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Do Gadgets Degrade Our Common Sense?
ShelleyPortet writes "In a world where gadgets are growing more sophisticated, human behavior is changing — and not in a good way. That is what Robert Vamosi, author of When Gadgets Betray Us argues in his book, which examines the dangers of our growing dependence on technology. As gadgets develop the ability to multitask seemingly endless functions, Vamosi argues that people are increasingly unable to think for themselves. 'Instead of lifting our heads, looking around and thinking for ourselves,' Vamosi writes, some of us no longer see the world as human beings have for thousands of years and simply accept whatever our gadgets show us."
some of us no longer see the world as human beings have for thousands of years and simply accept whatever our gadgets show us
And how did the human beings see the world before? Yes, only the area they lived on. The culture, and the religion. They heard and saw what dictators, politicians and religious persons told them. It was a very far off from the reality and it still shows today with religion. I rather hear things from everyday people. Theres a lot of information and knowledge that would never come out of "official" channels. Or with todays technology I can travel the world myself and see those things. Yes, some people will never use that opportunity. But at least now it's possible for everyone and everyone can make their own decisions instead of some religion telling you what to do.
Yes, I've traveled to Asia and even had sex with shemales there. I'm thinking of marrying an asian woman, which seems to be a problem for the religious types in my family tree but not for anyone else. And that would had been completely out of possibility in communitys where religion tells you it's "immoral" to have sex before marriage, or hell, make all of their women wear clothes that can't even show their faces. Gadgets, internet and the technology in general has allowed me too see different parts of the world myself, and hear things from a lot of different kinds of people. It has also opened my mind and made me question the stupidity that religion is and like this article tries to imply, controlling information so that only a few persons can express their opinion.
The point is, most people didn't think on their before either. They followed what someone else in power told them - be that their parents, religion or their country. Now there's at least the possibility to choose.
Death by GPS was the first example that came to mind.
They just broadcast it to the world now and make it very obvious.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
that I'm on of the people that gets to decide what the gadgets show.
sent from my iphone
Maybe some people are getting mentally 'lazy'. I guess they could have said the same thing about all of the technology developed during the industrial revolution. I know that I'm certainly less apt to cut my grass "by hand" now that I have a nice power mower ... and that car sure comes in hand when I don't feel like carrying stuff home from the store.
While I agree with this premise... Those of us that are working on these gadgets are learning more than ever before. So while some people are getting dumber, some of us are increasing our intelligence.
oooor.... we can maintain our intelligence, be educated (as in learn how to think rationally, not be indoctrinated), be reasonable, and use these tools to augment our natural intelligence do things that weren't possible 50 or 100 years ago.
it's up to each person to do this for themselves. complaining that "people can't think for themselves" doesn't really get you anywhere.
I'm more afraid of the filter bubbles. Information on the web is increasingly filtered for you, without you knowing it, or being able to control it.
See this TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
And the ancient Egyptians no doubt said the same when someone invented papyrus -- "kids these days don't know how to memorize things".
Bah. Not memorizing long winded tales leaves brain storage to remember other things, and papyrus memories don't suffer from the same bitrot as human memories. But those ancient old fogies didn't consider that any more than modern old fogies don't consider the advantages of new tech.
Infuriate left and right
Fundamental laws of physics:
1. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
2. Energy and momentum are conserved.
3. Every new technology must have an article by somebody talking about how it's going to ruin everything.
Evidence for #3 has been tested as far back as Socrates and Plato. I have no doubt that at least some cave paintings are really an editorial about how fire is going to end the species: with fire to keep us warm, who is ever going to have sex again?
If the point of the article is to say, "Don't be an idiot"... did you really need to spread that advice over five page views?
Does anyone have a podcast or ebook version of this article, I'm very interested in this topic.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
You practice a skill. Then a tool comes along and you no longer have to practice. When the tool breaks you are no longer able to do the said skill by hand as well as you could before the tool came along.
I think the TFA is a tool.
Its the law of consumerism. You need it, must have it, now find an excuse to get it.
One thing that I wonder about is how medical technology will affect the human genome. For example, in earlier centuries, women with narrow birth canals, and their babies, frequently died in childbirth. Now, the lives of such women (and their babies) are saved via Cesarian section, and the selection pressure against genetic variations (mutations) that produce narrow birth canals has been reduced. In future generations, how much effect will this have on the anatomy of the average woman? After ten, or fifty, or five hundred generations, might we be in a situation in which childbirth without Cesarian section is no longer possible?
Learning to read and write completely destroyed our ability to remember things. I'd still call the invention of literacy a net positive.
that never existed in the first place
"some of us no longer see the world as human beings have for thousands of years and simply accept whatever our gadgets show us"
LOL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_blind_leading_the_blind
certain people have always blindly accepted what was in front of them, and certain other people looked around and challenged their own assumptions. the proportion between these classes of people is innate, a random spread, a constant of the human condition. so it always was, so it is, so it always will be
technology is not changing essential human nature
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Prior to the advent of the communication age, the only way to disseminate information was for other people to tell you that information. Now it's people telling you that information through gadgets. I don't think Facebook is significantly different from gossiping at the village well or the office water cooler.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Again?
No it isn't, and that comes from the logical fallacy that you aren't enjoying life if you aren't out in the real world.
"Convenience can cause vulnerabilities"
No shit. Security is, and always has been, about a balance between Convenience and safety. The balance move, can be changed with money, but it's there.
I can make you car 99.99999 % thief proof... but it would be damn inconvenient to get to.
The whole article is a FUD generator to sell a book.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Blah blah technology is evil blah blah. This generation clearly is suffering from blah blah more than any other. Humanity is in danger blah blah.
My favorite part is the end:
So no need to throw your iPhone off a cliff - just yet.
What are we supposed to take away from this? Let's all be unspecifically fearful of future technology.
KARMA WHORE /KARMA WHORE
printable version
Help I'm a rock.
"people are increasingly unable to think for themselves"
*looks back at history* oh wait
Wasn't it Aristotle or one of the other great Greek thinkers who complained that writing things down was eroding society and people's capacity to be fully fledged thinking beings?
Haven't humans always blamed new technologies and new ways from eroding our abilities, don't people always look back to a mythical Golden Age? (which invariably seems to be set at two generations ago...)
My gadgets need these!
Well, imagine all those ads on one page. Nope, that wouldn't do at all.
They were very close on that one!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I don't think people are losing common sense. I think that new technology enables people who never had common sense to try to accomplish things that they wouldn't have even tried before.
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
"Any sufficiently advanced technology cannot be distinguished from magic." Unfortunately, it doesn't take much.
It is with great pleasure that I read the learned words of this amiable scholar, Mr. Vamosi. It is thus prooved that the Gadgette may be more of a threate to the mind of our Republice than the gallopping steamship or railroad loco-motive. Tell me, in what respect may the Gadgette hope to improve upon the brain given us by our creator? Did He make our human brains to be cleverer than himself, and master over Him? If ye say "No," then how can ye say that we are then so wise and skillful as to make a Gadgette to be clever than ourselves and master over us? This is as ridiculous as the old familiar question: "Can our Lord and Creator microwave a Burrito so scaldingly hot that even He Himself cannot taste of it?" Nay, presume not that the creator (whether our Heavenly master or our own intellect) can ever be led by his creation into any realm except that of the Doomed Abyss. Thus, Gentlemen of the Republice, cast ye Gadgettes into the sea -- lest they hang about they neck as a great millstone -- and drag ye down to the depths!!
I don't think it's gadgets degrading common sense, it's our physiology working against us; the human body really doesn't do more than it has to. If you don't use muscle it goes away, if you drink too much coffee you're basically dysfunctional before your first cup of the day, I don't remember half as many phone numbers as I used to since I stated carrying an address book, etc. Those gadgets just provide a gateway for our minds and bodies to seek the path of least resistance.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Stupid people used to die young before they had raised off-spring. Break a leg due to stupidity before germ theory and penicillin and that could be it for you. This meant that not only did nature "select" for "common sense", it gave incentives to those with poor common sense to learn those important life lessons. These days you can be an absolute moron with no ability to understand personal responsibility and have access to amazing health care for free and get government handouts to house and feed you (at least in most of the West apart from America).
It isn't that humans have evolved significantly in the last century or two it is that those who would have been dead are now sticking around to lower the average. They are also generally failing to give their children values that allow them to do anything but barely survive inside societies safety nets (hence generational unemployment, and voters that vote for bread and circuses).
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Story in The Telegraph, "Ramblers who use their iPhones to navigate and have no idea how to read a map are causing the number of emergency call-outs to increase by 50 per cent, mountain rescuers have complained. " http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8435019/Ramblers-who-rely-on-iPhones-to-navigate-increase-rescue-call-outs-by-50-per-cent.html
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
The same people that weren't thinking for themselves before, still aren't thinking for themselves now. Technology isn't breeding stupid people. Stupid people are breeding stupid people.
"Common sense" is a big misnomer. Sense has never been common. Most people have none, and did even before gadgets.
How ya like dat?
Gadgets might be causing us to take in a lot more information and spend less time digesting and processing that information. The catch is that we can't really define a cause so easily. For example in America our ability to use the English language is in a huge decline. Popular entertainment has caused a severe degradation in our ability to understand sentences an paragraphs, a lowering in vocabulary, and a detachment from the importance of detailed thinking. The use of gadgets may simply be a continuation of that process. Radio and television have depended on getting the least skilled among us to absorb their content. Broadcasting for the intellectual elite does little to support sales of products. As usual lowest pull the greatest downward in their direction.
I would be interested in Robert Vamosi thoughts on this subject, but I don't believe in this "writing" gadget that's caught on recently. It claims to be an accurate reflection of his ideas, but I'm not going to simply accept what it tells me.
Frankly, if I can't talk to him personally and discuss it, as humans have done for thousands of years before us, I'm allowing "reading" to do my thinking for me.
Haven't we seen people argue this for just about every invention created?
Books, TV, Movies, Music, Computers, Vibrators...
I mean do these authors live in a vacuum and think their ideas are "fresh and new"?
"Vamosi writes, some of us no longer see the world as human beings have for thousands of years and simply accept whatever our gadgets show us."
Welcome to transhumanism, film at eleven.
Hint: This is a good thing. Writing did the same thing; gave us an external storage mechanism. For the most part, we do not lament the loss of oral tradition.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Technological advances of this nature leverage human abilities allowing human productivity to increase.
It is in large measure how civilization advances. When the moldboard plow was invented humans were able to plant more land. This made more food available and hunger decreased. Yeah people probably became weaker as a result of having to do less grunt labor. But was the overall effect bad?
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations we can perform without thinking."
--Alfred North Whitehead
My first computer was an Amiga 500. And, honestly, I was awestruck for the first week of ownership. I felt like I was living the sci-fi fantasy I'd had just 10 yrs prior. An affordable tech that was simply amazing to me at that point.
I remember drawing on it and thinking: "The generation that comes after me will be like gods of technology. They'll have been born with this in their hands and it will bring them to new levels of intelligence, tech and opportunity."
This is just not the case now 25+yrs later. I work a great deal with teens teaching them tech from an art and theater end. What I find is that they know how to use the front end with incredible alacrity and skill. However once that tech has a glitch or fails them they're dumb founded. Yes, I am generalizing, but I've found an overwhelming majority lack even the basic sense to trouble shoot. At best they just let it sit until someone fixes it. At worst I've seen them toss cell phones and laptops in the dumpster because it was broke. (And I was able to retrieve it and fix it later.) It's that lack of trouble shooting ability that is the key to me. They've never been taught to do that. It's not just the tech that is different for them vs. me it's the societal thinking. You do not fix stuff now and keep using it. You toss it out and buy new. And that has deprived them of the desire, curiosity and ability to think creatively and trouble shoot.
While the complexity of the tech has grown since my first introduction, with an almost perfect inverse the ignorance of that same tech's fundamental workings has grown. Your results may vary, but this seems to be the same experience with a broad scope of my friends and colleagues as well. I personally do not see it getting any better. It's created wonderful consumers and that's just what the market wants.
But I am having trouble with this damn GPS - it keeps sending me into the lake!
"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." — Marcus Tullius Cicero
some of us no longer see the world as human beings have for thousands of years
Make that about a quarter of a million years (as modern humans), and many millions of years before that (as our pre-human ancestors).
When you're driving down the street and you see a pedestrian, you usually snap to it immediately because our ancestors have needed to detect the human gait for millions of years. But when someone is on a skateboard or scooter you don't snap so fast, because it doesn't make the right neurons fire.
Similarly, GR and QM seem bizarre to us because they operate on scales of time, space, energy, and gravity that our ancestors never had to deal with, but on scales that they did, we do OK - we can catch that baseball[*] even though it hasn't been around for a couple of hundred years, because it's still within the scope of what we've evolved to deal with.
If gagetry is a problem for any reason other than mere distraction, it needs to be viewed in terms of our evolved cognitive abilities, not on "thousands of years" of habit or tradition.
[*] Well, *I* can't, but presumably some of you can.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My goodness, yes. My father in law has no concept of common sense, thinking critically or of using his own memory to answer questions anymore. He just Googles everything and then reads off the first search result that catches his eye. Don't even get me started on Snopes.
A friend of mine once couldn't lock his car - the button on the key wouldn't lock the car. He tried various things like waiting for 30 minutes to see if the car would lock itself, etc.
Eventually he was talking to a friend on the phone telling her about his situation ('cos he couldn't leave the car unlocked), and she asked him if he tried turning the key in lock...!
So yes, gadgets do affect our common sense. We get used to using a gadget to do something that we forget how to do that action without the gadget. Are we fast becoming a race of needing a specific tool to do a specific job...?
I'd post comments but I have several urgent tweets waiting
I've noticed an increase in people wandering blindy, eyes glued to a phone. Maybe not a lack of common sense, but certainly a dumb and irritating thing to be doing.
Just because we have a technology that can cover for their stupidity to some degree doesn't mean we shouldn't use it. The idiot that drives off a cliff because the GPS told them to turn left, well they probably couldn't have found the cliff without the GPS but they were always idiots. They would have driven off another metaphorical cliff somewhere else in their due time. Get over it.
This may become long and drawn out..but I am speaking from a different perspective than most I would think.
I have been a PC tech/web developer for around 15 years. I kept up with the latest gizmos and gadgets, technology and toys for a long, long time. My last stint was support at a University. My wife and I got the "get back to basics" fever, quit our jobs, bought some raw land and are homesteading 4 acres on the outskirts of nowhere.
In that change also came a paradigm shift about technology. While we have to use our laptops for our web business, more and more we are wandering away from the screens and towards the dirt. What I find is that the less time you spend with "a screen" the more you come to understand and envelope yourself with the real world..the world of dirt, the world of nature, the real world you cant touch on flickr and cant smell on facebook.
We as a society are evolving into a clinically sterile, see here is nature on the screen, whats a shovel people.
I am not arguing that technology is bad, merely making the observation that reality is changing for most people. That we as a group are living our lives more and more through screens and by dilution less and less in the sun. While the irony of me posting this here does not elude me, I will be shoveling up some garden and doing some garden work shortly. I hope you would have some real world to balance off "the screens" as well because to me, the human condition is not a clinically sterile parade of screens and gizmos.. it is about the sights, smells, grit, efforts and rewards you can only get once you run out of batteries.
I dunno.
Lemme check wikipedia...
Relevant Dresden Codak: http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/
Dr. Walter Gibbs: Ha, ha. You've got to expect some static. After all, computers are just machines; they can't think.
Alan Bradley: Some programs will be thinking soon.
Dr. Walter Gibbs: Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop.
Technology is a Force Multiplier.
If you're a brilliant scientist, you can use it to do even greater, more important work.
If your a tyrannical dictator, you can use to to further oppress and control your citizens.
If you're a blithering idiot you can stare at it as you plow your car into a group of children waiting for a buss.
Wasn't this covered by a couple of episodes of "Star Trek"? They would find some civilization where the people had become dumb and relied on machines that had been invented years before?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Maps Suk.
I was terrified of driving until I got a GPS.
"I wanna know right now in the middle of this crap what that weird is". (North east cowpath road design).
I haven't once been told anything dangerous. At the very worst in NYC it doesn't find the road fast enough, but then in NYC the next road over usually works too and it fixes it later.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I recently was in a coffee shop. My espresso was 2.28 (tax included). There were two girls behind the counter. I gave them 10$, and I was waiting for my change. Suddenly, the power went out. With it, the cash register. Now.... huge question - how much change was I to receive ? Difficult calculations ahead. Fortunately the register was in the "open" position.
First try - one girl calculated in her head and gave me some amount (I guess it was too little, let's say... 7.35)
I, with an infinite patience, replied calmly "I'm sorry, no, this is not correct".
Second try - too much - say.... 8.10.
No, sorry, this is still not correct. Please try again.
The girl was now very nervous and started calculating on a piece of paper. The other came to help. They had a little conference. They were probably not happy with the result, because they started over. One of them asked me "Sir... how much do we owe you ?" I said (and yes, I guess I was mean, really mean, after all, those were two very nice young girls) "Well.... you should know, why don't you calculate it ?"
Finally, after some awkward and quite long hesitations, one of the girls remembered that she had a phone with a calculator. Problem solved.
These two 18-19 years old girls were probably not stupid. But I blame 1) the terrible schooling system and b) the over-reliance on technology.
This truly happened. So yeah... I would answer yes, gadgets do indeed degrade some of our basic skills.
Let me put on my tinfoil hat. Wait... there it is... Ok. I have to wonder how useful it would be to manipulate the data presented by gadgets. In fact, there could be an intriguing experiment there... Say, trick the iphone into reporting it's raining today, and all other smartphones report it's sunny, and then do a poll at the town square. Do it when it's raining, and when it's sunny, to identify the segment of the population (large, I hope, but you never know) who looked out the window.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Maps Suk.
That is totally a matter of opinion. I love maps.
I was terrified of driving until I got a GPS.
That explains a lot about why you don't like maps. You are one of those afore-mentioned people who doesn't know how to use them.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Another important point not mentioned by the author of the article is that gadgets and being "permanently connected" cause dimished attention span. IMO it gets to the point when individuals are unable to concentrate and get anything done because there is always something "important" that requires their attention RIGHT NOW, like Facebook notification, text message on the phone, Twitter updates, etc. And if there are no distractions people subconsciously start seeking for them.
I know a woman who goes shopping with her iPhone. Before she buys anything she checks out the prices on the same item on the web. Smarts and gadgets combined.
He documents how one woman narrowly missed being hit by a train after she followed sat-nav directions over a railway track. While she got out of her car to open the level-crossing gate, a speeding train drove straight through her vehicle. While this may be an extreme case, Vamosi argues that we are developing a culture of dependence on technology to the detriment of our common sense.
Are we really sure Skynet didn't become self-aware and declare war on humanity a few weeks ago?
Just as you cannot do very much carpentry with your bare hands, there is not much thinking you can do with your bare brain.
--Bo Dahlbom and Lars-Erik Janlert (unpublished)
"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?"
I was terrified of driving until I got a GPS.
In other words, you couldn't bother to look at a map and at least get a general idea of where you were going, couldn't follow the signs that were posted telling you what street/road you were on and had no idea of basic directions while driving.
Yup, you fit this article perfectly.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
What is this "Sex" that you speak of?
yes, I'm married, why do you ask?
While a lot of the article seemed pretty fluffy and paranoid, I do think there is a lot to be said about simplicity vs control. The growing trend with systems like iOS and even Android to a lesser extent is to give control over to a manufacturer to do what is in your best interest. People give up the ability to know what their device is doing in order to have a simpler experience. I do think simplification of technology is critical to mass acceptance, but I don't think that getting rid of the ability to access (and change) the details is ever in the best interest of consumers.
As far as the common sense, technology just makes the failures more spectacular. People haven't changed and aren't changing. Instead of failing to use common sense and making stupid mistakes, people fail to use common sense, think they are doing ok because of technology and do the same thing they would have done anyway, just technology lets more people know about it when it happens.
AJ Henderson
This sounds like a serious problem! Quick, someone (yawn) go and (eyes droop) and do (yaaaaawn) some sort of thing or somethinzzzzzzzzzzzz (snore)
The slightly smarter ones that work as "cannon-fodder" programmers get their jobs outsourced to India.
But the dumber ones work as cashiers (can't outsource that to India as cheaply yet).
Another disillusioned techie writes another anti-tech book about the way technology has made the general public dumber than it already is. Film at eleven.
People were, by and large, already dumber than rocks. This is, after all, the same species that wandered around in its current form for about 200,000 years before anyone noticed that seeds make plants, and only figured out in the last century or so that disease is caused by microorganisms and not evil spirits -- and still, a lot of people aren't convinced. The only thing that has changed is that people who previously did or said stupid things in private can now share them with the world on Facebook and YouTube.
That said, it's nice to see that the author is is a technology professional. Most of these books are written by liberal arts majors who are embittered by the presence of iPhones at their poetry slams.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I disagree with the premise. I think people have always had this problem. The thing about these "gadgets", as he calls them, is that they spread information faster and farther than was ever possible before. I just encountered this today with a forwarded email I received, from a very conservative friend, which stated that Sears is now selling X-rated DVDs. Without even looking into the situation, he just forwarded it on to all his friends adding the note, "Kinda sad because they sell great tools." It only took a few minutes for me to go to the Sears site and see that the email is a fabrication. It took only a few minutes more to discover that this is from an American Family Association (who?) alert sent out last year about "pornographic" art being sold at Sears -- which turned out to actually be pretty tasteful wall decor featuring nude bodies (not exactly my cup of tea, but to each his own). Even though it only took a few minutes to discover the hoax, it was easier for my friend to simply accept the news as the truth, and then angrily forward the information along to everyone he knows. However, if this were 1911 instead of 2011 and my friend had heard this rumor via word-of-mouth, he would have done the same thing -- that is, pass the rumor along without checking facts. People have always been stupid. Now they are stupid at the speed of light.
Proverbs 21:19
Don't forget 'some congressmen/women takes credit and equal amount of senators declare that we are doomed if we don't stop'
Absolutely. TFA is just a thinly veiled platform for older generations to complain about younger generations. I don't have the "common sense" of 150 years ago in order to buy a proper ox and wagon, find food and water for myself and the animals, or hunt and dress game. Similarly a person from 150 years ago wouldn't have the "common sense" to google for the answers to their questions about Abraham Lincoln.
"Common sense" varies from time and society, and both can change rather quickly.
My bullshit detector is ringing off the hook!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Kubrick2001 - the space odyssey explained (at least from the dependency on tools angle).
These two 18-19 years old girls were probably not stupid.
they cannot subtract 2.28 from 10.00 using paper and pencil. they sound pretty stupid to me.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Have you been in a major city? where the signs are covered by other sign or tree? big trucks?
Every try to look at a map while in traffic? on the freeway? it's hard and dangerous.
What happens when there is construction?
I can read a map, but when I went to Chicago, my G1s navigation app was a time saver. Even when it directed me to a road I could not use(construction) I just drove past an it recalculated.
Had this been 15 years ago, I would have had to find and buy a good map. Stop to read the map if I couldn't see or use a street. Not be able to easily change route if traffic was bad. Would have had to find a place to read the map. Since my direction had about a dozen turns I would have had to write it down.
Safer, faster, cheaper, and more accurate.
So please, Navigation is a great tool, and people who deride the skills of people who use them are jackholes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Back in my day, we didn't use any sort of "books" or "writing" to remember stuff. If we needed to remember we did! And if someone else needed to know, they came and they asked the person who did! All these books are going to do is rot your memory! Besides, how do you know if that book is true or not? People are going to believe 100% of what some damn fool writes in that book! Then what will happen! Everyone in the village will have no memory and be believing a bunch of lies, that's what!
will be the only ones to survive this century.
...if my e-reader hadn't gone dead, I would have googled it.
Basically, gadgets are toys in my eyes. I do believe from personal experience that the more we rely on gadgets to do for us, to simplify our lives, the more we are willing to give others control over ourselves, which includes common sense.
A few examples, phones that can hold memory or relay info such as caller id. Phones with memory hold phone numbers that we used to either had to look up in a phone book or had to memorize. I know that today, without my phone I can't remember anyone's phone numbers. Degradation of memory, by user choice of course.
GPS devices are electronic maps / weather stations. People used to learn where they were going by taking care note of what turns they made or by reading signs or memorizing landmarks and even studying a map (/gasp). Today, I've seen younger members of my family get lost even using a GPS, because they no longer understand N / S / E / W directions and they to retain info about where they turned to get to a location. Another family member will now rely on the GPS to traverse streets he's driven on for years. Common sense, and education of simple map reading are all but gone. A GPS is good in many situations such as going somewhere you've never been for the first time, for those who have difficulty driving at night on unfamiliar roads. But it's become a massive crutch.
Phones / iPOD / iPAD / hand held games are time killers to be sure, but where humanity used to fill time with their mind and relaxing, today people require constant interaction with something. No downtime from gadgets leads to poorer sleeping habits, less mental relief, and poorer memories from lack of down time. Creativity is lost, problem solving is weakened.
We build gadgets based on sets of rules. People begin to accept limits. We then blindly agree on strict rules like "zero tolerance" and lose common sense behavior.
This response make it sound like I'm blaming gadgets for the degradation of society, it wasn't my intent. But I do feel that constant reliance on gadgets lead to a way of limited thinking which leads to the ability to lose common sense.
These are only observances of mine with those around me, and it's a very narrow perspective of the world and society as a whole. So please only take this opinion with a grain of salt.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
I recently stayed at a bed and breakfast where some older conservative types were arguing that the 1950'ies was the decade where children were taught right, and that all the sex ed and sex on TV these days was causing increased promiscuity.
Except that, according to Wikipedia, the US teenage pregnancy rate was at an all time high in the 1950's. And reserachers estimate only 25% is due to abstinence, while 75% is due to the increased use of contraceptives.
Yeah, I miss those good old days too, Gramps. Just like I miss my Apple II+ with 48k of RAM. Now get off my lawn!
Agree. I was driving home yesterday, an accident had a major road blocked and I wasn't sure how to get around it without really going out of my way. Turned on GPS, hit the "go home" button, and as soon as I turned on a side street it calculated the correct path down some back ways, took me a few minutes longer than usual, but the other highway I would have taken would have added over 20 minutes.
... to everything. Simple tools, paper writing, maps, books. We just "accept that they work" and "rely on them". This isn't new. It's just that what is new is more useful to us. Instead of reading a book and believing what it tells us about the world beyond our vision, we now carry around the entire contents of all the world's libraries.
I8-D
I'll bet that a lot of it is that more people are feeling empowered by their iPhone, or GPS, or whatever to do things that they wouldn't have considered doing previously. Instead of thinking, "I'll have to figure out how to use a map and compass and if something happens I'll be miles away from any possible rescue, so maybe I'd better just stay home and watch TV" they are thinking, "I have my GPS and cell phone, I can go anywhere and if something happens, I can just call for help. Let's do it, and be sure to bring some beer.".
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
You have your home's location stored in your GPS? So that if it were ever stolen, the thief would not only know where you live, but be directed to your door?!?
I continue to be amazed.
One problem is with how you would define "common sense". FTFA:
He documents how one woman narrowly missed being hit by a train after she followed sat-nav directions over a railway track. While she got out of her car to open the level-crossing gate, a speeding train drove straight through her vehicle.
Take the keyless car-locking systems fitted in many modern cars. "With gadgets we believe that a new technology - such as anti-theft circuitry in our cars - somehow trumps all the real-world experience we've gained over the years," Vamosi writes.
Put people (even the 'smart ones' from a hundred years ago) into today's environment, and they would be lost. Recently, I came to an intersection on the road with a stop sign. A few feet behind the sign, there was a train track. Rather than stop at the sign, I stopped just before the track, and the cars behind me started honking. Turns out, that track was no longer used. Now, if I were to actually stop on the tracks at another city, and a train crashed my vehicle, I would be considered dumb. Environment and experience decides what skills we develop, and our thinking process. If our car wasn't broken into, we might continue to rely on keyless security, and why not? It does what we want it to do.
If someone came from an environment where the floor was extremely clean and they were used to picking up stuff from the ground and eating it, they might do t he same thing in a field with a dirt ground. It doesn't mean that they don't have "common" sense, it is just that they ignored problems that would not exist in their natural habitat.
I was driving last year with somebody who had a Garmin GPS. It told her to take us on a faster route than the Interstate, which seemed fine by me. Eventually, a bridge was out and it was directing us down a dark alley in the worst part of the worst town in New Jersey as an alternate route, and it was getting dark and we had three kids in the back seat.
"But the Garmin says we need to turn here."
"No, we're not turning here, go straight, take the next left, and we're getting back on the Interstate."
No arguments, just an alternate voice of authority was required. I'm starting to think Julian James was right.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"Go and look at the configuration settings and turn off wi-fi - in most cases you won't need it if you've got a cellular signal," advises Vermosi.
What? Why?
"By having wi-fi turned on, you don't have a firewall on your iPhone, so when you go into a public wi-fi situation you are open to a man-in-the-middle attack or someone eavesdropping on your transactions."
*facepalm*
What. The. FUCK does a firewall have to do with MITM or packet sniffing? Next thing you know this douche is going to be selling an "iPhone Firewall" for... some purpose, I guess?
But no, let's trust our wireless carriers, who've certainly never had problems like this before, and also waste gobs of our data plan to avoid wifi. Hey, at least you're aware of the dangers of broadcasting stuff in the clear over wifi. How about, instead of trying to broadcast it in the clear over something else, stop fucking broadcasting it in the clear?
"Turn off Bluetooth as well because chances are you don't need to be associating with another gadget.
Like, oh, a Bluetooth headset. No, can't have those.
I'd turn of Bluetooth to save battery, but if this is going to be a problem for you, maybe reconfigure Bluetooth so it isn't a security hazard?
Also, go into the camera and turn off the location data because you don't need to put location data with your photographs."
This might be the first actually good piece of advice -- though I would think the much more secure change to make would be to always strip location data from any photos you put anywhere. Why trust your phone to get it right?
And of course, that's assuming you don't want that data there to begin with. It'd certainly be useful to extract from my own photos, so long as it's stripped before I post them somewhere public.
I guess I have to agree with his premise -- gadgets do degrade his common sense. But TFA is a bit misleading in that it starts out talking about things like death-by-GPS, and then goes on to talk a lot about security and privacy, while the author doesn't seem to know much about either -- just enough to be dangerous. Maybe I'm naive, but I still think the solution is not to avoid gadgets, or to follow some cookbook recipe to make your gadgets safer, but to actually understand them -- what they are, what they can do, and how to use them properly.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Have you been in a major city?
I go to NYC twice a year, drive to D.C. about as much, have driven in San Francisco and when I graduated from high school (long before the net was even close to what it is now) I took two weeks off to travel down Skyline through Virginia, crossed over in the Smokey Mountains, back up through Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia and back home again. All by map. Yeah, I think I've been to major cities.
Every try to look at a map while in traffic?
Yes, but only if I absolutely have to. Since I plan out my trip in advance I am familiar with the roads and my internal GPS (not electronic unless you count the brain's electrical activity) keeps me pointed in the correct direction even if I have to take side roads.
So please, Navigation is a great tool, and people who deride the skills of people who use them are jackholes.
I never said they weren't a good tool. My parents use theirs from time to time even though they know where they're going except for those oddball locations that don't show on a map because of their location. In those particular cases it is very helpful, but for every day use, they are merely a crutch for people who can't plan ahead and have no concept of where they're going because they think the electronic device is the cat's meow.
The author is correct, gadgets do degrade our common sense.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Why would a thief who stole my GPS care where I live? Does possession of my GPS make my house any more valuable then any of the tens of thousands of other random houses in the city?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Yeah, because with fire came more sophisticated shelters, and with those came an expectation that the males would stop watching football and clean them before sex.
I need to go buy more batteries.
On a serious note, it's a gorgeous spring day outside, but I'm holed up in here. Thanks to modern medicine, I can take some allergy medications to keep the pollen from swelling my eyes shut, but May is like everything outside saying "Fuck you!" to me all at once. You talk a good game, but you have a very Emersonian view of nature. Don't forget that there's nasty stuff out there too.
North east cowpath road design
See, THAT is a degradation right there. Basically the entire planet is laid out on "cowpath road design" of some sort, and it's not hard to navigate if you actually use your brain. People who learned to drive in flat, grid-layout suburbs are completely atrophied, navigationally.
Gadgets (technology) have the ability to do two things in relation to society - take over the lives of those who can't/won't think for themselves or enhance the lives of those who do.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, go into business for themselves.
I think think the gadgets are making people lose common sense, I think the reverse is true. People without common sense are buying more gadgets than other people. Especially the sort of people who buy something merely because it's new.
"Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity - and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
Obviously there are many reasons for having a Cesarian section, and sure, having a genetically narrow birth canal is pretty far down the list. The point was not to ascribe evolutionary fitness to a wide birth canal, necessarily. The point was rather the reverse -- that the common use of Cesarian sections changes the evolutionary pressure on the female anatomy, in a very explicit and direct way: Before C-sections became common, it was (quite literally) physically impossible for a woman with a genetically narrow birth canal to pass that trait onto her daughters. Now, she can.
Okay, I'll bite... A few of the top reasons for having a Cesarian are OBGYN's avoiding malpractice suits, reduction in pain tolerance, and epidurals that prevent women from bearing down with their contractions causing fetal distress. If so does the change the evolutionary pressure on the women that want epidurals and are pain adverse or compliant with doctors suggestions for a C-section? That's seems just as likely as the narrow birth canal argument.
Also more likely (and probably true), is that the evolutionary pressure has already happened to adapt humans to the "chronic" condition of an average narrow birth canal to head size. The result is likely selective pressure for early birth before our heads become too big as described here http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/04/evolution-may-explain-why-baby-comes-early/
At least this guys ramblings cites studies and comes with graphs, what's your story?
I think the fear is someone stealing your vehicle or GPS while you are away from home and immediately going to your house. While you are dealing with the police they are robbing your house, confident that you aren't going to come home soon.
It seems to me most people think about crime more than is warranted. In my city, I am approximately 5x more likely to be in a car wreck than to be victim of a theft. I don't worry needlessly about car crashes, so theft is even further from my thoughts.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Fundamental laws of physics:
1. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
2. Energy and momentum are conserved.
3. Every new technology must have an article by somebody talking about how it's going to ruin everything.
4. If it doesn't make sense, a quantum did it.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Why would a thief who stole my GPS care where I live? Does possession of my GPS make my house any more valuable then any of the tens of thousands of other random houses in the city?
*sigh* Kids these days ...
A partial list of the dangers:
1. Since we assume you're away from home when the theft took place, the thief has increased confidence that if he goes directly to your home, you won't be there. (This is especially true if the theft were surreptitious, like something a pickpocket would do, and if the thief follows you for a few minutes and sees you enter a theater, concert venue, classroom, train station, or other place at which you likely will be occupied for some time. Or if your GPS were stolen from, say, your car in an airport parking lot.) He can ring your doorbell and, if no one answers, break in and rob your home at his leisure. If someone answers, he can ask for you, because he knows you're not home; when told you're not home, he can then say he'll come back later, and leave. Either way, he's safe. Being certain that at least one of the residents of the home is away is a powerful inducement to a thief.
2. Especially if you're female, he can go to your home, break in, and wait for you (or your kids) to return. He knows what you look like -- just the fantasy he's been dreaming of -- and now he knows where you live (and how to get there). With your GPS, he doesn't have to follow you all day to find out where you live, and risk being noticed. The rest of this scenario you can fill in for yourself.
3. If you've stored your home address, you probably haven't deleted any of the recent addresses you've visited, either. Looked for directions to any place (swingers club, girl/boyfriend's house, job interview with a competitor of your current employer, etc.) you don't want anyone (e.g., your estranged spouse's private investigator) to know about? With so many street addresses directly relevant to your life stored in one place, identity theft -- or stalking, or blackmail -- could hardly be easier.
Need I go on? I'm not a criminal by profession, so I'm afraid I can't provide a complete list of the dangers. If you still want to store your home address in your GPS, do so in peace, with my blessing, but don't live under the misconception that there's no risk involved in doing so.
I simply can't agree with the basic premise. Instead, I think the problem is that human behavior isn't changing in a world of gadgets. That is, if you look at human evolution, prior to about ten thousand years ago, there was long period of time when humans used stone and wood tools, fire, and other things made from things in the environment. By "long" I mean perhaps over a million years.
So just as perhaps tens of thousands of generations of humans treated their tools at things which they could make but didn't try to understand, we're treating iPods, smartphones, etc similarly. The difference is failure modes. The modern gadgetry can fail in ways which we don't understand and may never realize happened while stone cutters fail only in pretty obvious ways.
lololololol
... theft is even further from my thoughts.
But that's the point -- if you don't store your home address in your GPS, you don't have to worry about theft at all. (I don't.) Without the tie to your house and the rest of your life, theft of your GPS is a trivial loss. With the tie, however, one needs to consider the implications more seriously.
Risk is (likelihood of loss) times (value of loss). Without storing your address, this is the multiplication of two small numbers and the result (we agree) is negligible. With your address stored, this is a small number times a potentially much larger number, and one has to perform the calculation to see if the result is still negligible.
No, you suk. At maps. Maps themselves are neutral items.
I like maps, in large part because I learned how to use them.
Back in the days before personal computers and GPS (I'm an Old Fart), a friend who lived in a distant town would tell me their address, I would look it up on a map, figure our how to get there, and go. And arrive with no problems. Even if I had never been anywhere near that location before.
Lots and lots of people used to be able to do this. Most people, in fact. And now most people probably can't.
Agreed GPS-aided navigation is a useful tool. But it does not require "skills" to use. All you are doing is following instructions.
A skill would be the ability to read a map and plot a course. So if your GPS breaks down, you can still find your way home.
One of the fascinating aspects of human "progress" is how each "improvement" causes us to lose some degree of innate ability. Back before the invention of all those mechanical devices, humans were much physically stronger on average.
One thing that I found particularly interesting is that literacy severely damaged our memory capacity. In non-literate societies, individuals would often memorize entire epic poems. Imagine knowing, for example, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, and being able to recite it word for word.
But when we could just open a book and read it, we got "lazy" and our memory capacity shrank.
Everything is a trade-off.
I got an android phone and that of course gives me google maps with GPS. So, do I blindly follow its route advice? No.
Instead I now got a map++. I installed an off-line map for when the 3G is doing and so I can still locate myself on the map by looking at landmarks, shapes of the roads and find them on the map to see where I am.
The GPS is not all that accurate for a reason, typically showming me to be a few meters off. That does not man I drive in the ditch. Instead I use the added feature of satallite imagery to help me find the building I am looking for.
The gadget has enabled me to do more, not less by giving my brain more information it can use.
Yes, some people are stupid and follow the GPS blindly. Some people also followed maps blindly or written instructions blindly. So? It is called evolution, someday women will only breed with really smart men (we all pray for that day on slashdot) and stupid people will die out.
And then we have nobody to buy the gadgets we build.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You are absolutely right about the attitudes - the mountain rescue team mentioned that. Three problems (1) mobile phone signal in the mountains is completely untrustworthy (and Murphy's Law says that the place where you bust your leg has lousy signal) (2) smartphone batteries do not last long enough (while GPS and map screen are in use) for a whole day on the hill. Murphy's Law also says the moment that your battery starts giving up is the moment the fog arrives (3) the maps in smartphones are not good enough to enable you to work a safe route off the mountain - people end up stuck at the top of cliffs
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
they fed it to their livestock, cows/rabbits/chickens...
You see a lot of "intellects" spewing logical filth like this all the time. The problem with his logic is that if we let the computer do our thinking that we will then curl up into a jello ball in the corner. What these idiots always fail to realize is that we are adaptive feedback machines. Our brains will find other stuff to think on, making us more effective--just like always.
I would guess that my address is in my car usually, if not on my insurance/registration/tire receipt/etc. then on some stray mail. I expect that is the case for most people. Barring that, a thief could look up the owner by their VIN or plate, then check property records to determine what house(s) they own.
That's actually a good idea if any thieves are reading this. Go to a theater or sporting event and pick out a nice looking car as it arrives. Look up the owner by plate number or VIN, check property records to see if you can figure out their primary residence. You know they won't be around for a while, so go rob their house.
I don't think avoiding programming your GPS gives you any extra security. It does make your GPS more annoying to use every time, with 100% certainty. Anyone who worries about being burgled should buy good insurance and try to relax.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Our capability to build "gut instinct" in certain areas has been compromised. Thus, "Use it or Lose it" is all too real. I can refer to a great book, "To Engineer is Human", in which the author describes what went wrong with various structures. Metal fatigue, and relying on computer programs to design structures are two major causes of building disasters. Why? We are no longer using the good ol' slide rule, which allows the person using it (engineer) to fudge on either side of center when necessary, instead of a packaged program. After a few of these assumptions, we get the snowball effect without realizing it, because we're relying on someone else's program. . In any field, an experienced 'old-timer' can teach an apprentice everything he knows, yet he cannot begin to provide the apprentice with the gift of gut instinct, which only comes from having and solving problems - i..e., years of experience..