A father recently asked his teenage son for someone’s phone number. The boy had called the number dozens of times and yet, he could not remember it offhand. He said he had to “go look at his phone” since it was stored in there. When asked why he could not remember a number that he has called dozens of times, the young man replied, “why would I need to remember it myself when my phone does it for me?” A typical thought response from a typical technologically-reliant teen. And let’s talk about texting. Everyone is doing it, including adults. It is an easy convenient way to send messages to one another and it is cheaper than a phone call.
That is if you use it correctly. We have all seen the clever TV ads, which show a teenage girl and her mom (and even her Grandmother) talking in text; they are saying things like ”idk” (I don’t know) and “omg” (oh my Gosh) and “lol” (laugh out loud). Technology makes it so easy for anyone of us to take shortcuts. Even most word processing documents on computers have “spellcheck.” In the good ole’ days, we actually had to go find the dictionary and look up the word to know how to spell it correctly; an extra step that really made us work harder and think- even if it was just a little bit more. And let’s not forget about the ever-impressive Google search engine. Google is the little tool that makes us feel a whole lot smarter than we really are. People everywhere are becoming “Google Smart,” and The Gorilla himself admits that he sometimes feels helpless without it.
So with all of this technology; cell phones; Blackberrys; computers; the question is: Does technology help or hurt? If kids aren’t regularly accessing the memory centers of their brains to remember things such as phone numbers, and they are relying on shortcuts for spelling, important dates, or phone numbers, then what do we have to look forward to for the next generation of kids? Will we have a bunch of tech-dependent dummies walking around running the planet? After all, if these kids can’t even remember a couple of phone numbers, what kind of expectations should we have?
Cell phones can store up to 500 phone numbers or more. Blackberrys can remember appointments and birthdays so why do we have to? Though, we must admit, it is great to constantly have these mental plug-ins at our fingertips, should we worry that we may become mentally crippled if our technology is suddenly out of reach? Now the Gorilla isn’t saying that this kind of silicon uploading to our brain is a bad thing, but there must be something said for learning about history through reading a book from cover to cover. All of that time taken to read may seem consuming and inconvenient yet, it is like slowly marinating a steak, only the steak is our brain. Suddenly the brain is fully aware of facts and stories, and can recall- all by itself- dates and names and yes, even numbers. Imagine that! So yes, let’s have our tech-buzz with a side of convenience, but hey why not throw in some good old fashioned books, the art of actually hand writing a letter, and the use of a dictionary from time to time? Oh poor Encyclopedia Britanica! Where are they now?
March 18th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Why spend energy memorizing something when it is far more efficient to learn how to find that information quickly? The amount of information we are able to use is then exponentially (or even logarithmically!) larger. It’s an efficient and intelligent approach to memory and learning.
The suggestion that our brains would suffer from not being used in a certain way is important. Undoubtedly people’s minds will process the world differently if used in different ways. This isn’t inherently good or bad though. New perspectives will provide new approaches and new ways of understanding. The brain functions released may be employed in new ways, perhaps in more critical or synthetic (as in synthesizing new stuff) ways.
March 31st, 2008 at 8:46 pm
I won’t say how old I am, but I’ve been in the computer business for 25+ years. When I was in college, the precious computer terminals were reserved for math and engineering (which I was) students. The terminals could only operate a few hours a day, because they were such a drain on the colleges’ IBM 370, that nothing else could run. I was an early adopter of just about everything tech you can imagine, and I have logged more hours in front of a computer screen than I can possibly count. I am the extreme case, like the rats they feed overdoses to. According to some ‘pundits’, I should have brain cancer, carpal tunnel syndrome, and a host of other debilitating ailments, but I am in the best health of my life. Technology, like food, is only bad if you mis-use it. If a massive electromagnetic pulse from a solar flare destroys all the worlds computers and cell phones, we’ll just build more, and we’ll get along fine while were doing it, once again creatinjg a vibrant and thriving technology industry, in my humble opinion.