As our use of technology increases,do our I.Q.'s decrease?
How many people still know how to use the ancient abacus?
Or a slide rule?
Or even how to make conversions on a natural sine table?
Has our over dependence on calculators reduced our ability to think?
Does any child still know how to use a dictionary or thesaurus?
Or has Spell Check eliminated the need to know how to spell?
I know plenty of people who probably couldn't write a blog without spell check. Something has definitely been lost as I sat with my nephew and as he wrote and misspelled words I asked him can't you feel that it's wrong. He asked me what do I mean by feel? I told him almost at the second that I write if it's wrong my brain stops and makes me want to check it. He told me NOPE!
ReplyDeleteCalculators has made many a mathematician who really are memorizing formulas and plugging them in without truly understanding why.
We have definitely lose something!
I generally write colloquially and fairly loose (lazy) with sentence structure too.
ReplyDeleteI was also helping some kids with homework when I noticed that most spelled words using texting shorthand and they couldn't understand why their spelling was incorrect.
IMO - We are suffering from our own "success".
-Cheap and easy food = Fat people who die of various conditions brought on by their weight.
-Dependent people = a drain on our common potential and achievements.
-Easy targeted entertainment = an under educated population.
etc....
Things have become so easy that many fail to grow and learn.
I could be explained away as defending myself, as I have the worst spelling of anyone in my generation, but I would say that certain skill sets have suffered, this is not an automatic teller of a decline in intelligence.
ReplyDeleteOne may have poor arithmatic, but with the aid of a calculator this individual can be freed from struggling with long division, allowing them to actually understand a theorum, or actually think creatively.
Spell check may allow a student to move past rudimentary exercises and truly learn to express themselves in writing.
Remember that spelling, math, and many other things are simply tools to allow one to do something bigger, or rather beyond those tasks used to get there.
@Brohammas - I agree with them being stepping stones but if the stones they step on are faulty wouldn't that mess them up.
ReplyDeleteI did Economics in college and we did regression analysis. Now I sucked ass in math so I made a deal with another guy and he helped me with math while I got the theory part. We graduated top in our class and got 100k offers with Nissan. Now I turned that ish down because I knew I was going to kill people with my analysis while my boy went on and is doing well to this day.
So with my TI-81 I could keep the basic formula but I couldn't do the ish if my life depended on it. So if it's a stepping stone how high can someone go or do we want them to go before I put the gas tank in the back of the car and cause a Pinto disaster!
@ brohammas - But the people working at these more complex levels at least understand how to do these basics.
ReplyDeleteThe technology is just a time saver - it doesn't replace one's abilities as seems to be the case with many today.
I had to teach a grown ass man (who wanted to learn carpentry) how to read a tape measure.
With this level of required remediation, it's no wonder so many people are falling behind.
I think I missed learning how to use a slide rule by about 3 or 4 years, I'd look at them at school and they were a complete mystery to me, still are. The abacus is the same. Lived in China for a while and was amazed by the speed with which the market sellers could work those things. I do keep a dictionary and thesaurus beside the PC as I continue to find them much quicker to use when I need a specific word. Have to be careful with spell check as a lot of people object to US spelling but I like to use it to obfuscate my location.
ReplyDelete@ doll - Damn... you have some wild friends and followers at your site!
ReplyDeleteYes, apologies. I was too lazy to swap to a more sedate login. In case you were wondering how I got to your site it was the posting about the padded knickers to give a more voluptuous look. I remember the fuss about that because it was when I was in China and the Chinese women (who can feel a stigma about being slim butted) were very keen to try them.
ReplyDelete@ doll - No problem.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure everyone here is an adult.