The library used to be an asylum for thought.

Situated amid the bustle of the campus or city center, the library was once a place of refuge, a cocoon of tranquility. Sprawled on the floor, concealed among the forest of shelves, a person could spend undistracted hours buried in a book, lost in thought. Every now and then a distraction would arise, only to be quickly quieted by the austere glance of a bespectacled librarian.

The traditional library was more than a home for books. It was a place of solitude, a place to go to flee the rat race, where time stopped and new worlds and intellectual frontiers opened, where nuggets of knowledge could be discovered, mined and then locked away like precious stones in the mental vault. The library was a place for reflection, concentration and sustained focus. The lumpish detested the library. For thinkers, it was utopia.

It appears these halcyon days are ending. Today the most popular service offered by most libraries is Internet access. According to the American Library Association, 99 percent of U.S. public library branches provide Internet access. The average branch has 11 public computers. More than three quarters of public libraries offer wi-fi networks so patrons using personal laptops can access the Internet. These days, the “predominant sound in the modern library is the tapping of keys,” writes author Nicholas Carr, “not the turning of pages.”

Take the Bronx Library Center, a four-year-old branch of the New York Public Library. “On the library’s four main floors,” write three management consultants in the journal strategy+business, “the stacks of books have been placed at each end, leaving ample space in the middle for tables that have computers on them, many with broadband access to the Internet. The people using the computers are young and aren’t necessarily using them for academic purposes—here is one doing a Google search in Hannah Montana pictures, there is one updating his Facebook page, and over there a few children are playing video games ….”

Instead of shushing patrons, librarians check out dvds and “organize gaming tournaments.” No longer is the library in the business of creating a place of mental solitude; rather, “it is in the gaming business or the entertainment business or maybe the information connectivity business” (ibid.). In an attempt to woo the young, library systems in Los Angeles, Singapore, and Alexandria, Egypt, among others, have made similar changes in the way they do business. In Toronto, teens can swing by the public library on Friday afternoons for online games and music. The Stanford University Library created an online identity in Second Life, the online “virtual world.”

Far from being asylums for thought and private reflection, libraries are becoming vibrant high-tech hubs for people seeking social interaction. The modern library is an eccentric mix of the Internet café, Blockbuster movie store and old-school library.

This evolution of the library is more than an interesting phenomenon. There is much we can learn—about our own minds even—by reflecting on the cause of this growing fixation on the screen rather than the printed page. Superficially, it appears libraries are merely redefining how they do business in an effort to maintain relevance in the age of technology and the Internet. But there’s more to it than that.

The transformation of the public library reflects a transformation of our minds.

The library is a grocery store for the intellect. In much the same way a person can get a glimpse of the nutritional health of the public by surveying the sugar-soaked shelves of Walmart, one can gain insight into the mental diet and practices of a community by studying the public library. Like Walmart, and the thick assortment of fast-food restaurants, the local library stays in business by giving the public what it demands. In the case of the modern library, this means pushing books to the margins, offering Internet access—essentially a connection to a world of perpetual distractions—and creating an environment more a buzzing beehive than a tranquil cocoon.

Like the modern library, this age of technology and the Internet is transforming our minds, in some cases for the better, but in many cases, for the worse.

Like the average experience in the modern library, the cognitive patterns and processes of the modern mind are becoming increasingly desultory and fleeting. In the same way teens are visiting the library to play online games or scroll for pictures of Hannah Montana, mentally we’ve grown accustomed to splashing around in the shallows. Because of our perpetual connectedness (via technology and the Internet), to each other and the rest of the world, daily life, like the library, is devoid of quiet nooks. Moments of reflection and prolonged concentration, be it on a task at work, a homework assignment or in productive conversation with friends, are rare.

Of course, this is not to say our love affair with technology and the Internet has stymied our mental activity. We still use our brains, constantly. Like the space in the library, we’re just using them differently. “We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming,” notes the blurb of Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows, “but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation and reflection.”

Like the modern library, our minds are filled with knowledge, and ease of access is unprecedented. But like those on the computers at the library in the Bronx, we are so constantly plugged in to our iPods and cell phones, Google and Facebook, we rarely find (or make) the time to unplug. We can’t pick up a book and spend time with it, or delve into personal reflection, focused and undistracted. Just as the modern library is no longer conducive to thinking—in-depth, sustained, single-focused, unadulterated thinking—neither are our busy, perpetually connected lives.

It wasn’t always like this. Before we became prisoners to technology, reflection and concentration were much easier. All it would take was a walk in the park, a glass of wine and a book, a drive in the countryside, a visit to the library. Today, exploiting these exercises for quality thought is apparently impossible, at least without Herculean self-discipline. We still take walks, but the world—be it our favorite blog, our friends on Facebook, our favorite music group, the latest news—tags along in our pocket. The moment we sit in our favorite chair to read, the phone rings, or within moments we succumb to the alluring glow of the computer screen or the distinct chirp of a new message or e-mail.

Like the young lost in the din of activity at the modern library, we rarely pause to ponder, to think, to focus singularly and at length on any of the many reflective moments life throws our way. The more we connect, writes William Powers in Hamlet’s Blackberry, the more the nature of everyday life changes. As it becomes more “frantic and rushed,” we lose “something of great value, a way of thinking and moving through time that can be summed up in a single word: depth.

“Depth of thought and feeling, depth in our relationships, our work and everything we do. Since depth is what makes life fulfilling and meaningful, it’s astounding that we’re allowing this to happen” (emphasis mine).

He’s right. Undoubtedly, some have found the transformation of the public library as a place of mental refuge and sustenance into a bustling high-tech social club infuriating. But how many are surveying what’s happening to our public libraries and are alarmed by the deeper, more pervasive psychological phenomenon that it represents? The evolution of the public library into a busy hive of often shallow activity is a direct reflection of a process well underway in our brains.

The Trumpet has a keen interest in exploring and explaining the ongoing transformation of the mind and the way it works. Stay tuned for future articles on this subject. In the meantime, to learn more about the human mind and what a magnificent instrument it is—including the ultimate purpose for its existence—request and study The Incredible Human Potential.