One day in grad school, I opened up my e-mail to double check the time and place for my voice lesson. I left my apartment and arrived on campus a little early. My first instinct was to find a computer to check my e-mail, even though I had just logged off moments before (this was in the dark ages before smart phones). It was only one of the many memorable signs that my Internet cravings were consuming more of my brain power, that my urge to check e-mail was swelling to addiction. I came to wonder if the instant gratification I got from the Internet was costing me my ability to focus for lengthy stretches, say on an hour-long voice lesson.
I asked my roommate about it. “I’m sometimes horrified at the hours that can go into e-mail,” says Boston-based violist Emily Rideout. “On a daily basis, I also find it very difficult to move from computer-based work to something creative, like practicing or writing. The way the computer ‘feeds’ me the next e-mail or task puts me in a mindset where I get used to just responding and not reflecting on what I’m doing.”
Scientists, educators, and commentators have also begun to question if the Internet is affecting not only how we do business but the way in which we think. Was my e-mail craving just a momentary sensation or was it a signal that my brain was rewiring to crave constant content inputs?
Journalist Nicholas Carr seems to thinks it’s the latter. In his recent book, The Shallows, he asserts that “when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning.” He acknowledges the Internet’s power to find information and connect us with others, but argues that its “repetitive, intensive, interactive, and addictive” nature “turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.”
This effect, he says, has neurological consequences. While scientists long regarded the brain as an unmalleable machine, formed forever by childhood experiences and capable only of decay as it matures, research has revealed that the brain forms new synapses between its neurons in response to new stimuli or practiced behaviors. This phenomenon, known as neuroplasticity, explains why human behavior has changed vastly over time, even though the basic structure of our brains has not.
Neuroplasticity can have both positive and negative consequences. If part of the brain is injured, another part can learn the skills that the damaged section controlled. On the other hand, the brain can also fall into destructive patterns, such as in the case of mental illness, when powerful neural pathways become the paths of least resistance. This effect explains why it is both difficult to establish an exercise routine (those newer pathways are still developing) and a struggle to quit smoking (the connections of an old habit remain strong).
Moreover, our brain makes way for new pathways by abandoning ones it no longer uses. Carr quotes research psychiatrist Norman Doidge, who writes that “if we stop exercising our mental skills, we do not just forget them: the brain map space for those skills is turned over to the skills we practice instead.”
So by Carr’s argument, if you’re among the majority of adults who spend at least two hours online per day, you might replace an ability for deep focus with the quick-decision reflex needed to navigate the various sensory stimuli found online. Your language skills might alter as you practice expressing yourself in text messages and status updates instead of full sentences and paragraphs. In addition, Carr cites psychological research that proves that “frequent interruptions scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory, and make us tense and anxious.” He writes, “the Net’s cacophony of stimuli short-circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively.”
Is this true for singers? Does the Internet diminish our ability to study music and think creatively about our careers?
“I can always tell a ‘screen baby’ from a student who has read books,” says Craig Maddox, voice professor at Stetson University and Seagle Music Colony. “It takes time to get them to develop an attention span—if the student is willing to get away from the screens. When I encounter a student like that, I limit their practice sessions to a time frame that can sustain their concentration, sometimes as little as five minutes at a time, but numerous times per day.”
Steven A. Daigle, voice and opera department head at the Eastman School of Music, agrees. “Technology (and the speed at which we received data) has caused the students’ attention span to shorten,” he says. In addition, “present-day students tend to be wired in a way that they expect a quick result,” in contrast to the slower-paced study of generations past. “This ‘fast-lane’ approach to technical development causes anxiety, stress, and impatience,” he says.
Professor Edith Wiens of Juilliard disagrees. “That amazing quality of talent plus passion plus work habits is not as related to outside influence as one might think,” she says. “Those who do lose themselves to the Internet would have lost themselves to something else a generation ago.”
Wiens makes an interesting observation. And it is, after all, 2011 and the Internet is not going away. And what better way has there ever been to keep track of Young Artist Programs, find out about competitions, and be able to hear about and respond to auditions with lightning speed? We are also counseled to increase our online presence, creating at least one website, two Facebook pages (personal and professional), and maybe a blog, YouTube channel, and Twitter account.
Technology also offers invaluable new teaching tools. Maddox uses voice spectrography, which creates computer-generated images that reflect vocal timbre, registration, articulation, and vocal production elements. “I think that it is no mere coincidence that before [beginning to use spectrography in] 1995, I never had a significant competition winner come from my Stetson voice studio even though I had a number of very talented young students during those years,” he says.
Soprano Dina Cancryn, a voice professor at Middle Tennessee State University, also finds an interesting use for technology in her teaching. When a student cannot afford a regular pianist during lessons, she uses a computer application that can play accompaniments in different keys and tempos.
The profusion of online music and video offers a way for singers to broaden their knowledge of the repertoire. Even so, David Adams, voice professor and head of performance studies at the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music, does not find many students exploring this resource. He laments what he calls “a widespread lack of curiosity,” observing that “so many voice students come to college knowing very little about opera or song literature. With the easy availability of recordings and videos today,” he says, “there is no reason not to inform oneself.”
There are pitfalls, however, in navigating the wealth of music online. Stephen Ng, a tenor on the voice faculty of West Chester University, has noticed that when his students learn a new piece by listening to online recordings, they often “come back singing wrong words and wrong notes,” he says. “There are a lot of things that are just not right on the Internet.” While Cancryn acknowledges that the Web is a real time-saver for finding translations, “in terms of really getting into the language, the dictionary is better,” she says. “The slow way becomes faster the more you do it,” she says. Ng also attests that he retains languages better when he translates songs himself. And just like recordings, online translations can be unreliable.
Carr describes a study in which subjects who completed a logic puzzle without the help of software were able to finish it more quickly and with fewer mistakes than people using software that gave them hints. Similarly, by accepting the upfront convenience of the Internet, we may short-circuit the learning process that lets us best use that information in our creative work.
Daigle also points out the potential cultural consequences of our increasing focus on technology. “The communion between the audience and the stage in a live performance is getting lost by technology that takes us further away from the original intention of the art form,” he says, referring to the increasing frequency with which we experience opera as a video clip or HD stream in a movie theater. “Will seasoned opera fans eventually pay only to hear the highest level singers at the Met (kicking up your feet with popcorn and a Coke in hand) by way of HD streaming instead of supporting a local company?”
Technology can isolate as much as it connects us. Right now I am writing this article in a busy outdoor café. When I look up, I invariably see at least one adult, still as a statue, head bent toward a smart phone while their dog or baby waits patiently beside them staring into space. You can observe the same scene in any public place right now. If nothing else, our focus on machines takes us away from interacting with people directly, which can have consequences for us as collaborators, teachers, and artists.
In the worst-case scenario, creativity itself may become one of the casualties of heavy Internet use. Singers habituated to the constant stimulation of the Internet will find it difficult to advance themselves if every practice session and learning opportunity is a struggle to pay attention. A distracted, multitasking brain cannot be reconciled with the quiet, focused thinking that yields creative ideas.
On even the most practical level, technology can limit the music that we discover for ourselves. You can Google and download the song you were told to find, but you will cheat yourself out of the joy of stumbling upon new repertoire located right next to that song on the library shelf. As search engines collect more data to “personalize” every Internet search we do, they also diminish the scope of resources they offer us.
But we’ve been through this before. Carr describes how new technologies have always affected human behavior, including innovations that we now take for granted, such as maps and clocks. As clocks became more accurate and widespread, we ceased to experience time as “one cyclical, continuous flow,” he writes, but instead as “a series of units of equal duration,” which affected how we measure our productivity and value as individuals. The full effects of our wired lives may not be known today, but they will doubtlessly have a similarly revolutionary effect.
Carr again quotes psychiatrist Norman Doidge, who finds that “the computer extends the processing capabilities of our central nervous system [and] also alters it.” Electronic media and our own nervous systems “work in similar ways,” Doidge writes and, because of neuroplasticity, the two can “merge with electronic media, making a single, larger system.” In other words, our minds can become the machine.
As we grow accustomed to the realities of our wired lives, teachers offer their students broader perspectives on the traditions that have sustained the live arts for centuries. Live performances offer a sort of communion, as Professor Daigle calls it, that “is unique only to those involved in any given night and makes the experience thrilling.” The intimacy of voice lessons, “a time-honored way of teaching,” Professor Cancryn says, is really a “life lesson,” and “that art can’t be done through a computer.” But, “we do live in this age,” says Cancryn. “You can’t get around it.” And the effects of technology have already altered our lives.
“I really don’t have an opinion on that at all!” says Jessica Bianco, an undergraduate student of Craig Maddox. “Since I’ve grown up in this technological age, I guess I wouldn’t notice how these things impact me.”
