Technology is making us stupid – smarter – dumb – clever

I read a post today that said, in a light hearted way, that technology might be making us more stupid. While I know I’m safe – as I can’t get any stupider-er – it made me think – which hurt.

The post replies almost all agreed, often more seriously than the post implied, that we were more stupid these days.

Is it true? I had intended to surf the net for answers – but I lost interest half-way through and found myself tweeting my Angry-Bird high scores instead. Don’t even know how it happened!

As it goes, asking if technology makes us dumb brings 4,530,000 hits – asking if it makes us smart brings 2,570,000 hits. Trying to untangle the opposing views took more than eight seconds and I blacked out. When I woke I was updating my Facebook status to “someone stop the terrible pain in my head!”

now I must update my status to tell everyone I updated my status to tell everyone I was updating my status….

I don’t even have Facebook!

Don’t be silly – of course I have Facebook – you can’t NOT have it. I don’t have a head.

I decided to just refer to this article, which has a lot of words in and not many pictures – which means no-one will read it and so can’t argue with me! Trust me, it says what I do 🙂

The bottom line for me is that technology doesn’t make us anything – we do.

If we are getting dumber it is not the fault of technology but indicative of our out-moded education system (in the UK at least.) Do we hear China moaning about increased stupidity? or Finland?

World education ranking

Country Name	Reading score	Maths score	Science score
Source: OECD, PISA 2009 Database-
OECD average	493	496	501
Shanghai-China	556	600	575
Korea-South	539	546	538
Finland	536	541	554
Hong Kong-China	533	555	549
Singapore	526	562	542
Canada	524	527	529
New Zealand	521	519	532
Japan	520	529	539
Australia	515	514	527
Netherlands	508	526	522
Belgium	506	515	507
Norway	503	498	500
Estonia	501	512	528
Switzerland	501	534	517
Poland	500	495	508
Iceland	500	507	496
United States	500	487	502
Liechtenstein	499	536	520
Sweden	497	494	495
Germany	497	513	520
Ireland	496	487	508
France	496	497	498
Chinese Taipei	495	543	520
Denmark	495	503	499
United Kingdom	494	492	514
Hungary	494	490	503
Portugal	489	487	493
Macao-China	487	525	511

Okay, so I don’t want to be as oppressive as China, or as boring as Finland, to dismiss two countries in just one prejudiced adjective each. But they have as much technology as we do – and they aren’t moaning about being stupid.

Are all the scientists at the Large-Hadron Collider struggling to work the coffee machine and being forced to re-sit their Cookery practical? Methinks not, and there appears to be a little technology involved with their work.

We are not more stupid or more intelligent because of technology. Yes we can look anything up, so we don’t need to remember phone numbers and dates – but we remember how to use our phones, our passwords, sites, user-names. We are aware of the news not just at home but across the globe. We have to be able to handle much more information now than we ever have – it’s just in a different form.

Some old skills are lost, but new ones arrive to take their place. Kids don’t need to remember phone numbers – just as we didn’t have to know how to use social networking. We are not more stupid or more intelligent – just different.

In ye olden times there were complaints that there were too many books – and people would suffer ‘information overload’. Sounds familiar?

Also sounds ridiculous?

Now… it’s been nearly four minutes since I last LIKED something…