This Is Your Brain on the Web [Archive.org URL]

Clicking on link after link, always looking for a new bit of information, we are actually revving up our brains with dopamine, the overlord of what psychologist Jaak Panksepp has called the “seeking system.” This system is what drives you to get out of bed each day, and what causes you to check your e-mail every few minutes; it’s what keys you up in anticipation of a reward. Most of your e-mail may be junk, but the prospect of receiving a meaningful message – or following a link to a stimulating site – is enough to keep your brain constantly a bit distracted from what you’re reading online.

As historian Marshall Poe observes, “A book is a machine for focusing attention; the Internet is [a] machine for diffusing it.”