Email has turned us into ‘lab rats’

Email has turned office workers into no more than lab rats desperately craving “pellets of social interaction”, a leading expert has claimed.

Nick Collins — The Telegraph 

Increasing levels of information overload from computer and smart phone screens cause a “bottleneck” in the brain and prevent any deep thought, according to Nicholas Carr, former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review.

His comments add to the weight of evidence that our addiction to technology and the snippets of information it provides is damaging our ability to apply our power of thought in a meaningful way.

Mr Carr, a former business of the Harvard Business Review, whose books include The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, said email exploits a basic human instinct to search for new information, causing us to become addicted to our inboxes.