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Are Computers Stealing Your Memory?
alangmead writes: "According to this article in the Sunday Times an increasing number of
people in their twenties and thirties are suffering from severe memory loss. Doctors blame this problem on their over relience on PDAs and computers for holding information for them. As one doctor succinctly put it, 'Young people today are becoming stupid.' I know that I rely heavily on PDAs for keeping track of things for me, but it was because I was already forgetting things. Maybe my decision to use them is rather short sighted."
siri
Wow, I'm inclined to trust a doctor's opinion who equates memory loss with stupidity.
Perhaps this is a sign of a greater shift in importance from pure memory to analytical skills. The teaching world seems by and large to have followed that.
I'm taking a math class right now and having a hard time because the prof seems to have put such a high emphasis on memorization. However, working as a programmer in lots of different environments and rapidly changing technologies, i've found that my capacity for research has helped me far more than my memory.
Too much info == not enough time to process it. The younger you are, the more info is thrown at you, and the better you get at processing it, but the less time you have to spend memorizing any of it. Information is commoditizing, and consequently becoming less valuable intrinsically as consituent parts. Those who can make sense of it in a larger view do well, and those who hang onto it will find themselves with that info and not much else when that info is no longer valid.
just my blog and pix
Please, using a PDA is no different than telling your secretary to remind you of your appointments for the day, or keeping numbers in a rolodex, or even having your secretary keep numbers in a rolodex. "Ms. Smith, please get Mr. Brown on the phone". I'm sure any programmer with a PDA can remember the syntax of all the commonly used C commands, regardless of whether they know their mother's phone number. I think that's a much more impressive feat of memory.
However, there is some relevance here. As we rely more on technology, we become more interested in things getting done, and not how they get done. For instance, many grade schools now allow calculators to be used in grade 2 to add and subtract. Only a couple lessons are spent on multiplying or division, and then it's simply plugged into the calculators. What this results in is that students get their homework done faster, and with fewer calculation mistakes, but they have NO idea why it works. When these same students hit calculus, algebra, etc, they become lost, because they don't have the basic mathematical foundations to understand the more complex ones -- they just know the calculator can do it. Society ends up with people pulling out a pocket calculator to figure out how much the tax on their big mac meal is going to be because they can't add 5% in their heads. This ignorance simply perpetuates itself. Instead of understanding how a mathematical simulation of a complex model works, it's taken for granted that some programmer correctly entered the formula they were handed. The answer pops up, it looks right, so we continue on, and then boom, a nuclear bomb goes off in Iowa.
Someone with solid basic math skills could probably make a killing by adding an extra percent to grocery, restraunt, or shopping bills, because just about anybody who checked their bills wouldn't have a clue that they were being overcharged.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
As I became a computer geek I went from remembering books worth of information in my head to keeping a rough draft of many many more types of information in my head along with knowledge of how to find the details when needed. So it may seem I remember fewer things but really it is just a memory management technique. For me I can't completely work when you take away the Net because it's became a part of my mind. Eventually I suppose enough people will evolve around the Net that it'll have a direct hack to the Net directly into the human body. Every step closer takes us that way. Mainframe to desktop to laptop to PDA etc. It gives intelligent people great flexibility to be able to only remember what they must and to store the details somewhere else. Anyone can be reasonably expert in anything if they learn how to look up the information on demand and understand how it goes together.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I am glad that today I'm taught how to think instead of what to think. Maybe you're thinking of church instead of school? I don't know, but I learn what to think by myself. Nobody tells me. I am just taught the basics of how to solve a problem, then I must piece the puzzle together myself. I can't always have a teacher standing by my side when a problem comes up that I have never seen before. If I learn to just "do" a specific problem, then I will never be able to do a different problem, even if the concepts behind the two are related. I must learn the concepts first so that I can apply them to any problem.
Strict memorization is not the key to anything, besides getting an "A" on your test or quiz. You may be able to recall the information that day, but what about the next day? Or the next year? I doubt you could recall it. What is important today is application. You don't learn what 2 + 2 is. You learn how to get your answer. Of course, one doesn't have to ask themselves "ok, I have two, and I have to add two to it, what do I have now?" After applying the concept of addition over and over to the same problem you naturally remember the answer. This is the best way, by far, to learn--not only in math, but any subject.
However, if you don't know what an answer is, you learn where you can find it. It is so much more important today to know where you can find an answer if you don't know it, since there is so much more information today. It's more important to learn "how to get an answer" than "the answer." That's why teachers in math, physics, etc. give credit to incorrect answers. It's the correct steps to getting to an answer that are more important. Not the answer itself.
You had to learn how to recall trivial things, because it was the only way to survive and prosper. The best minds of my day were like that.
That doesn't work today, unless you plan on going on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Application today is the key. Not the recollection of pointless facts.
You have to give them rigid rules and test them on their grasp thereof.
I took one of those today. They are called quizes. I have another one tomorrow. It's called a test.
You can't teach a whole generation to drive society by encouraging them to feel about driving. You have to give them rigid rules and test them on their grasp thereof. And if they don't conform, then you make them conform.
You add 2 + 2 and you get 4. Hypothetically, let's say that when I see 2 + 2 I had 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. I did it differently than your way, which is the "normal" method, but am I wrong? By your standards I am.
What's needed is a better combination of the two methods. We should insist that our children learn both what and how to think. Only that way can we insure that the new generations can learn from my generation's mistakes and fulfill our promises of greatness.
So in Literature class, we should teach students that one work sucks just because, but this other one doesn't instead of explaining why it is such a good work and how to distinguish them from others that are not?
So, to summarize everything here, school today is not about remembering answers. It's how to get answers to infinite amounts of problems. There is only so much that you can remember. There is no limit on the application of concepts. Now there is something you can remember. So do it.
I have no idea what my social security number [...] is
Translation: I have not gone to college.
Well, at least you got this part almost right:
>Kids are being taught how to think, instead of what to think, out of some liberal notion that we shouldn't make their beliefs conform to our own experienced ones.
Though to be completely correct, it would be "some liberal notion that understanding logic, reasoning, and how to do your own research is more important than being able to recite 'facts' that someone else presents to you".
Having attended schools that were on opposite extremes of this -- a state school (where everything was "fact", "skill and drill"), and Caltech, where, everything very heavily emphasized understanding basic principles, I can say with some experience that "skill and drill", and memorizing "facts" is a total crock.
The "tough" problems at the state school were the ones where they used variable "x", instead of variable "z" (like in the book). This would complete mystify most of the class, because they'd "learned" to recite "facts", instead of understanding principles. At Caltech, after having one problem during the term emphasizing a basic principle, you'd be expected to be able to apply that principle to novel problems for the rest of the course. You were never expect to regurgitate it as some "fact".
There are volumes of research, now, backing this. Not only do more comprehensive teaching techniques produce students that are better able to apply their knowledge to novel problems, it turns out they also enjoy it much more, and are more interested in pursuing education.
Example: I have no idea what my social security number, blood type or insurer is. If I was ever in an accident, I'd be good as dead. However, that seems unlikely since I'm inside all day playing Counter-Strike, of which I've memorized every inch of every stage, the cost of each gun and ammo type, and the IP address of my favorite servers. My memory is now commited to useful things.
Given a reasonably level playing field, who would win a fight between a bear and a shark?
Remember Sean Connery as Indiana Jones' father in the most recent movie? Indiana asks him something, Dad says it's in his diary and he doesn't know, Indiana disbelievingly asks him if he can't remember, Dad summons up his dignity and replies, "I wrote it down so that I wouldn't have to remember."
Or my favorite quote from Alan Turing (paraphrased): Programming should always be exciting, because as soon as something becomes boring or repetitive, it should be turned over to the machine.
I've automated so many of my sysadmin duties that I can't remember how to do them manually anymore. :-) Frees up more time for programming.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)