12 of 53

No

Write now Article Tools

Page 2 of 2

our forebears out as well. The slide-rule and the abacus both served to help people crunch numbers, allowing them to focus on the overall picture instead of every single math fact. No one living today pre-dates those tools, and should think twice before they criticize technology. And then, I should point out that a solid understanding of math has allowed computer programmers to create "Mathematica", which is such an amazing math tool that it can solve convoluted calculus integrals that would leave me crying for weeks.

How many critics count themselves smarter than Albert Einstein? I ask, because Einstein was horrible at math. He struggled in school - his math teacher labelled him as a hopeless case, in fact. His mind is now frozen - not because it was impoverished, but because we recognized that it was so very potent that we hope to learn from it.

People might worry that children don't read books as much now. That's not the same as not reading - the internet can supply a wealth of stories and knowledge. There are even efforts to place classic works on the web, so that people will have more convenient access to them. Perhaps your daughter won't want to pick up the bulky paper version of Great Expectations, but finding it online she may start into it. Better yet, there's no due date, so she can keep reading at her pace with no pressure. People worry that chatting and texting are destroying children's writing skills. I wonder how many of them were stenographers, or learned shorthand. The ability to compact information is a valuable tool, allowing it to be transfered from one person to another more rapidly. With the sum total of our knowledge already well beyond anything one person can know, it is perhaps more amazing that any of us continue to communicate with unwieldy sentences and atrociously expansive words.

I could go on with any subject. Technology touches everything, making the basics easier and also bringing knowledge to more people than ever before. It is clear that technology robs us of nothing. We could still choose to live in stone huts even to this day if we liked. No one would stop us from living on a diet of berries and mushrooms either, though I'm certain they would laugh. More to the point though - no one stops us from choosing not to use our minds. No one ever has either. Throughout history there have been people who sought to acquire and apply knowledge. There have also always been people who got by learning as little as possible, doing as little as possible. The attitude is often contagious, and can be passed on from one generation to the next, or from friend to friend. Technology has made it possible for even a lazy soul to make a decent living today, and so perhaps more people choose to take the lazy route. The key is that people are choosing to impoverish their minds, technology is not at fault. Technology has also made it possible to learn more and do more than ever before with our minds. Technology is but a tool. We are responsible for our minds.

Learn more about this author, Ernest Capraro.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

• << previous page
• 1
• 2

Add your voice

Know something about Does technology impoverish the mind??
We want to hear your view. Write now!