One of the great pleasures of plying my trade at the Fool (it's hard to call it work) is the outstanding array of outside experts who drop by and speak to the company. This morning, we chatted with Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain.

Carr has found through his research that the Internet may be diminishing our capacity to engage in deep thinking or concentrating on one thing for long periods of time. The problem comes as we flit about minute-by-minute between Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Bing, Facebook, Twitter, and texting. Carr says there is "enormous evidence" that our brains change all the time in response to our habitat, and the Internet is an important part of our habitat. The circuits and pathways dedicated to this type of "shallow" brain activity strengthen, while those we ignore fall apart.

Although there are certainly benefits to the constant Web interaction, Carr believes that as a society, we stand to lose as least as much as we gain.

I'm interested in your thoughts. Carr says he became interested in this topic when he found himself losing the ability to concentrate. As you become more immersed in texting, surfing, and social media, have you noticed any degradation in your deeper thinking? If you can concentrate long enough to find the comments box below, please let me know.