For humans, this desire to search is not just about fulfilling our physical needs. Panksepp says that humans can get just as excited about abstract rewards as tangible ones. He says that when we get thrilled about the world of ideas, about making intellectual connections, about divining meaning, it is the seeking circuits that are firing.
Ever find yourself sitting down at the computer just for a second to find out what other movie you saw that actress in, only to look up and realize the search has led to an hour of Googling? Thank dopamine. Our internal sense of time is believed to be controlled by the dopamine system. People with hyperactivity disorder have a shortage of dopamine in their brains, which a recent study suggests may be at the root of the problem. For them even small stretches of time seem to drag. An article by Nicholas Carr in the Atlantic last year, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” speculates that our constant Internet scrolling is remodeling our brains to make it nearly impossible for us to give sustained attention to a long piece of writing. Like the lab rats, we keep hitting “enter” to get our next fix.
If humans are seeking machines, we’ve now created the perfect machines to allow us to seek endlessly.
People keep saying this but I wonder if it’s empirical. I read and write in bits and pieces and both enjoy it and seem to sustain the meaning.
I find it difficult to read New Yorker-length articles online but enjoy them in print. Maybe it’s something with screens?
I think that in print we psychologically “know” when the page is supposed to end, whereas digitally, we don’t.
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