When we talk about the impact of technology we hardly ever narrow our attention down to our own brains. Here is what’s going on.

Everyday we are exposed to technology: it has become part of our lives. From checking emails and notifications on our phones to using the GPS to get wherever we need to go, or having the possibility to stay up to date with the news 24/7. The truth is that we have become so accustomed to using technology that we don’t even notice all the times we resort to it to make our lives easier. Because that’s what technology is for. But if technology is making our lives easier, how does that affect our brains?

The problem is that when we talk about the impact of technology we tend to think of advances in communication, research and so on, but we hardly ever narrow our attention down to our own brains. I first came across Jim Kwik’s book “Limitless” a couple of years ago. I was looking for ways to improve my focus and efficiency while studying, and this book promised to reveal how to “learn anything faster”. The truth is that it also provided me with interesting insights that made me reflect on my relationship with technology. Technology is not necessarily a bad thing. However, it’s important to be aware of how it affects us, in order to use it wisely, and not be consumed by it instead. For this reason, I’d like to go through four impacts technology has on our brains, as Jim Kwik identified and discussed them in his book¹.

Digital deluge

Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, tells us that 5 Exabytes of information were created between the dawn of civilization and 2003, while now that same amount is created every 2 days. To me, these figures seem crazy. But what is even crazier is that, due to our own perfectionism and fear of failure, we now expect ourselves to retain that humongous volume of data.

“Compared to the 15th century, we now consume as much data in a single day as an average person from the 1400s would have absorbed in an entire lifetime.” (Kwik, 2020)

The thing is that the technological landscape is expanding exponentially, opening many doors for people to access a constantly increasing number of information. New…