How the Internet and AI Are Changing the Way We Think

Leyla Marie Hazim Bahssa
7 days ago
3 min read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTZkauHzrtU

For years, technology has been sold as a force for freedom. More speed. More productivity. More connection. More access. In many ways, it has delivered on that promise. Today, anyone can launch a business from a laptop, automate workflows that once required entire teams, and access more information than would have been imaginable just two decades ago.

But at the same time, something else is happening.

We are building a society that is becoming less capable of thinking slowly.

That was one of the central themes of our conversation with Pablo Mondragón on The Nomu Hour. As an anthropologist, consultant, and expert in human behavior applied to business and technology, Pablo has spent years studying how cultural shifts influence the way we work, consume information, build companies, and make decisions.

The Internet Wasn't Just a Tool. It Became Our Environment.

We often talk about technology as though it exists separately from people, as if "returning to what is human" means distancing ourselves from the digital world.

But technology has always been human.

Fire was technology.

Writing was technology.

The Internet is technology too.

The difference is that the Internet didn't simply give us another tool. It created an entirely new environment.

Today we work online, socialize online, learn online, and build our reputations online. A significant part of modern life now takes place inside platforms specifically designed to capture and retain our attention.

That's where the real transformation begins.

AI Doesn't Just Automate Work. It Changes How We Think.

One of the most compelling ideas discussed during the episode is that, just as social media weakened parts of our attention span, AI may gradually erode our capacity for deep thinking.

Not because the technology is inherently harmful, but because consistently outsourcing cognitive work changes how we use our minds.

We summarize emails automatically.

We generate content automatically.

We automate repetitive tasks.

Everything becomes faster.

Everything becomes more optimized.

The challenge is that the less we exercise certain mental abilities, the more dependent we become on external systems to perform them for us.

We Live in an Economy Designed to Overstimulate Us.

This is happening within an environment engineered to compete relentlessly for our attention.

Notifications.

Infinite scrolling.

Short-form content.

Instant rewards.

A fragmented attention span that jumps continuously from one stimulus to another.

Our brains evolved over thousands of years in environments that looked nothing like this.

They were never designed to process the sheer volume of information we consume every day.

That is why conversations around cognitive well-being are becoming increasingly important.

Just as society eventually recognized the physical consequences of ultra-processed food and sedentary lifestyles, we are beginning to understand the cognitive consequences of information overload.

How we consume content.

How long we can truly focus.

What permanent connectivity does to our minds.

And whether we are gradually losing our ability to think critically and deeply.

AI Is Democratizing Product Development.

The conversation also explores an especially important shift for startups.

AI is dramatically lowering the barriers to building products.

Today, a single founder can prototype an idea in days, validate it more quickly, and launch products without assembling a large technical team from day one.

That fundamentally changes the competitive landscape.

For years, building software was itself a competitive advantage.

Increasingly, it is not.

The real advantage is knowing what deserves to be built in the first place.

As technical execution becomes more accessible, value shifts back toward judgment, distribution, strategic thinking, and a deep understanding of human problems.