TeachThinkTech

Via World-Shaker.

Excerpts via Diigo.

I’m going to do something that’s frowned upon in many bien-pensant circles: I’m going to cheerlead for technology. Let’s look at where we are at present:

In developed economies that are free of totalitarianism, it is economically feasible and technically trivial for most people to express themselves, as much as they like, in any form or media that can be digitally transmitted—words, music, pictures, video, code, etc. Whatever they create can be made available, almost instantly and freely, around the world, to everyone else in a similar society.

It’s easy for these people to instantly access a huge amount of free information on almost any topic imaginable and to sort through this information with some level of precision.

There are over 4.5 billionmobile-phone subscriptions in the world today. One of the globalization pundit’s favorite lines used to be that over half of the world’s population had never placed a phone call. Anyone think that’s still the case?

None of this was the case 20 years ago—not even close. And isn’t all of it really good news, on balance? Turkle says: “I see part of my role in this conversation as giving nostalgia a good name.” Well, I see part of my role here as restoring progress’ good name, making it once again something to celebrate rather than disparage.

Carr and Turkle are particularly worried about the bad habits that result from “always on, always on you” technologies. And I see their point; there certainly seem to be more ways for me to distract myself now.

But the neuroscientist Steven Pinker got it exactly right in a great New York Timesopinion piece: “… distraction is not a new phenomenon. The solution is not to bemoan technology but to develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life.”

Countering the popular arguments of Nicholas Carr (The Shallows, Is Google Making Us Stupid?) without mentioning him by name, author and Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker explains why new media are not making us stupid after all in a great new op-ed piece for the New York Times.

Far from breeding shallowness, Pinker notes that the rise of information technology has fueled rapid scientific progress and helped reinvigorate and democratize the arts and humanities, writing:

For a reality check today, take the state of science, which demands high levels of brainwork and is measured by clear benchmarks of discovery. These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint. If electronic media were hazardous to intelligence, the quality of science would be plummeting. Yet discoveries are multiplying like fruit flies, and progress is dizzying. Other activities in the life of the mind, like philosophy, history and cultural criticism, are likewise flourishing, as anyone who has lost a morning of work to the Web site Arts & Letters Daily can attest.

While Pinker acknowledges the Web comes with infinite opportunities for distraction, he essentially says, “don’t panic.”  A few simple self-regulation strategies like ignoring the cell phone off at the dinner table and turning of Twitter and e-mail notifications when engaged in deep work can eliminate most of the negative side-effects of tech use (which, Pinker suggests, have been overhyped anyway.)

He concludes:

The new media have caught on for a reason. Knowledge is increasing exponentially; human brainpower and waking hours are not. Fortunately, the Internet and information technologies are helping us manage, search and retrieve our collective intellectual output at different scales, from Twitter and previews to e-books and online encyclopedias. Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart.

Read the full article here.