Creative Boredom, Dumbing Down, and Memorizing

In the 1970s, calculators began to enter our classrooms – to the consternation of some educators, and many parents, who were concerned that basic skills would be lost as students became “dependent” on them. The reality turned out to be somewhat different – calculators helped students become more engaged in mathematics, and allowed them to get to higher proficiency in mathematics overall, as they moved beyond performing basic calculations. In other words, the calculator actually made us smarter.

But just because that happened with one piece of technology, doesn’t mean it happens with all pieces of technology. And technology is so ubiquitous and powerful today, it’s probably worth thinking seriously about what effect it is having overall on our human capabilities. We say “Human is my superpower” at BillionMinds, but that superpower needs to be nurtured and maintained.

It’s easy to make the “pro-technology” case. The internet has democratized access to highly detailed information, often for free. Want to learn from an expert how Jane Austen’s letters to her sister debunk myths about her sheltered upbringing? Download the Kanopy app, and start binging 24 college-level classes on Austen with nothing more than a library card. Oh, and the above brief history of the calculator? Credit Sarah A. Banks Masters Thesis on the usage of calculators in classrooms since 1975. 132 wonderfully meticulously researched pages found with a 1 minute Google search. Never in the history of humankind have we had easier access to such rich information.

So, what’s the “anti-technology” argument? There are actually many. Consider that not only is misinformation ripe on the Internet but that it spreads faster than the accurate stuff. Henry Mintzberg (who will soon be a guest on our podcast) – cites several causes for dumbing down, including the decline of our communities, addiction to our devices, and Groupthink. And some of the more dystopian views of an AI-dominated future reference the movie Wall-E, which imagines a world where our electronic surroundings overstimulate us so much that we no longer think for ourselves at all.

So should we be worried that technology IS dumbing us down? The answer is, to quote the wise band Oasis, Definitely Maybe. One key difference between the calculator and the smartphone is that the calculator isn’t really addictive, but the smartphone is outrageously so. The calculator made basic calculations lightning fast, and we used the time freed up to do more complex mathematics. In other words, we spent our time thinking deeper thoughts. Our current devices push to us whatever content we want, or what the algorithms think we might want, and overstimulate us to a point where many of us are doing very little thinking at all. Even if we cannot be sure how dangerous that is, it’s probably time we put down our devices for a bit and started at least thinking about it.