Florida Beaches Brace for Oil Spill
CHETRY: How many times a day do you check your e-mail, send a text or update your Facebook status? Well, all this technology makes life a lot easier, but could it also be changing how we think? Well, journalist and author, Nicholas Carr, think so. It's the topic of his new book, "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brain". For this "A.M. Original", I talked to Nick and asked him what he found out.</s>NICHOLAS CARR, AUTHOR, "THE SHALLOWS": It's not good news. I mean, on the one hand, the net is providing us with all sorts of new information and it's allowing us to connect with other people, but it's also keeping us in a perpetual state of distractedness. We can't slow down. You know, we're juggling tasks all the time. We're getting interrupted all the time. And what happens is we never train our brains to pay attention, to get engaged in more deeper kinds of thinking.</s>CHETRY: Yes. When we were in college, we called it, you know, getting into the zone, and you had to --</s>CARR: Right.</s>CHETRY: -- really find a way to sort of shut everything else out to really concentrate and absorb material. But does that really play out neurologically? I mean, is there something to be said for how you absorb information?</s>CARR: Yes. It's -- there's a lot of evidence that the way we take in information online with lots of links and lots of multi- tasking and multi-media, all sorts of things coming at us at once, kind of break the link between our short-term memory, which is just where, you know, stuff comes in and goes out very quickly, into our long-term memory, which is really where we build deep, conceptual knowledge.</s>CHETRY: And so, how do you know that eventually we wouldn't adapt in a way and our brains wouldn't adapt in a way that makes us impervious in some ways to the constant barrage of distraction?</s>CARR: Yes. I think -- I think we will adapt. I mean, one thing we know about the brain is it's very adaptable, but in some ways that's what scares me. Because when we adapt, it means we're changing things in our brain and so we're getting used to be scanners and skimmers and surfers and browsers. And we're probably getting better at that, but we're losing the ability to go deeper.</s>CHETRY: Is there anything that we can do, some building blocks that we can lay down for our young children to make sure that this doesn't happen or there are times when we are disconnecting?</s>CARR: Yes. We have to start pulling back from constant connection. And nobody's going to, you know, unplug the internet or go offline all the time, but we've -- we've gotten it into our minds that it's OK if our kids spend -- you know, send and receive a couple of hundred text messages all day long.</s>CHETRY: Right.</s>CARR: And we have to think, you know, this is having an effect on their minds just like it's having an effect on our own, and maybe the time has come to start putting limits on these things.</s>CHETRY: Is this such a leap, I mean, with what we're exposed to on a daily basis in terms of always being plugged in?</s>CARR: Yes. It's true that there's always kind of fears when -- when a new technology comes along. What's different now from the calculator and from other types of tools that we've used is -- is our connectedness is going on all day long --</s>CHETRY: Right.</s>CARR: -- and all the time and it's taking all different forms. You know, we're checking Facebook updates, we're getting texts, we're -- we're scrolling through our e-mail. We're not giving our brains any chance to do anything else basically.</s>CHETRY: While I was looking through your book, I thought to myself, you know, because of GPS, you don't have to learn the directions anywhere.</s>CARR: Right.</s>CHETRY: And it's true. And I -- I have to put the same -- the address in the GPS because I didn't learn it from the last time --</s>CARR: Right.</s>CHETRY: -- because a computer was telling me how to get there.</s>CARR: And there's -- there's an interesting kind of scary point to that, that actually when we depend on software, it's hugely convenient.</s>CHETRY: Right.</s>CARR: You know, I get -- you know, I program the GPS, but it's true that it bypasses our ability to learn. To learn something you have to actually struggle with it, OK? And that's the way it kind of lodges in your mind. And if you bypass that and just click and turn on your GPS, you may fail to learn some important concepts.</s>CHETRY: It makes a lot of sense. It's certainly something to think about. Our Nicholas Carr, author of "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brain". Thanks for spending some time with us this morning.</s>CARR: Thank you.</s>ROBERTS: Crossing the half hour now, we're checking our top stories. At least seven people killed in a suicide attack in Northern Iraq. Officials say six police officers are among the dead. It is the second day of deadly violence in a row there. On Sunday, at least 29 people were killed in Western Baghdad when suicide bombers blew up cars packed with explosives in back-to-back attacks. Officials say their target was The Trade Bank of Iraq.</s>CHETRY: The fight over illegal immigration comes to a head today in the city of Freemont, Nebraska. This morning, in a special election, the community of 25,000 will vote on whether to ban businesses from hiring illegal immigrants and to bar landlords from renting to them. Supporters say the proposal is needed to stop the loss of good jobs for local residents. But opponents say all it does is fuel discrimination.</s>ROBERTS: The federal government is taking over the claims process for the oil spill in the Gulf, promising to get checks to the people who need them the most -- fast. Many victims say they can't last much longer. We'll talk about that with the new man in charge of cutting those checks, Ken Feinberg -- coming up in about 40 minutes time.</s>CHETRY: Well, with the huge tourism industry, Florida has a lot at stake from an economic standpoint when it comes to this oil spill.</s>ROBERTS: Tourism is a $60 billion industry for the state. And for residents there, worried would be an understatement. Our David Mattingly is live in Okaloosa Island, Florida. And, David, business is down there by how much?</s>DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: All across the panhandle, business is down, John. Every single thing that tourists spend money on is hurting. And the more oil that comes ashore, in whatever form it is, the worse the pain gets.</s>MATTINGLY (voice-over): Blue water, sugar-white sand -- a perfect picture from the Florida Panhandle, except for those BP crews picking up tar balls. (on camera): As you were watching these guys, what was going through your mind?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That they're on top of it. That's what I'm thinking. They're trying to get it before it gets --</s>MATTINGLY: No second thoughts about the vacation?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not yet at this point. Not yet.</s>MATTINGLY (voice-over): Vacationers I talked to are making day-to-day decisions, go to the beach if the oil stays away, go home if it doesn't. So far, the tar balls seem manageable. (on camera): They're literally cleaning up tar balls just a few feet away from where you're sitting.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, and it's very sad.</s>MATTINGLY: But you're not worried about it.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, not right now. We're not stepping in it or anything.</s>MATTINGLY (voice-over): But these pieces of the BP spill are killing business -- down 30 percent to 40 percent across the panhandle, worse around the beaches where the tar balls hit. The official strategy: clean it up, and fast. (on camera): This is what this is all about, right? Making sure people can still come to a clean beach?</s>COMM. JOHN JANNAZO, OKALOOSA COUNTY, FL.: Exactly. And we're cleaning up. When we did have the -- we had some oil a couple days ago and we picked it up just like that. It's gone.</s>MATTINGLY (voice-over): But the oil threat isn't so easily forgotten. Everywhere I go, there's worry, a feeling of "enjoy it while you can." (on camera): This is one of the biggest party areas in all the panhandle. This area is called Crab Island. It's not really an island. It's a sandbar just outside of Destin. Literally hundreds of boats gather here every day to enjoy the water and the sun. Are you worried this might be one of your last weekends out there?</s>CROWD: Yes!</s>MATTINGLY (voice-over): Just like BP chief Tony Hayward who spent time on his yacht back home in the U.K., people here can't resist the water when it comes to relaxing.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where's he putting his boat in?</s>MATTINGLY (voice-over): Why do you want to know?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because he's probably in some really clean water.</s>MATTINGLY: What would you like to say to Tony Hayward?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We love it here. And we wanted to stay clean and he needs get down here and make sure it stays this way so that we can bring our families out.</s>MATTINGLY (voice-over): But as the BP spill creeps eastward across the panhandle, questions grow -- not just about the future of this tourist season, but the seasons that follow.</s>MATTINGLY: And local authorities are trying to keep pace with wave after wave of tar balls. This is what the culprits look like. These little pebble-like pieces of tar that mix with the sand and mix with those white sand beaches. And once that does that, that means it's going to -- it has more diminishing effect on this already- damaged tourist season.</s>CHETRY: And, David, it's the first day of summer officially in just a couple of hours. What are they expecting there over the next couple of days in terms of how these waters hold up?</s>MATTINGLY: Well, this boom behind me going out across the water here is a good indication of what they're waiting for. They've been seeing these tar balls for days now. They're bracing for what's worse, what might be coming after this. And that's those ribbons of emulsified oil that we've seen out in the ocean. But, at this point, it's very fragmented out there. They're not able to keep track of it the way they could over in Louisiana. Over here, they're expecting to see pieces of it here, pieces of it there. But everyone across the panhandle bracing for worse -- worse than what we've seen with these tar balls.</s>CHETRY: What a shame. David Mattingly for us this morning -- thanks.</s>ROBERTS: Well, how do you cope when your partner in life slowly slips away overcome by Alzheimer's disease? It happened to CBS news correspondent Barry Petersen. He's written a book about his wife Jan's battle with the disease and the toll that it has taken on him as well. He'll join us in just a moment.