Do Smart Phones Equal Dumb People?
El Vendor, a five-part advertisement for Android, is pretty funny (catch all five episodes here, on Wired.)
The premise of the series of advertisements is that a vending machine falls on top of Dave, an average assistant manager in a large company. He is stuck under the vending machine for 32 hours. But it's okay because he has his Android phone with him. During that time Dave becomes much more productive than he was before and actually gets promoted - because with the Android smartphone, he can do anything.
At the end of each of the videos (aside from the first one, I believe) the following text appears:
Do any of the following sound familiar:
John Elder Robison writes in his article "Is Technology Making Us Dumber" (www.psychologytoday.com, Nov 30, 2009) that:
So, just for the fun of it, I'll go against the grain: No, computers are not making us dumber. Computers are merely taking away the need to exert unnecessary energy on remembering things, learning facts and performing calculations that can otherwise be done by a machine.
Did the abacus make us less able to do math? Did the invention of the printing press reduce our ability to write by hand? Did the Dewey Decimal System reduce our capacity for memory?
The answer is no, and here's incontrovertible proof: Because even though we created all of these technologies and systems to reduce the need to rely on our own mental faculties or physical capabilities, we were still smart enough to invent the computer.
[And, yes, I Googled "define:incontrovertible" to make sure that I spelled it correctly...]
The premise of the series of advertisements is that a vending machine falls on top of Dave, an average assistant manager in a large company. He is stuck under the vending machine for 32 hours. But it's okay because he has his Android phone with him. During that time Dave becomes much more productive than he was before and actually gets promoted - because with the Android smartphone, he can do anything.
At the end of each of the videos (aside from the first one, I believe) the following text appears:
Android = SMARTER phone.Are computers making us dumber as they get smarter? Good question. Wish I was intelligent enough to answer it, but I'll give it a go.
Do any of the following sound familiar:
- I don't have to know facts, I'll just Google it
- I don't have to know how to speak Korean, I'll just Google translate it
- I don't need to know how to count, I'll just use my calculator (or Google it)
- I don't need to know how to read a map, I'll Google it
John Elder Robison writes in his article "Is Technology Making Us Dumber" (www.psychologytoday.com, Nov 30, 2009) that:
They [people] have become slaves to machines out of intellectual laziness, and the laziness makes them less smart.And if you Google the phrase "are computers making us dumber" you get about 48,000 links to blogs and articles that probably say the same thing.
So, just for the fun of it, I'll go against the grain: No, computers are not making us dumber. Computers are merely taking away the need to exert unnecessary energy on remembering things, learning facts and performing calculations that can otherwise be done by a machine.
Did the abacus make us less able to do math? Did the invention of the printing press reduce our ability to write by hand? Did the Dewey Decimal System reduce our capacity for memory?
The answer is no, and here's incontrovertible proof: Because even though we created all of these technologies and systems to reduce the need to rely on our own mental faculties or physical capabilities, we were still smart enough to invent the computer.
[And, yes, I Googled "define:incontrovertible" to make sure that I spelled it correctly...]
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