I personally feel that modern technology has, and is, an extremely large effect on our brains. From the individual influences of searching the internet for personal interests, to the global society and the new geometry of power that is present throughout all global networks.
Information technologies are an advancing field with new aspects emerging every day. This has caused the choices that we are thrown into to go up exponentially, no other generation before us has had to deal with such a thing. A new form of global civil society is allowing people to become self organized around the world, for both the good and the bad. A new creative class has been created and jobs in digital manipulation is another growing field.
On the individual cognitive level, many new forms and patterns are being seen. One is the new way we handle and store our information. There is less emphasis in knowing all the details, there is always Google and spell check to back you up. A holistic view is becoming more and more present in western thought as the internet gives a first hand experience of the complex connections between ideas and people through out space and time.
I was once told that the best thing to emerge out of the internet is the ability to acquire information, theory's, and conclusions that can take lifetimes to gather the data and ponder over. Once someone has presented their thoughts to a digital medium it can last as long as the satellites keep orbiting.
Then there is the biotechnologies that are creating more cures, more options, and more issues then the legal policies can keep up with. It can make the head spin sometimes.
As individuals we now have access to the evolution of the universe. The future direction of this evolution depends on the choices we, as individuals, communities, and the collective whole, are going to have to make and are making every day.
