outsourcing our brains*
Welcome to the information age where knowledge is abundant and accessible. GPS devices replace maps and directions. Cell phones abolish the need for recalling phone numbers or writing them down on slips of paper. Itunes helps you organize your music and figure out what your musical tastes are while Facebook allows you to remember who your friends are and what they’re up to.
Until that moment, I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.
We’re so eager to implement the latest technology to solve our problems, that we forget the use of computers often diminishes our own cognitive abilities. Doctors come to rely too much MRI scans, and their diagnosis skills grow rusty. Our memories grow weak as we can google the texts in books and search for the latest trivia answers. And apparently, a third of people under thirty can’t remember their phone numbers.
Our infatuation with technology is spreading. We’re excited about the potential of giving laptops to third world countries in order to help improve education, and connect children to the rest of the world. Though many are hopeful about the changes that these laptops may bring, and I do applaud the people involved who have forsaken higher salaries in order to try to positively impact the world, I find it strange that we’re doing this while studies and commentary are coming out that show that technology doesn’t really enhance education.**
So before we continue on our high and noble quest to turn the rest of the world into a spitting image of ourselves, let us remember what we lose with all that we gain. In the period of colonialism, cultural and political dominance was conducted in the name of Christianity. Perhaps today, we are conducting cultural and economic dominance in the name of “development” and “poverty alleviation”.
Meanwhile, on this side of the globe, we continue to carry around more electronic gadgets, and Google continues to learn more about us than we could ever know about ourselves. David Brooks notes:
Now, you may wonder if in the process of outsourcing my thinking I am losing my individuality. Not so. My preferences are more narrow and individualistic than ever. It’s merely my autonomy that I’m losing.
Perhaps the disappearance of agency*** is the biggest cost of our postmodern information age:
though knowledge is vast and abundant, understanding has become a lost art
though our identities are distinct, unique and express, our lives still fail to have meaning
* Title taken from Brooks’ article. I can’t take credit for it.
** Unplugged schools is an interesting reflection on the role of education and technology in America.
*** Arguably, I could list many other costs that may also be conferred the honor of being the “biggest loss”: authenticity, community, Meaning, Answers with capital letters
**** Speaking of loss of agency, there’s a fear that one day people will believe that they’re not responsible for things that their brain made them do!
1 comments:
While I completely agree with the gist of your commentary and the highlighted points from Mr. Brooks, I'd say that technology is merely the crutch propping up some very bad societal habits.
Technology has indeed replaced slips of paper, but only insofar as we cannot carry a forest around in our pockets or briefcases. The concept of understanding has indeed given way to nearly instant availability of knowledge, as one can Google the answer to almost anything. The problem is that we have nearly 2 generations of adults who have been taught that rote knowledge is more valuable than understanding. Under pressure to make sure students are equipped and at the same time get the type of results that make parents look good at dinner parties, educators are pushing knowledge that can be regurgitated, rather than frameworks and concepts that require logic, critical thinking, and decision making skills. For the past 25 years, these skills have been primarily relegated to the "gifted" students.
Ironically, what we need is more understanding. Parents need to understand that true conceptual understanding may produce the same sort of A grades they would like. Educators need to be freed to stop pandering to parents and a government that are only interested in quantitative results that can be measured in GPAs and letter grades, and students need to be made aware that studying a subject and not remembering anything about it a month afterwards is a useless waste of time. Otherwise we will continue to continue to build a society with degrading neural pathways whose schools hand them the most culturally significant toilet paper the world has ever seen.
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