Comments about ‘Is technology making us stupid? Author suggests 'Internet sabbath' to students’

First of all, social connections/interactions and stupidity are not the same thing.

Second, although some people are good at memorizing phone numbers and stuff, address books for the rest of us have been on the market for generations. There is no difference intelligence wise between writing a phone number down in a book or entering it into a phone.

Third, even Einstein thought it ridiculous to memorize stuff you can look up.

Using technology does not make us any more stupid - it just changes how we access things. If the problem is connecting with your family, well, that is a totally different concern.

Your feet don't create large callouses if you wear shoes. Thus in wearing shoes you become more dependent on them and have a harder time walking around barefoot. I wonder if Mr. Powers ever looks down at his feet and feels like a hostage to his shoes.

Should we all go shoe-less one day per week as well?

I agree with the first couple of comments. I am graduating with a Mechanical Engineering degree in the coming months. I currently work as a computer technician and am currently out of town interviewing for a position where I would write programs to supplement engineering software. I am around technology all of the time and am around people who are enthralled in it. I have learned first hand that we, as people, have begun to change the way in which we use our intellect. We don't need to memorize as many equations, facts, etc. any more but we do have to memorize locations where to find that information.

If technology is used as a tool it effectively enhances our ability. We have access to far more in less time than the past. Technology combined with learned critical thinking produces amazing products. That is why technology grows at an increasing rate. It could not do so if it was making us dumber.

On the other side, like any other tool, if used in a non efficacious way there are detrimental side effects. In this case it is social interaction. Let's not blame the tool, just teach how to use the tool.

I think the visionary television show, Pokemon, got it right when they told the story of you 10 year old boy leaving his family to wander the countryside with his smartphone (Pokedex) and a dream of becoming the Angry Birds (Pokemon) Master. Occasionally he'd check in with mom, but he didn't need family because he had other fans of Angry Birds, (Pokemon Gym leaders Brock and Misty) to keep him company, and of course he had his Smartphone and game prowess to back him up.

Yeah, Technologies great...

I was so interested by the title of the article but found the content to be somewhat different. I like the idea of a technology break. I have noticed that people don't seem to be able to concentrate for very long (everyone claims they have ADD, and I mean EVERYONE), and reading anything longer than a paragraph or two seems to be too long.

There are some detrimental effects from technology, but I think that is the case with many things. We just need to be smart about how we use them. Having a time to disconnect might not be too bad, but thinking the sky is falling is.

It's not that we're less capable, it's that technology is freeing us up physically and mentally to pursue greater things.

'Is technology making us stupid? Author suggests 'Internet sabbath' to students' - title

Claim:
**'Obama's TARP Slush Fund' - David Asman - Fox Business - 02/24/10

Fact:
**'Univ. of Maryland study finds Fox News viewers to be misinformed on key issues' - By Ryan Witt - Examiner - 12/17/10

"Over 40% of respondents said President Obama started TARP even though TARP was signed into law by President Bush on October 3rd of 2008." - article

Claim:
On Saturday's Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade attempted to dismiss the importance of Planned Parenthood funding by claiming that services like pap smears are available "at Walgreens'.

Fact:
**'Walgreens Corrects Fox & Friends: We Don't Offer Pap Smears' - Media Matters - 04/11/11

Claim:
**'Nearly 1 in 5 Americans Thinks Obama Is Muslim, Survey Shows' - By Lauren Green - 08/19/10 - Fox News

Fact:
**Obama, family attend Christmas church services By Julie Pace AP Pulibshed by DSNews 12/25/11

This is one reason many of our missionaries in our mission had a difficult time verbally communicating with others. They has spent so much time texting, playing digital games and on facebook previous to their mission they had failed to develop interpersonal human relationship skills and were not effective as missionaries. About the time they were ready to go home they were finally developing the communication skills they should have already possessed at the time they entered the Mission field.

If you cannot go a week without Facebook you have some very serious personal problems.

There is a dichotomy here... just as there is with everything.

This question is not new. This is not a theory... it has been proven by human history.

This debate was keenly on the mind of Sorates who feared that the advent of the written word could allow his generation to stop using their memory, which till then they memorised their family stories, family history and religious histories. He feared future generations would rely on the written word (which would allow them to get lazy and forget their history). The same debate surrounded the advent of the printing press. Some said with the ability to mass-print volumes and easy access to printed material, the art of penmanship and the written word would fade. The same concerns circulated with computers and the internet. And it's true. They do let us give up the way we USED to communicate. And some of it's for the better... and some of it isn't.

It would be nice if we still felt the neccessity to memorise our family history and our religious history... but it's in the library so why bother. It would be nice if our childeren knew how to write by hand and do math in their heads... but they have computers that make it so much easier. That's part good... but not ALL good. You have to try to preserve the old methods of communication as well, or you lose something. But on the other hand... you have to keep making progress, or you miss new opportunities.

I think the author needs to go in search of a better cause to champion.

What is it that you are worried about here? Do you think you might be caught out in the woods without a calculator and need to do long division by hand to save your life?

Our blessed, honored, pioneers did amazing things with very little technology. When it improved though, they didn't keep dragging hand carts across the plains, they jumped on the blessed, honored railroad! I have another newsflash for you. I've read tens of thousands of hand-written documents from the 19th century and guess what? They didn't know how to spell worth a lick and their handwriting was awful!

If you want to take a sabbatical from modern civilization be my guest. I'm sure there's some anti-technology commune in Idaho somewhere you can join.

I don't know if it's making us stupid, but I do know that thinking people need to know where you are, what you ate or watched or whatever all the time skews your reality. None of us is that important. And all that personal information people give away...you never get control of that again. The technology may not make us stupid, but our egos do, and that's what the technology enables.