The physical world is where I not only see, I also feel — a friend’s loving gaze in conversation; the movement of my arms and legs and the breeze on my face as I walk outside; and the company of friends for a game night and potluck dinner. The Internet supports my thinking and the physical world supports that, as well as, rich sensing and feeling experiences.
It’s no accident we’re a culture increasingly obsessed with the Food Network and Farmer’s Markets — they engage our senses and bring us together with others.
How has the Internet changed my thinking? The more I’ve loved and known it, the clearer the contrast, the more intense the tension between a physical life and a virtual life. The Internet stole my body, now a lifeless form hunched in front of a glowing screen. My senses dulled as my greedy mind became one with the global brain we call the Internet.
Read the whole post here on O’Reilly Radar or a slightly different version, here, on the Huffington Post.
Read John Brockman’s 2010 World Question Center. Thought leaders and scientists respond to the question: How has the internet changed the way you think?
Comment here — write your own response. Happy New Year!
Linda Stone 
beginning days of opening up the astral as part of normal experience, no problem ..
and, my two rupees to EDGE, the internet changes nothing about thinking, Patanjili already nailed what the mind can do … the internet is just making it more obvious
The internet has turned me from a researcher [I was trained as an historian in the late 1960’s] into a filter. Most of my writing, thinking now involves distilling reams of data and becoming, I hope a trusted source in my areas of expertise-especially governance and fund raising.
Thank you, Phil! Filtering is one of the best possible skills to have at this moment in history!