net is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation”. He cited other high-powered thinkers and online commentators: what if the way I THINK has changed? asked one. “I’ve lost the capacity to read War and Peace any more,” said another, whose current best effort was to stay with a three or four-paragraph weblog entry.”

Another article talks about Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of a new book, iBrain, “who cites a Stanford University study that for every hour a person spends on a computer, personal interaction with others drops by 30 minutes.

“With the weakening of the brain’s neural circuitry controlling human contact,” Dr. Small writes, “our social interactions may become awkward, and we tend to misinterpret, and even miss, subtle, non-verbal messages.”

You can think of it along the scale of Asperger’s syndrome, which is a mild form of it, where there’s not social connectiveness and difficulties with eye contact.”

And this isn’t just about the so-called digital generation, “Scans of the more practised internet users [55-78] during those search tasks showed increased activity in the front of the brain, where reasoning, complex decision-making, short-term memory and the processing of sensations and thoughts all originate. … Within five days though, the digital newcomers were showing the same neural activity.”

Along with greed, is it possible that this new style brain affected the people who ran the banks, hedge funds, and other businesses that played fast and loose with your money?

How will these new brains lead as they move into the workforce and the world?

Your comments—priceless

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Image credit: sxc.hu

I’ve written a number of posts over time both here and at Leadership Turn about how turning off, unwiring and giving yourself the freedom and time to think—letting your mind wander freely—will juice innovation and spark productivity.

When most everyone you know is wired to the hilt and acts as if their world will end if any little wire goes astray you start to feel like a fish looking for water in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

But it turns out that I’m not alone in my concerns that the Net is dumbing us down and innovation is being killed by constant noise.

Yesterday, Soul Shelter posed the question, “What if the Internet poses a threat to the cultivation of a rich, reflective inner life? What if Internet-mentality endangers Art—its creation, its place in our culture, and our ability to appreciate it?—or the cultivation of real knowledge?” and reviewed these books.

• Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob by Lee Siegel;
• The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age by Sven Birkerts; and
• The Twilight of American Culture by Morris Berman.

The review also mentions Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future and an article by Nicholas Carr in the July/August issue of Atlantic Monthly, Is Google Making us Stoopid? with the subtitle: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains .

Pick up any of the books; click the link to read the Atlantic article; at the very least read Soul Shelter.

Then, if your brain can still focus and think, consider the real truths that are presented.

How wired are you?

Image credit: Angel-13 CC license