Is Tech Making Us Stupid?
Our
gadgets auto-complete, remember for us, and think for us. What’s to become of
our brains?
THE ABOVE statements have been
pouring in from scientific studies across the world. This is their essential
premise: that multitasking between emails, Facebook, Twitter, TV, mobile
phones, tablets and gaming consoles have made us perpetually distracted and a
scatter-brained race. Not only is the new era of information technology making
us less creative and more muddled – it’s put into place a permanent change in
the way our brain maps information, how it retains it, which parts are used how
and even the size of the brain is going through a metamorphosis. Very scary,
right? Wait, there’s more.
Hypertext
(clickable links) has made sure that most of us cannot read a single paragraph
without wandering off topic in a completely different direction.
SHALLOW AND FRIED
The first news of this came when a
series of articles and a book was released by Nicholas Carr. His argument was
that ever since the advent of the Internet, we as a human race have been
becoming more stupid. His book ( The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the
Way We Think, Read and Remember) made some very compelling points. Taking
himself to be the guinea pig, Carr said that over the last few years the way he
read and absorbed books was completely changing. He said, “I was losing my own
capacity for concentration and contemplation. Even when I was away from my
computer, my mind seemed hungry for constant stimulation, for quick hits of
information. I felt perpetually distracted.”
Carr’s theory found many followers.
A huge number of them agreed and said that the way they were thinking, reading,
absorbing and learning was becoming disjointed. Every part of knowledge
assimilated was not absorbed into the brain but kept at an arm’s distance on a
computer. Some of his findings were startling:
People who are continually
distracted by emails, updates and other messages understand less than those who
are able to concentrate on one thing.
People who juggle tasks are often
less creative and productive than those who do one thing at a time.
As the number of links in an online
document goes up, reading comprehension falls.
As more types of information are
placed on a screen, we remember less of what we see.
The richness of our thoughts,
memories and our personalities hinges on our ability to focus the mind and
sustain concentration. When we’re constantly distracted and interrupted, our
brains can’t forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give
distinctiveness and depth to our thinking. When we have to juggle between
mobiles, computer screens and emails, our thoughts become disjointed, our
memories weak.
And while Carr was criticised for
concentrating mainly on the written word, his books,
articles and conclusions struck a
chord with tech users across the world.
THE DUMB-ASS GENERATION
Once this all-new thought process
was introduced and accepted, the floodgates were open. Studies showed that
people who were given a computer to solve a problem could not retain the
problem-solving skills they had used a week earlier, while the same skills used
without a computer were recalled by users even after six months. Another study
showed that children introduced to computers started scoring lower grades. In
fact, if you Google this subject right now, you will get thousands of articles
and studies that prove with precision how technology is neurologically shaping
us to become more stupid in the future.
The greatest scare that is out there
is that the digital generation, children born in the last 10 years, will have reduced
metal abilities as they grow up. They’ll be adults with brains that jump all
over the place, ninnies with the memory retention of a goldfish, with brains
that have shrunk to the size of a pea. They won’t be able to sit still for
long, concentrate or come up with creative innovations and ideas. New thinking,
innovation and creativity in this world as we know it is likely to die in the
next 50 years!
What exactly is going on here?
Wasn’t technology, the Net, Google and all other tools supposed to make us
smarter? Wasn’t the fact that we now have reams of information supposed to
kickstart a new creative and innovative process? Weren’t we going to be a
smarter race due to technology? When did the process reverse?
THE SMART TRUTH
It hasn’t reversed. We aren’t
becoming more stupid. Technology isn’t the villain here. Innovation and
creativity won’t die a brutal death. We are just evolving as human beings
always have. For years, the human brain and the way it functions has remained
almost the same. The human brain today is very different from the time man was
a huntergatherer, but for many years since civilisation it has stagnated. This
is the first hardcore reboot of the human mind in a very long time.
The change that seems to have got
the critics in a knot, is actually us preparing for a brand new world. A world
where the brain doesn’t need to process useless information. What is the use of
your brain storing 40 mobile numbers? Whom does it help? Isn’t your mobile
phone directory with 1,000 numbers, email addresses, birthday dates and notes
about each person a far better and more efficient system to record numbers and
dates? It’s freed up your mind to understand and remember better ways of
retrieving that massive set of information. Your brain now knows better ways to
search and use all that data you’ve kept. It’s the same with our new technique
of ‘skimming’ information. Today we can scan a web page and make sense of 90
per cent of the content within the first five seconds. Only if it’s what we
were looking for do we remain on the page – otherwise off we go to the next one
till we find the exact and precise piece we were looking for. How is that bad?
The ability to skim and reach a conclusion so quickly is proof the human brain
evolving to the next level.
SEE THE BRIGHT SIDE
Then there’s the fact that
information overload has a high threshold. Many have been able to make it to
the other side as more evolved beings – with the ability to filter redundant
information from the true hidden gems. In this way they get the best of both
worlds – lots of information and high quality knowledge. Of course, the classic
debate of the printed page versus the Internet page will continue. Who is to
say that reading a page printed on paper slowly and with full concentration versus
reading many pages on the Net by jumping to many pieces of content on the same
subject is more superior?
Maybe the hyper jumping is
triggering an all-new level of intelligence that will show its true colours in
some years. A new intelligence that may give birth to innovation and inventions
at an unprecedented scale.
Technology has always been painted a
villain too soon. There’s that famous saying that technology always comes
bearing great gifts with one hand and stabs you in the back with the other.
This time it doesn’t apply. Technology and the information highway is the
greatest gift to mankind. True solid proof of that will show up soon. But if it
doesn’t happen, don’t blame me! After all this column is being written by
somebody who uses technology and the Internet 16 hours a day. You can’t blame
somebody who is progressively becoming more stupid every single day.
RAJIV MAKHNI HTBR120826
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