Just What is the Internet Doing to Your Cranium? Hint: Go For a Pessimistic Answer

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"I told him he was a very sad man, that collecting Facebook friends is the equivalent of being a catlady, collecting numerous Himalayans, which you have neither the time nor the inclination to feed. "You have obviously never been on Facebook," he said. "It's so much worse than collecting cats." (Matt Labash)

One recent piece of research shows that “periodically checking your e-mail lowers your cognitive performance level to that of a drunk." (James Bowman)

"Internet software can be used as parasocietal mechanisms for the observation of online interactions. Online social networks allow for high levels of surveillance." (Susan B. Barnes)

"There are a hundred means of communication, and there is nothing to communicate.” (G.K. Chesterton)

“This... nicely catches the nuances of the ‘Facebook addict’ type: an anti-social, agoraphobic, ‘low maintenance’ lurker who is also a passive-aggressive and voyeuristic stalker accumulating useless social capital.” (Meaghan Morris)

"Facebook is a worldwide pie-stealing phenomenon that needs to be put behind bars." (Yours Truly)

"Oddly enough, Facebook has little to do with faces and nothing to do with books." (Mike C.)

“Modern societies must decide what their loves truly are — or else technology itself will entrap them in what is merely feasible.” (Michael Novak)

"Today we believe our machines allow us to know a lot more, and in many ways they do. What we don’t want to admit — but should — is that they also ensure that we directly experience less." (Christine Rosen)

“The human race has susceptibility to harm but Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record: he has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age.” (Eben Moglen)

"God is omnipresent. Facebook comes in second." (Ironic Catholic)

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." (Albert Einstein)

"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards." (Aldous Huxley)

"Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other." (Carrie Snow)

"It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome." (T.S. Eliot, about radio)

"Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation." (Jean Arp)

"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do." (B. F. Skinner)

"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." (Carl Sagan)

"Television to brainwash us all and Internet to eliminate any last resistance." (Paul Carvel)

"Technology... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." (Max Frisch)