Some technologies change aspects of our lives – how we work, travel or play. Few alter our whole way of being.

It is now a decade or two into the internet revolution and we are still struggling to grasp its vastness. One vital new development is research into the way our reliance on the web for information and communication might be changing the way we think. This new field of inquiry has been summarised and popularised by the writer Nicholas Carr in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, a book that has stirred fierce debate on and offline.

A key observation in the book is that large amounts of time spent browsing the web appear to affect neural pathways, with implications for the way we respond to information and form memories. Crudely speaking, we skim the surface of knowledge, covering more, absorbing less. That assertion will not surprise those of us who switch endlessly between email, web and phone. We know our attention spans have atrophied. Still, it is alarming to think the change might not be habitual, but neurological.

Sceptics observe that the brain has developed over hundreds of thousands of years. It is unlikely to be reconfigured in what, in evolutionary terms, is a split second.

But the science of how we turn data into consciousness and memory is too little understood to rule out the idea that the web is having an impact.

As we come to understand the process better, we might start to cherish more the habits of thought that are endangered by endless shallow skimming. That is not to diminish the huge intellectual and economic bounty that is the web.

But, just as we know how a mostly sedentary modern lifestyle places more obligation on us to exercise our bodies, it is quite plausible to imagine a time when we will more diligently practise concentrating on one thing at a time, in order to exercise our minds.