Will a Wired World Have Nothing to Say?
A business associate once remarked that anyone not understanding computers would, by the next century, be considered illiterate. At the time, he was working out the glitches in a video game that featured little pixelated bugs rolling up, er, dung balls. The player with the most at game’s end won. How did Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein develop their minds without that experience?
This was in 1992, and I’ve heard similar expressions countless times. They usually come from those who confuse data with knowledge, who mistake information for insight. If the computer is bringing such momentous intellectual gains, where is the evidence of it? Only 42% of the 2003 freshman class in the California State University system were proficient in math and English. SAT scores, reading levels and other measurements of achievement reported by the press show a steady decline and a consistent lowering of levels of understanding, knowledge and abilities, most markedly since the God-like computer came on the scene.
Certainly there are social, cultural and economic reasons for some of it, but the most basic cause may be neurological. Our brain is made up of billions of cells and trillions of connections that have developed over an evolutionary span of millions of years. It is hard-wired to run things, to do things. And we may unwittingly have reached a point where we’ve begun an irreversible trend to prevent it from doing them.
The brain does not grow, does not develop as a passive organ. The initial output may be passive -- a child hears words and learns to speak; she hears music and smiles. It is active participation and involvement of the higher centers of thinking that result in learning and in increased mental capability.
Staring at a computer monitor, typing at a keyboard or watching a television screen are essentially passive activities. And the brain can’t distinguish between bad and good. “Masterpiece Theater” is as damaging as Jerry Springer to a growing brain. Playing a repetitive video game doesn’t stimulate thinking. We now have an entire generation that was raised by and on television, and then easily segued into video games, music videos and computer screens. The necessary steps of learning, of contemplation, of thoughtful consideration were skipped. They fast-forwarded past it. And it can’t be rewound.
When I was a child, one of my eyes turned in, causing double vision. The brain couldn’t handle the confusion, so it shut the eye off. Physically, the eye looks normal, moves correctly, but I have no vision in it. I recently asked my doctor why the brain doesn’t turn the vision back on now that the eye is straight. It seems there is a window of opportunity before a child reaches the age of 6. If not corrected by then, the eye will never work. If parts of the brain aren’t used or needed, the brain shuts them down.
I’m not a neo-Luddite, terrified of technology. I’d rather cut my grass with a power mower than a pair of scissors. But having a lawn mower doesn’t make me a landscape architect. A computer is a tool, no more, no less. Expensive, complicated and fast -- but dumb. And handing either mower or computer to children too early results in badly cut lawns. And missing brain cells.
When future historians (if there are any) write of the decline of American intelligence, they will focus on the digital revolution. And discover, with irony, it was called progress. We became connected to everyone. With nothing to say.
*
Sterling Rock Johnson is a writer in Palm Springs.
