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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.'"
Right, and having a dictionary and thesaurus on my desk in easy reach is stopping me from learning new words.
Die in a fire.
"Never memorize what you can look up in books." - Albert Einstein
As quoted in "Recording the Experience" (10 June 2004) at The Library of Congress
I will not mourn that which I never had to lose. - Unknown
We had to walk up hills and solve complicated equations in the snow to search the internet. And we liked it, it built character.
Get off my lawn.
The "intellectual capacity to store information" and the "ability to think innovatively" are controlled by two completely different cognitive mechanisms.
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.
He noticed a depreciation in memory from writing things down...
It has hurt us SO much
"Search engines(TM) function of providing us with information almost instantly means people are losing their intellectual capacity to store information,
Oh, please. Before we had the internet, we had reference books.
The key to getting things done is not in memorizing sheaves of information but knowing how to look things up and synthesize.
Display some adaptability.
More like how having a spell-checker makes people never learn how to spell most words. And even with a spell-checker then you see them writing "should of" or using a wrong near-homophone (homophone, surprisingly enough, doesn't mean "sounds gay";) like "eat, drink and be marry" because if the spell-checker didn't put a wavy line under a word it must be the right one.
Or like already the use of calculator means a lot of people in the western world are effectively innumerate. They can't actually even tally up whether a 5 Euro bill is enough for two packs of X at 1.99 each and one of something else at 0.95. (And I'm only using Euro as an example because here the VAT is already _included_ in the price, you don't have to calculate how much the VAT would be on top of the price. So really, they just need to add.) Or they can't even notice that a special offer of a six-pack of something at only 5.95 Euro isn't actually an improvement over a price of 0.95 Euro per can otherwise, unless you told them to calculate and they pull out their calculator.
No, I'm serious. There actually are such special offers that sound like you could save a lot, but are actually more expensive per unit/gallon/inch/whatever. And they actually work. Because enough people can't do elementary arithmetic any more, or it ranks up there with anal rape for the kind of force or threat of harm you'd need to use to make them do arithmetic.
We had a good century or so of building up literacy and numeracy... and now it's sliding right back.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The article starts off by talking about taxi drivers, which reminded me of this incident.
This isn't just a software issue; it applies to any tool that has replaced a skill. You could say the same about matches replacing firelighting skills.
We will never be "the same" as we were yesterday. Our great-grandparents probably didn't go to school. Our grandparents probably did but left as early as they could. Our parents almost certainly attended school and got some qualifications. We are required by law to attend school and almost certain will leave with a raft of skills - not a SINGLE one of which will be Latin.
My great-grandparents probably did not have electricity, or bulbs, so they could not study at night without breathing in carcinogens from a fire hazard. My grandparents were evacuated from their education into villages and towns to avoid undirected "batch-dropped" bombs. My parents never saw a computer until they already had children.
Humans do not stay the same. The skills my parents need are different to the ones I need and always will be. I *do not* need to memorise lots of phone numbers because I have multiple SIM cards and online backups that do that for me. I don't even KNOW most of the numbers I dial regularly. My grandparents probably had a 4-digit phone number when they first used one, and barely knew anyone they could phone. My great-grandparents did not have biros to write with, and I don't write with one now (I can't remember the last time I had to write anything down, except on computer!).
Stop complaining about "drastic changes" that the human body or mind has to undergo. It's ALWAYS in flux, my daughter will not learn the same language that I've spent my life learning. If we're talking critical changes, then things like planetary legacies, etc. are infinitely more important than "our children may use a calculator instead of their fingers" or any of the things mentioned in this article.
Humans are a flexible, adaptable, learning machine. That's what makes us so fantastically successful (relatively speaking to other mammals our size). Our brains will automatically adapt to what they need to learn to support modern life. In this case, probably long-term memory will eventually make way for improvisational and logistical skills. That's not a BAD thing.
Just like books destroyed our ability to memorize, slide rules destroyed our ability to calculate, and that newfangled mechanical music technology--what are is it called? yeah, harpsichords--destroyed our ability to sing.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You're just flat out wrong about double negatives. Double negatives in English did not negate each other until the 1700s when people like Samuel Johnson made that rule up out of thin fucking air.
Going back through Shakespeare, Chaucer, and the Old English period repeated negatives are used as intensifiers. This 'double negatives cancel each other out like negative numbers being multiplied' is a fabrication of the 18th century. Chaucer wasn't breaking any rules with his multiple negations.
Moreover, there are a number of languages where multiple negations still function in the same way they did in Old, Middle, and Rennaisance English (including some dialects of Modern English).