The likelihood of you finishing this column is not good.

These first two sentences are already boring you.

After a few more words your eyes are going to scan down until something else catches their attention, and from there you may read a little longer, skim to the last paragraph, and finally move on to the next page.

Don’t worry, I won’t be offended.

It’s not your fault.

It might not even be my fault.

Instead, blame the Internet.

Not only is it changing our brains, but it’s changing society.

Those reading online will say, “Of course, there’s always something better to find on the Internet than the Daily Nebraskan.”

Maybe so, but that doesn’t explain why your patience ran out after a few seconds.

And if you’re waiting for class to start and your laptop is stashed away at home, this excuse doesn’t work so well.

The blame would theoretically fall back on me for producing a boring column.

But maybe not.

We have limited patience because our brain is being rewired to prefer reading brief segments of information over long blocks of text.

Shortened attention spans aren’t only the result of countless distractions surrounding us throughout the day, but also what those things do to the neurological pathways transferring data through our brains.

So while the Internet gives us libraries of information at our fingertips and has revolutionized worldwide communication, it might also be making us dumber than the generations before us.

Is it all worth it?

Is losing the ability of deep, contemplative thought and long, deliberate reading worth the benefits of a hyper-connected race with the ability to ‘know’ anything after a .18 second Google search?

Nicholas Carr’s latest book, “The Shallows,” asks these same questions.

However, as Carr points out, the idea of technology degrading human intelligence is nothing new.

He cites Greek philosopher Plato’s “Phaedrus,” in which Socrates tells the story of an Egyptian god discussing the new invention of reading with a prince of Egypt named Thamus.

Although the ancient Greeks were the first civilization to put together an effective alphabet, they didn’t trust the written word, instead favoring those with skills in oration and memorization.

Plato makes this clear through the prince, Thamus, who said the ability to write “will implant forgetfulness in (people’s) souls: they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written… (the written word) is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder… They will seem to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing.”

The argument between Thamus and the Egyptian god could easily be applied to our ability to learn and the negative consequences of Google.

The former represents the potential for deep, lifelong knowledge in a subject, while the latter grants us endless access to information within seconds of wanting it, but it’s longevity in our minds is reliant upon our limited memory (as opposed to the infinite cloud of online information) to save it.

Yet, in this particular case, Thamus was wrong.

Over the next two millennia, the ability to read and write brought literacy, communication and history to the masses.

It accelerated the development of human society and culture more in those 2,000 years than in the 200,000 before it.

In fact, all changes in how we read and write throughout history were made to make reading more efficient.

The Greeks read aloud because words wereruntogetherlikethis, a slow, clunky process difficult to pick up without years of schooling.

Because of this, the poor weren’t learning how to read much more than the occasional street sign.

After words were broken up, hardbound books (as opposed to scrolls, which are impractical and difficult to navigate) made research easier for ancient scholars.

In 1450 the Gutenberg press was introduced and eventually made reading accessible to the lower classes of society.

Again, every new technology and innovation in reading and writing has, as a whole, made us collectively smarter and better off than before.

So why would the Internet be any different?

Evolution has nothing to do with our ability to read better than our ancestors; 2,500 years of reading with an alphabet is a sliver of time on the geologic scale of human existence.

As a species who, for most of our being, needed to be acutely alert of our surroundings to avoid predators and other humans, long periods of blinding focus on one thing goes against the evolved physical makeup of our brains.

Learning to read and write takes a considerable amount of time, and forces the brain to rewire itself in the process.

Therefore it is in our nature to focus our attention from one thing to another more so than to read a long book or engage in meditation.

Surfing the web may be more natural to us than reading a book, but that doesn’t mean it’s better.

With our attention spans shrinking because of the Internet’s bombardment of distractions, we lose the ability to form long-term memory.

Because of everything occupying our attention, our short-term, or working, memory is laboring overtime to keep up.

And as Carr states in “The Shallows,” “The depth of our intelligence hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory to long-term memory and weave it into conceptual schemas (the concepts which aid us in complex decision making).”

These schemas are responsible for the creativity and original ideas that are needed to solve complex problems.

All of which are critical to the further advancement of society.

But with Facebook, Twitter, blogs, e-mail, text messaging, television, smart phones and more often being engaged all at once, the information overload is weakening our long-term memory, and the intuitive wisdom that goes with decision making is being lost with it.

So what does it mean for society if we are losing our attention spans while gaining access to vast amounts of information at the same time?

For students it makes long reading assignments harder to digest, and lengthy papers require even more time and focus to write.

It may be good for a stock broker to be able to scan through piles of information in a short time, but for a lawyer looking through dry, lengthy summaries of court cases to keep their client free, one would hope they could concentrate on their work.

Or look at our president (notorious for spending time on his Blackberry), who is unable to commit to memory even the basic points of his speeches without the help of a teleprompter.

Would this be a sign of someone who can’t make major decisions because his brain hasn’t stored enough long-term memory?

Does he not have the schemas necessary to provide him with enough creativity to come up with the best solution?

Probably not, but it is a new way to start looking at the changing world around us.

None of this is meant to be a call for everyone to abandon the Internet and read James Joyce’s “Ulysses” this weekend.

But it should be a reminder that humanity and culture are not static, not even the physical makeup inside our heads.

Moving forward with new technologies, we should be aware there is a give and take involved, and we are giving away as much as we are taking.

While we distract ourselves with endless amounts of media, our ability to fully understand it is slipping.

And if you’re still with me and not halfway through the crossword by now, you’re either my mother or none of this applies to you.

To the latter, I’m envious, and to my mother, “Hi

Nick Pelster received a Facebook message and forgot to finish this column. Reach him at nickpelster@dailynebraskan.com.