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How Good Software Makes Us Stupid
siliconbits writes "The BBC has an interesting article about how ever improving software damages our ability to think innovatively. 'Search engines' function of providing us with information almost instantly means people are losing their intellectual capacity to store information, Nicolas Carr said.' This sadly convinced some journos to come up with wildfire titles such as 'Google damages users' brains, author claims.'"
Quote: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" ( http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/09/1332252 )
In a way, this also gives a hint on how to explain the Dupe-Phenomenon.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Not sure if TFA is accurate or not, but I do know that my research skills have vastly improved since the Internet became a daily part of my life (I'm 26). This isn't just because there is more information available...I mean I am able to sift through the crap and find what I'm looking for much quicker than I used to.
That's worth something...right?
Living With a Nerd
I sat down the other day to watch a movie and was actually paralyzed with too many choices. I have blu-rays, DVD's, Netflix streaming, Hulu, YouTube, hundreds of cable channels (including many on-demand), and about a zillion other ways to watch TV and movies. But lately, this has become too much. I'm beginning to feel like I have *too much* choice (something I never would have thought possible). Back in the day, my choice was pretty limited. I would go into the local video store and maybe discover something special or just rent a blockbuster--whatever. Now I have a sea of possibilities and it's overwhelming.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What would you have whined about had you lived two centuries ago before English had standardized spelling? Or had you lived in China two thousand years ago, would you wail of the abacus making people unable to cipher?
Like any tool it all depends on how you use it. After I got a mac my spelling actually IMPROVED thanks to the real time spell checker built in to all applications*(ok, Cocoa applications). I could actually see my spelling errors real time and have been able to pinpoint words I frequently spell incorrectly and now I would say my spelling is better than ever before. Back in the stone age when I actually just wrote shit down I basically got 0 feedback and thus my spelling became atrocious(which I initially spelled with two ts, so obviously room for improvement :P).
:P People were complaining about this for years, well before such devices became ubiquitous. For instance I remember ALL the way back to 1990 there being this huge banner on the side of a store selling something for $2.50 or 2 for $5! What a deal!
As for effect calculators/computers are having on numeracy, I think you must have a very short memory
Monstar L
Now, in addition to thinking random thoughts (which the mind/brain tends to do), I can read up and learn about on these subjects which earlier used to be just thoughts, and in that sense it makes me more learned.
What this encourages though, is a more unsteady thought pattern, with related and seemingly 'random' web searches about this thought stream.
I'm considering taking up meditation to encourage a 'calmer' mind that doesn't jump around as much between thoughts.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The sad fact is that making something convenient *does* impact people's ability to use less convenient methods. That can be a problem when the less convenient method is unavailable, or has other benefits. With respect to the first point, there's a lot of information that hasn't made its way into Google yet - e.g. legal case histories, medical records, lots of historical archive material. Some of that information is subject to privacy concerns and should *never* be on Google or Wikipedia. If you want to use those sources effectively, you have to develop skills like using the local classification system (e.g. Dewey/LoC or domain-specific) and indexing methods, skimming pages quickly to sort out the wheat from the chaff, etc. You get better by doing, and if what you've been doing is honing your Google skills instead then you simply will be less productive in these other environments than someone who is used to them. S2BU if that turns out to be part of your job, and you might be surprised how often it is.
With respect to the second point, I'll give another example. One of my work-study jobs in college was to develop a bibliography on African education. One of the critical skills in that job was to read the bibliography in one book to find other titles and authors, but that's more to the previous point. The other thing that really helped was to go to the shelves to find one book I knew about, and then *look around* to find others that might be of interest. Try that on Google. The kind of search they offer is too focused, or perhaps not focused properly, to allow that kind of browsing. I get the same experience every time I use an old-fashioned paper encyclopedia; I find all sorts of other information "along the way" that's utterly useless in my current search but more often than not comes in handy - even if it's only as a conversational gambit - some other time. Those are secondary benefits that I don't get by using the major online sources, though I get some by wandering through low-profile blogs and other sites. To the extent that some people never stray more than a link or two away from Google (or Slashdot), that's a loss and it's sad.
The web can broaden our horizons (TBL's initial vision) or narrow them. Sadly, the current directions we're taking tend more toward the latter.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
I've been working around this business for most of my adult life, going from phone jockey to the guy who wrote the manuals to the IT dept. To be brutally honest, a lot (though certainly not all) of that has less to do with people getting lazy about their job and more about employers dumbing down training and automating so much of the troubleshooting process so they can hire any idiot off the street. Soon you have a floor full of idiots and management can't be happier. Pay rates drop, distension disappears because you have made the use of critical thinking skills a punishable offense and the higher levels egos get rubbed because they are now the smartest minds in the building.
Finally quality drops and the training dept begins to yet again lower standards. Wash, rinse and repeat. In the end you have a room full of shivering, gibbering, shit producing bio-IVRs who are too afraid that they will get canned for saying anything other than the text they see on the screen.
you only need to follow a few simple rules to increase your profit and maintain market share:
- embrace extend and re-market, or extinguish
- patent the crap out of everything; sue for infringement
- sue competition to bankrupt them
- lock-in with EULA, lock-down with DMCA
- implement proprietary systems for everything; interoperability to be limited or broken
- collect demographic info for targeted marketing or sales
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Sorry for the long answer to a fairly obvious statement, but it's written, and it's going out:
True, but to me there is a difference between memorizing (learning verbatim/rote) and just remembering something useful. I haven't memorized the size of the known universe, I just remember it. I didn't memorize the size of bears, I just remember it - and when I go to use something I haven't recalled in a while I may notice that it is a little foggy. I can place bounds on the values and possibly remember specific values after dredging it from the depths of memory, but I can definitely recognize the need for a refresh.
Anyway, the more you have to look something up, the better you will remember it. If it's something that you need to use frequently, your recollection of it it will become more and more solid with every lookup - though if it is complex enough, you will likely notice that it is hard to remember, and keep the reference extremely handy.
The ability to *use* knowldege[sic] has nothing to do with knowing it.
? ?
Only if by " *use* " you mean blindly applying canned "solutions" built by others.
However, that is not the type of use of knowledge that the GP was discussing.
Not at all. That, in my mind, is just another form of a 'ritual activity'. ( rote memorization or rote application, etc ) It's when you truly know how to think, to identify the real problem at hand ( not always apparent ) and plan an appropriate long and short term solution to the problem. You can search for operational characteristics of various technologies, consult with those that know it like the back of their hand then put the bid out for the path you have chosen.
In this scenario being "on the ground" and "knowing the technology" Will place you in the wrong pay bracket. It may seem sad to be paid more for knowing less, But you're really being paid more to think well, because that's a much rarer skill.
Now this is only one example, as search engines have many more facets to their paradigm. I for one, don't want to memorize phone books to find a realtor, or memorize every publication that critiques cuisine to find a good restaurant.
Also, Almost everyone confuses knowledge with intelligence. They are two distinct entities. Knowledge will amplify intelligence, but you don't need to know every thing in order to be highly effectual. Perhaps a degradation, if it's real, is just another example of evolution?
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.