Slashdot Mirror
Intelligence in the Internet Age
ErikPeterson writes to tell us about an article on News.com that takes a look at technology versus intelligence of the general population. From the article: 'Is technology making us smarter? Or are we lazily reliant on computers, and, well, dumber than we used to be?'
Lazy != Dumb
Smart people will use technology to augment their intelligence. Dumb people will use it to become lazier. And in between there will be mixes of augmentation and lazy reliance. I don't think there's a single answer to this question. I think this has always been true, but technology amplifies this gap.
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
Basically, technology makes us more efficient, which is an assertion that few on slashdot are going to dispute. This means we can either do more with our time, or have more leisure time and look "lazier" to someone without proper context.
During the dawn of agriculture, humans had to work their butts off every day tending to fields or getting ready for the winter or they would die. These days you can work a mere 8 hours a day in a cushy office job and have all of the food and shelter you need. Modern man looks a lot lazer--he only works half as much time wise--but due to technology he's actually contributing more to society than his primitive ancestor.
I read the internet for the articles.
Does that mean he's not as bright as an economist from the 1950s? Is he smarter? The answer is probably "no" on both counts. He traded one skill for another. Computer skills make him far more efficient and allow him to present more accurate--more intelligent--information. And without them, he'd have a tough time doing his job. But drop him into the Federal Reserve 40 years ago, and a lack of skill with the slide rule could put an equal crimp on his career.
Or, on the other side of the ruler, put that same economist from 40 years ago w/his slide rule knowledge into today's world and watch him be as equally worthless.
Computers, the Internet, and the information available to us nearly instantaneously has made us a completely different culture all together. There is no use comparing us to those in the past. It's just not the same... I remember when I was learning about cells and my father said to me, "When I learned about cells we knew of the cell wall and the nucleus. Look at what you have to know." Now students probably don't even have to know that - Google tells them everything they need to know. That doesn't make them dumb - that makes them have room to learn TONS more.
I am honestly looking forward to the day when wireless Internet is combined with Internet mapping software (i.e. GMaps) and an online collaboration. Say goodbye to speed traps (your autorouting will know the locations of the traps and route you around it or warn you to slow down).
The possibilities are endless and the creative factor is incredible!
Aside from the obvious one, spelling, I think the word processor has encouraged at best a different kind of intelligence.
It used to be you had to conceive your entire essay/story/etc., then have each paragraph, and each sentence, held in your head to some extent before you started writing. Think once / write once (edit once) and then type it out. Now you can start a paper/paragraph/sentence with nothing in your short term memory, just kind of roll it out and go back a million times to edit/redu/rethink/rework it until it's all coherent.
Basically, for certain tasks, the more that's stored in the electronic memory the less is (needed to be) stored in your brain.
closed minded is as closed minded does
The truth is that we (humans as a whole) haven't grown progressively smarter or dumber, just we have learned how to get information when needed. just my 2 cents
If it's based on mostly memory specific tasks (like speling, for xampl), then I'd say the information age, with spell checkers and the like do make us 'dumber.'
But if its based on reasoning ability, the information age has probably raised average intelligence. I may not be able to spell, but I can handle many different kinds of systems and adapt to new ones in ways that people 100 years ago probably couldn't. And the fact that I have to constantly learn new tech (how to upgrade this software, how to program my new VCR, etc.) plays into that.
The above post, and others, proves the point that we're "smarter" using computers. But ascribing a quote to someone isn't hard...
What's going to be harder in the future, and can be hard right now, is knowing how to verify and sift through the information you find on the internet. A "smart" person will be the one who can do this, and a "dumb" one is the one who gets their information from a bogus website full of crap.
That would have been a better and more interesting direction for the article to go.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Lazy doesn't mean dumb. Smart people often apply their intelligence to try and automate something so they don't have to do it. Our UNIX admin here at work reworked our new account system. Previously students had to come to the computer room, show their ID, get added, go long in to telnet, run a shitty script that often didn't work, have someone manually create the Windows side of the account,. Now they go to a webpage, enter their university ID, it checks their affiliation, makes and synchs all the accounts, and does so in about 5 seconds.
Now his motivation for this was laziness, basically. He was sick of dealing with a massive rush of students the first week and having to have the whole computing staff bust their ass on meanial shit. So he found an intelligent solution to the problem. This year, the first day was hardly any different from any other.
Lazy, perhaps, not dumb.
Lots of high schools have really bad teachers who basically teach their algebra classes as if they were a "learn to punch things into a calculator but not understand what happens" class. Students don't really have an option as to who their teacher is and even then, some school systems make this type of thing go on uniformly. When people try to go up in higher level college math, they're fucked.
i don't know... i've had bad teachers, and i've had good teachers. I think if a student is really interested in a subject, he or she will find a way to learn it.
algebra is a funny example, becuase the number of people who would put in the effort to learn algebra despite a bad teacher is a small group of people. that's us, the geeks. we like algebra, we think it's pretty. we're a minority.
i think that with the kinds of people we (geeky slashdot people) like to hang out with, and with the kinds of jobs we get, it's easy to get a skewed perspective of how people really think and what they are in to. it's like in college. i went to a small liberal arts college, and i would meet kids all the time who would say stuff like "how do these conservatives get elected? *i* don't know anyone who would vote for them"... well... there's a big america out there that i just don't like to be in touch with...
the same is true for technology... when we invented calculators, people who would never have leared math in the first place could now do it... that didn't stop anybody who would have learned it anyway from still learning how it's done
The problem is though that the idiots usually manage to reproduce before they knock themselves off, so hoping Darwin will save you won't get you anywhere.
This is the geeks misunderstanding of natural selection - intellectuals love evolution because they think their superior brains will win in the end. This works in the work world to some extent, but on a species scale it's different.
The reality as far as evolution goes (and remember that evolution works on a macro scale, not in your lifetime or the foreseeable future) is that stupid people are at a distinct advantage. While intellectuals tend to have two or one children, the stupid masses are going at it like rabbits. Intelligent are at a selective disadvantage, because we don't pass our genes on as often as the trailer trash chicks that drop out of school by the time they are pregnant at 14 and have 8 kids by their 30th birthday.
*They* are the evolutionary giants, not us. We live side by side now, but when society breaks down in a few hundred years or whatever, the billions of big dumb kids will finish us off very quickly.
Of course, it's even less of an issue for most /.ers, because sitting at home by yourself with your 20 gig porn collection isn't gonna pass your genes on to anything but your keyboard...
All available data suggest that regardless of any of this, the sun will still come up tomorrow.