Tech wizzes as do low tech parenting?

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Kimio, do you have any facts or studies to back up that people are using their brains less or is this just your impression based on who you hang out with and communciate with?
 
My sense is that they are not using them less, just differently. After all, the move from oral to textual society changed how we use our brains (from storing whole long stories in our heads to putting them into words with some permanence). I suspect that there was probably some suspicion of that new technology as well. The Internet builds on that textual society and expands it with new forms of visual media so it is definitely going to change how we use our brains as well. In all likelihood, there will be both positives and negatives to that change, but I doubt that it will be wholly positive or wholly negative.
 
Besides here? ;) actually, the people I hang out with are generally in the 'in-between' generation, whereby Internet came into our lives after our identities were formed without it and yet the idea of getting used to it wasn't as foreign. We already had ATM machines for a long time, some played video games, we'd been using computers off line a bit, and were starting to use cell phones - but most people i knew weren't really online yet, when we were in our 20's. In between.

I have seen things to suggest our brains, parts of it are being used less - attention spans are shorter, and multitasking is having a negative effect. I'll have to search for those. But, otherwise, just observation. Living downtown where there are a lot of young people constantly 'plugged in' and yet don't seem to know what's going on in the world or they lack depth - but they look fabulous and have cute phone cases and cool laptop bags. I know that's not all of them, so it's not nice to lump them all together, but it is definately noticeable around here. Something, some intelligent quality, or depth, feels like it's going missing from our culture.
 
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You are presuming that the person who was looked at the address lost with their GPS< would have been fine before that.
In fact, they may not have figured out how to get out their front door. Or if, they did, they would have used a set of instructions from a friend, and ended up heading west instead of east, or confused and going right....then standing looking at their paper saying" but they told me to go here..."

sigh, gps helps people doesn't hurt.
 
lol, yes, i know, coz we coz life was so much better before we had invented items such as penicillin.
 
Pinga said:
You are presuming that the person who was looked at the address lost with their GPS< would have been fine before that.
In fact, they may not have figured out how to get out their front door. Or if, they did, they would have used a set of instructions from a friend, and ended up heading west instead of east, or confused and going right....then standing looking at their paper saying" but they told me to go here..."

sigh, gps helps people doesn't hurt.
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It makes people more reliant on tech and less reliant on their own wits and the ability to, let's say, read a map! What's wrong with a map in the glove compartment, anyway? Or, even stopping to ask a real person for directions?
 
Pinga, you have your opinion I have mine. Being intelligent in a few old fashioned ways can't hurt either. Penicillin was a good, but overused, invention. Now we have anti-biotic resistant superbugs.
 
@Pinga you're not going to read the article before responding to me? I have provided some articles that make stronger and more credible points than I can. Yes, I realize that young woman could've just generally been an airhead - but I worry about degradation of aspects of human intellect.
 
Kimmio said:
It makes people more reliant on tech and less reliant on their own wits and the ability to, let's say, read a map!
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Lol, it allows folks who can't read a map the hope of getting to a location. I am quite thankful for mine. I am s**t at maps, and compasses.


Kimmio said:
Pinga, you have your opinion I have mine. Being intelligent in a few old fashioned ways can't hurt either. Penicillin was a good, but overused, invention. Now we have anti-biotic resistant superbugs.
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cozit was so much better when folks died. i"ll tell my husband as a child lost his father to pnemonia . yup, those 50 years of penicillion, and all the ohter meds, we would have been better off without them.
 
kimmio, i can't finish one response, before you open up 5 more.


lol, now, back to the person on the side of the road with the flat tire.
Are they better off if they have a cellphone, than if they had their CB, how about, if they had smoke signals...woudl that be bettter?
 
It'd be better still if they were like my old roommate who knew how to change her own flat tire :) but a phone call (from an old cell or pay phone up the road) to BCAA (or equivalent) used to work. It was an adventure! GPS has it's good uses too if it works - but what I am saying is reliance is the problem - if you are s**t with a map and a compass - practice and get better! (and teach kids the same so they can rely on their wits - this is what I think people like Jobs understood - hence, the OP) I am not fast at it either but i can read a map. Same thing with math. I hate it but i can do basic math in my head, I can split things pretty fast into common fractions - quarters/ halves or thirds - multiply on paper, and round off large numbers for multiplication and division to get a rough idea when I need to. Why not? If it's intellectually impossible for you (which i don't think it is) that's different, but why not try otherwise?
 
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A map in the glovebox doesn't help when there's construction in an area you're not familiar with and you have to decide fast - left or right and picking the wrong one can take quite some time to correct. I've been in that situation with and without a GPS, and I'll pick the GPS.
 
Kimmio, sure, learn that, and become adept at part of training your brain to do complex patterns, but, thne, use the tools at your disposal to take your thinking to the next level.

You first learned how to scribble, then print, then write, then type. You can continue to use all of those options, but, the structures you make become more advanced or just more appropriate. Your toolkit of ways to communciate have now got more options.

You could stick with smoke skignals and voice or you can learn to use the myrial number of tools for what is best for the communciation at hand. I was cautioned not to drive at night for fear the car would break down and I, a young female, would be alone on a country road. With the onset of cb's, and then cellphones, the world became more available. It isn't as simple as learn to change a tire. Having a means to reach out for help significatly changed the experience of driving.

Do you remember chain letters? I sure do. God they were painful.
People have used communication from gossip over the lunch table, to stupid chain letter,s to chain emails.

hand written notes, roa dsigns, caa trip-tiks, gps....

Fools have existed and will exist in every form of interaction available over the years.
Technology isn't bad because some people are fools.
 
Yes 'fools' will exist but like one of the articles alludes to...young people aren't necessarily fools - they don't lack any capacity to learn - but if they are using less of their brains or retain less information during college lectures that encourage laptops vs. those that don't, for example - that is the beginning of a problem trend in learning and what areas of the brain actually are being used. Ie. if we change how we learn we eventually change how we think and what areas we think with.

P.S. my spelling has gotten much worse since I am in such a hurry and online so much. Seriously. And I even ignore spellcheck.
 
ChemGal said:
A map in the glovebox doesn't help when there's construction in an area you're not familiar with and you have to decide fast - left or right and picking the wrong one can take quite some time to correct. I've been in that situation with and without a GPS, and I'll pick the GPS.
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So, then you have to backtrack a bit. Not as big a deal as we make it out to be in our world where we are constantly in a hurry.

One thing I noticed about my mom and step dad, who have the Internet but don't use it much - they share a prepaid cell for emergencies and are generally totally uninterested in tech (my dad is a different story - again, I am in between but have been thinking more about it lately). They move slower. Everything they do is slow. Not intentionally, not for medical reasons, they are educated, very smart - it just is. They are slower. They move at a normal pace for, let's say, the early 80's, not a 2014 pace. I find it really incredibly frustrating to try to slow my brain to their pace sometimes, but they are happier that way and they don't understand why everyone else is in a rush. They haven't had to multitask as much - so they don't!
 
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Kimmio said:
So, then you have to backtrack a bit. Not as big a deal as we make it out to be in our world where we are contantly in a hurry.
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I don't think 2 appointments in one day is all that recent of a thing.
It isn't just time, also gas and the money for the gas.

I don't want to go back in time, start fire by banging 2 rocks together, having no conventional medicine, no controlled heating, etc. What's your cutoff here when it comes to technology?
 
It's not my cutoff. It is just not getting too reliant. As for cut off though, I would say - before we get AI that 'outhinks' us that we rely on to make major decisions for us. No way. Then, we will literally be idiots for doing that, IMO.
 
kimmio, there has been technology that outthinks us since the invention of the old fashioned calculator.
Not everyone can add.
 
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