Intelligence in the Digital Age

Book excerpt: Intelligence in the Digital Age examines how our current Internet age and people’s use of digital technologies may be affecting their mental capacities and emotive lives in ways in which it will become increasingly difficult for those people to explore a larger, more expansive consciousness. After beginning with an examination of how people’s attention spans, working memories, and capacity for deep thought and reading are being imperiled by their addictive use of smart phones and PCs, the discussion continues with how this may be occurring at a deep level at which the brain creates short and long-term memories, pays attention, and thinks creatively. The book then explores how these negative effects may impede the search to explore the limits of one’s thinking mind and memories in pursuit of a larger intelligence. People may have fewer opportunities to be successful in this pursuit simply because they will have lost access to important personal dynamics due to the effects of the digital world on their minds, brains, and inner lives.