Recently, I posted some thoughts on inner conflicts I deal with regarding our overdependence on technology.
From the Dumbestgeneration.com website:
"The dawn of the digital age once aroused our hopes: the Internet, e-mail, blogs, and interactive and ultra-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their know-how and understanding of technology to form the vanguard of this new, hyper-informed era.
That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen.
The technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their minds had the opposite effect.
According to recent reports from government agencies, foundations, survey firms, and scholarly institutions, most young people in the United States neither read literature (or fully know how), work reliably (just ask employers), visit cultural institutions (of any sort), nor vote (most can’t even understand a simple ballot). They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount foundations of American history, or name any of their local political representatives. What do they happen to excel at is – each other. They spend unbelievable amounts of time electronically passing stories, pictures, tunes, and texts back and forth, savoring the thrill of peer attention and dwelling in a world of puerile banter and coarse images."
A few days ago, I posted a Twitter and Facebook update stating that I was "pondering the decline of intellectual curiosity in Western Civilization."
That day, I was thinking about how many issues we face in society could be related to that topic.
Appropriately enough, a friend of mine actually replied to this by saying, "Dude....you are seriously too deep. Are you a half empty or half full fella? Have faith in your fellow man:-)"
A few other replies were as follows:
- "you're wasting your time man, westerners are too indifferent..."
- "We're much better off when society watches the boob tube 5+ hours a day, don't you think?"
- "really? Why? Oh who cares anyway..."
For the last one, I really liked the ignorance and apathy reference.
A lot more on this subject is bouncing around inside my head, but it probably won't come out coherently and I'm out of time for blogging today...
From the Dumbestgeneration.com website:
"The dawn of the digital age once aroused our hopes: the Internet, e-mail, blogs, and interactive and ultra-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their know-how and understanding of technology to form the vanguard of this new, hyper-informed era.
That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen.
The technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their minds had the opposite effect.
According to recent reports from government agencies, foundations, survey firms, and scholarly institutions, most young people in the United States neither read literature (or fully know how), work reliably (just ask employers), visit cultural institutions (of any sort), nor vote (most can’t even understand a simple ballot). They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount foundations of American history, or name any of their local political representatives. What do they happen to excel at is – each other. They spend unbelievable amounts of time electronically passing stories, pictures, tunes, and texts back and forth, savoring the thrill of peer attention and dwelling in a world of puerile banter and coarse images."
A few days ago, I posted a Twitter and Facebook update stating that I was "pondering the decline of intellectual curiosity in Western Civilization."
That day, I was thinking about how many issues we face in society could be related to that topic.
Appropriately enough, a friend of mine actually replied to this by saying, "Dude....you are seriously too deep. Are you a half empty or half full fella? Have faith in your fellow man:-)"
A few other replies were as follows:
- "you're wasting your time man, westerners are too indifferent..."
- "We're much better off when society watches the boob tube 5+ hours a day, don't you think?"
- "really? Why? Oh who cares anyway..."
For the last one, I really liked the ignorance and apathy reference.
A lot more on this subject is bouncing around inside my head, but it probably won't come out coherently and I'm out of time for blogging today...