TIS
the season… to be scammed by online scammers who are out to steal your holiday
cheer. Every year as online commerce
grows, so do online scams. Today’s
cybercriminals are going to try to entice you into giving them your hard earned
cash through a number of ever more imaginative scams. In today’s blog, I will endeavor to give you
a leg up on the top 12 ways to avoid getting Grinched this holiday season.
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Has the Internet Made Us Smarter?
For
all intents and purposes the Internet has been in existence for 20 years. During
that time, the entire world has literally been at our fingertips online. But has the advent of the World Wide Web made
people smarter, or has it truly made us dumber as we become more reliant on having
access to all kinds of information at the click of a mouse? In today’s blog, I will look at how the Internet
has affected us as a species, as well as examining whether it appears to be helping
or hurting our intellectual evolution. I
will also delve into the rise of web-enabled “smart devices” that will soon be taking
control of everything from our appliances to driving our cars.
Caution: Slippery Road Ahead
As
I entered the office building where I work, I spied a young woman who works in the
office across the hall coming down the stairs.
Wearing high heels with her head canted forward, she was looking at her smartphone
and texting as she descended the staircase.
“You’d
better be careful before you wind up taking a tumble,” I told her as she made her
way through the lobby.
“Not
to worry,” she responded without looking up from her phone. “I do this all the time.”
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Maybe
it’s a generational issue, but I remember a time when people weren’t so absorbed
in technology that it became a hazard to their health. I also remember when people took the time to meet
and talk without having to bring their technological ball and chain with them.
Think
about it, the same technology that puts the world at our fingertips has actually
caused our species to become more and more isolated. Between texting, social networking, chat rooms,
home delivery apps and virtual worlds such as Second Life, it is now possible to
avoid interpersonal contact altogether. (Any
parent of a teenager will agree with this conundrum.) What’s even worse is that technology has insinuated
itself into practically every corner of modern society. If you don’t believe me, go to a restaurant or
coffee shop and see how many people are either texting or surfing the web while
they eat, even if they have a dining companion sitting across from them. Most people refer to this as multitasking. I call it rude.
Besides,
research has proven that multitasking isn’t helping us as a species. It’s hurting us. Everyone from Stanford Professor Dr. Clifford
Nass to Michael Gazziniga, Director of the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind,
agrees that multitasking negatively affects everything from attention span and writing
quality, to task completion and brain function.
“Stanford researchers compared groups of
people based on their tendency to multitask and their belief that it
helps their performance. They found that heavy multitaskers—those who multitask
a lot and feel that it boosts their performance—were actually worse at multitasking than those who like to do a single thing at a time. The frequent
multitaskers performed worse because they had more trouble organizing their thoughts
and filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching from one task to another. Ouch.”
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(Score Internet 1, Evolution
0)
Far
from pushing a “down with technology” agenda, when the Stanford research was performed,
it was assumed that there must be some advantage to multitasking. So they set out to find it.
"We kept looking for what they're better at, and
we didn't find it," said Ophir, the study's lead author and a researcher in
Stanford's Communication Between
Humans and Interactive Media Lab.
In the tests, the researchers created two groups
of students, those who heavily engaged in media multitasking and those who didn’t. Each group was then given a series of exercises
to test everything from pattern recognition and organizational skills to their ability
to filter out irrelevant information. To
their surprise, the research indicated that the more heavily students engaged in
multitasking, the worse they did at these tasks. Puzzled at why the multitaskers did so poorly,
the researchers thought that maybe they excelled at switching from one task to another. So they tested this hypothesis only to conclude
that once again, the light multitaskers outperformed the heavy multitaskers.
"They couldn't help thinking about the task they
weren't doing," Ophir said. "The high multitaskers are always drawing
from all the information in front of them. They can't keep things separate in their
minds."
So
profound were the discoveries made in this study that it led the researchers to
wonder if it was the Internet that had somehow interfered with the cognitive function
of the brains of students who were heavily into multitasking, or if they were in
fact born with an inability to concentrate.
Either way, the heavy multitaskers, by exhibiting an inability to filter
out irrelevant information were clearly at a disadvantage. Even more alarming, some of the heavy multitaskers
also exhibited the same physiological symptoms as drug addicts. In other words, the more they multitasked, the
more electronic stimuli they craved.
Can You Say Crackberry?
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| Courtesy of |
“Benjamin Wong, a counsellor at Richmond
Addiction Services, said he works with individuals between the ages of
12 to 25 and their families to support them in dealing with digital addictions —
when they just can't separate themselves from a screen, be it a smartphone, computer
or gaming device.”
Just
like drug addicts, the effort to break a digital addiction takes a lot of time
(as much as a year). It also isn’t relegated
merely to Millennials. Even Baby Boomers
can get hooked on tech. And the tawdry road
that leads to digital addiction is a more slippery slope than that experienced by
devotees of illicit pharmaceuticals. As opposed
to back alley deals, digital addiction can be as simple as accessing your favorite
social media site.
In
a 2014 CBS News report entitled, How Real a Risk
is Social Media Digital Addiction,” social media marketer Jason Thibeault
reported that he quit Facebook cold turkey when he realized that it was becoming
an addiction.
"Just imagine that Facebook is like a digital water cooler.
I was drinking A TON of water every hour," he wrote. "Although I'm not
a neuroscientist, I'd venture to say that what was happening was related to my Dopamine
levels--when I was checking status updates on Facebook, my brain was rewarding itself
with Dopamine; when I wasn't, and Dopamine levels dropped as a result, I started
'jonesing for a fix.'"
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| Courtesy of |
(Score: Internet 2 Evolution:
0)
As
our wired world continues its march toward technological domination, far from being
an isolated incident, IAD will continue to spread as the Internet becomes available
to more and more of the world’s population. (Google is building blimps that are
intended to bring the Internet to isolated parts of the world.) To make matters
worse, a new age of internet-enabled appliances, clothing and devices such as cars
are going to inevitably make inroads into a number of areas that were once thought
exclusively the domain of human beings.
While
I could wax apocalyptic about how smart houses, clothes, cars and appliances are
going to lead to the disintegration of what’s left of society, I think I’ll let IDG Enterprise CEO Mike Friedenberg chime in
with his post on cio.com:
“I look back at the time my
parents taught me how to parallel park, and it's a very fond memory. Now all you
need to do is push a button and your car will parallel park itself. Makes me wonder
what our lives will become. Is the future really about pushing a lot of buttons
to get things done?
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| Courtesy of |
(Score: Internet 3 Evolution:
0)
My partner Hector told me about the new Terminator movie where it depicted a possible scenario of our not too distant future. In this future, everyone was wanting and waiting for a single operating system called Genesis. This new OS would run every machine and appliance that we use. The reason people wanted this change was so that it would make it easier for us to learn and use these devices. However the new OS in the movie was actually the artificial intelligence called Sky Net - poised to take over the world and kill off most of the human race. This is not too different from the doomsday proclamations as those issued by the likes of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking concerning the emergence of artificial intelligence.
My partner Hector told me about the new Terminator movie where it depicted a possible scenario of our not too distant future. In this future, everyone was wanting and waiting for a single operating system called Genesis. This new OS would run every machine and appliance that we use. The reason people wanted this change was so that it would make it easier for us to learn and use these devices. However the new OS in the movie was actually the artificial intelligence called Sky Net - poised to take over the world and kill off most of the human race. This is not too different from the doomsday proclamations as those issued by the likes of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking concerning the emergence of artificial intelligence.
There is no doubt that the Internet has allow us access to vast amounts of information and given us a huge knowledge base to draw from. With this the huge amount of knowledge also come a vast amount of responsibility. As to whether the Internet is going to wind up making us smarter or dumber, all I can say is this - that if society takes just a few more steps toward technology, it’s probably going to be game, set, match as far as human evolution is concerned.
----
In
this article I have discussed how the improper use of the internet has created
a large segment of tech addicted humans worldwide. I provide real studies that show
how multitasking people preform much worse than those who don’t multitask and
how people actually show withdrawal symptoms when access to their social
networks are not available.
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Carl
Weiss is president of WorkingtheWebtoWin.com a
digital marketing agency in Jacksonville, Florida that routinely works with
bloggers and other online marketers to grow their businesses.
Social Networking Secrets & Best Practices: Part 3 – There is no Substitute
By Hector CisnerosI have been actively networking in a number of organizations since the early 1980’s. My experience, tells me that most people get out of social networking what they put into it. People often come up to me after a speaking engagement and ask, what is the magic formula for networking success. How can they become successful as a social Networker? My answer is always the same, it’s not a magic formula, although many perceive it to be a secret, a powerful principle or other hidden system of techniques. My answer always state that the secret is in plain sight. Look at the word “network” and the answer is in the title itself. The first parts of this series addressed the relationship between face to face networking and social media. Part two addresses the secret aspects of Giving. In part three of this series, we will discuss the habits that must be acquired and followed, in order to become a consummate Networker. We’ll be looking at 15 important habits which will guide and drive your success. So let’s get to work and begin by dissecting the term Social Networker.
Social Networking Secrets & Best Practices: Part 2 - Giving is The Givers Secrets
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| Courtesy of WorkingtheWebtoWin.com |
Have you ever wondered why some networkers are phenomenally successful and other struggle to even get one referral? Why is it that many are attracted to a few seemingly special networkers and others are shunned? Could it be that there is a secret that these few Super Networkers know, that others do not? Part one of this series shows the relationship between face to face and online social networking. In this second part of Best Practices of Social Networking Secrets series, I will cover what those Super Networkers know - the secrets that makes Super Networkers magnetic. The secret that brings them followers and referrals far beyond the average business Networker. The magical secret of Giving! Giving you say? It can’t be that simple. Well, I didn’t say it was simple or even easy, but yes, giving is the magical secret. In Part three of this series we will explore another secret that demonstrates that there is no substitute for proactive participation. But in this article we will expose Giving in all its glory. We will explore what has taken me a lifetime of learning. Now let’s explore what I mean by giving, so that you can use it to produce massive positive result for you and your business.
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