We live in a very impatient world. It’s a world where people distribute their time by the second. If a video pauses before loading, many people will close it and move on. There is a constant buzzing rush to accomplish as much as possible in the least amount of time. Recently, I’ve started wondering if our impatience has gotten so extensive that we’ve started to rush our own species’ evolution. One essay in The Digital Divide that really caught my attention was "Your Brain is Evolving Right Now" by Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan. They open the essay with the following claim: “Because of the current technological revolution, our brains are evolving right now—at a speed like never before” (pg. 77). They go on to assert that, “this evolutionary brain process has rapidly emerged over a single generation and may represent one of the most unexpected yet pivotal advances in human history” (pg. 77).
That concept got me thinking about the human timeline. Humans first appeared on Earth around 200,000 years ago. We only started documenting history about 5,000 years ago. Therefore, it took around 195,000 years to evolve to the point where we were able to develop the printed word. Since that point, humans have evolved at an unimaginable rate. Even if it was only a few thousand years, it would seem that we allowed our brains ample time to evolve and adapt to a print-based world, but since the invention of television (less than a century ago), and even more so with the invention of the internet (about two decades ago), we have been putting evolutionary pressures on our brains that may be causing more harm than good. In the current society, technology is evolving faster than we can, and we are forcing ourselves to keep up with it, at whatever cognitive cost.
Since the inception of the printed word, progress has been inevitable in domesticated culture. We, as humans, will never take a step backward from that progress. But maybe we need take a look at the mental and social consequences of our relentless evolutionary push, and pump the brakes. According to Small and Vorgan, “as the brain evolves and shifts its focus toward new technological skills, it drifts away from fundamental social skills, such as reading facial expressions during conversation or grasping the emotional context of a subtle gesture” (pg. 78). Those fundamental social skills have been part of our evolutionary development for much longer than the printed word, and to see them deteriorating at such a fast rate because of our obsession with technology is cause for concern. “With the weakening of the brain’s neural circuitry controlling human contact, our social interactions may become awkward, and we tend to misinterpret, and even miss, subtle, nonverbal messages” (pg. 78). These awkward encounters have become very prevalent in our culture; many famous comedians and actors (like Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, Will Ferrell, etc.) use “awkward humor” to draw laughs. But I doubt anyone would be laughing if that awkwardness “might affect an international summit meeting ten years from now, when a misread facial cue or a misunderstood gesture could make the difference between escalating military conflict or peace” (p. 78).
Humans are an extraordinary species. We undoubtedly contain the evolutionary capacity to adapt to this new technological age. But evolution is a slow process. We can’t run before we learn to walk. Instead of overstepping our developmental boundaries, let’s just enjoy what we have and allow our brains the necessary time to adjust. There’s no need to rush the inevitable with new “must-have” devices every 4-6 months.
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