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Ever since I went back to the university and was surprised at the full compliment of calculators and/or electronic scientific data base devices present in mathematics and science classes, I thought the venue of higher education had begun to experience a lowering effect. No more written, long hand, computations ( or the possibility of the errors associated with this type of calculations ) seemed to be a wonderful by-product of the miniaturization in the computer field. But, what if the power goes off or the batteries run dead at the most inopportune time?
Even if the power never fails, and your knowledge of the ancient art of hand writing and written computations doesn't need to be tested, the influx of these machines has created a society which is beginning to use them as a crutch or true substitute for brain matter. Why committ anything to memory if it is just a keystroke away? Why learn to add, subtract, multiply or divide; if the calculation you require is just a few digital imputs away?
The purple haired, pierced eyebrows, crowd would argue that high tech wonders like calculators and laptop computers free up their minds for more introspection or incresed imagination and productivity. I say that the opposite is actually the case. I believe we have created a generation of typers who can cut and paste from the internet to do their homework, but they can't use their imaginations to get out of a paper bag. During my time in school, using the encyclopedia or short-cuts like Cliff notes was highly frowned upon and most likely to get you a non-passing grade, must less a ' B ' or even a ' C '. This using calculators for computations and searching the internet for someone else's opinion or recorded set of observations only breeds a generation of COPYCATS!
Interestingly, on the Fox News Channel show " The O'Reilly Factor " this middle week of January, there was segment with an author, Clifford Stoll, who wrote a book " High Tech Heretic ", which touches along similar lines. O'Reilly and Stoll brought up the dumbing down effect, among other short topics, including: 1) The new society not reading books; 2) Not seeing your neighbor because you spend all your time logged on to the internet; 3) Being bombarded with " too many images "; and 4) Kids being programmed and not coming up with their own solutions. This last one is the closest thing to what I felt, looking around that classroom full of machinery instead of pencils and paper. I must really be a dinosaur, because I almost started to applaud the television set when Stoll said we have a " pre-packaged thing being passed off as creative ". Bill O'Reilly did say something to the effect that we can get the kids to point, click and mouse, but we can't get them to read " The Hardy Boys " ( how many people reading this even know what the Hardy Boys mystery novels were? )!
While we are ending our reliance on organic brain ( memory? ) cells and shifting it to physical instrumentality, I hope we can figure out a way not to lose our imaginations along the way.
- Bongo ( Cut and paste me? )
Updated ( 1-22-2000 )
(c)2000 Bongo.