Are we getting dumber as our devices grow smarter?
“And AC said, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!”
And there was light — — “
‘The Last Question’, by Isaac Asimov- the rockstar of science fiction.
I’m almost convinced that Asimov was predicting our future when he wrote that masterpiece.
Looking around at the world that has gunned its way from striking fire off of flint in damp caves to being able to pick up gravitational waves 1.4 billion light years away from the earth, I’m almost convinced that soon, artificial intelligence will take over human existence and bajillions of years later, the universe will be reborn, devoid of human footprints.
But forgive the digression — my obsession with an AI apocalypse is an off-shoot of my original rumination — how strong a grip have we let technology hold over us? This poses the bigger question — is all our intellectual capability being channelled into the tech we create?
In scarier terms, are we turning back the cogs of evolution? Sprinting backwards with every step science takes forward?
Despite the large evidence and research that may prove otherwise, I don’t think humanity is getting stupid, but we sure have turned into lazy, dependent sloths of the 21st century.
Our century has seen the largest rise in rates of human development, and one of its most contributing factors is the mind-boggling science and technology we have harnessed. We have managed to allot the rudimentary tasks to computers, and have in the process made our lives easier and given ourselves more time to indulge in the things that matter. Powerful devices like the personal computer, smartphones, and e-readers have streamlined simple tasks that now take up less of our time. Smart inventions like the Tesla automobiles have begun to revolutionize the way we view our energy consumption.
Long story short, we have some amazing tech at our fingertips, 24 x 7.
But with great power comes great responsibility, and what do we do with all the extra time we have now? Play longer stretches of Flappy Bird and lose our last dregs of self-esteem in the endless scrolling of our Facebook news feed? While smarter devices may have eased our work, they’ve sure enabled our productivity levels to fall faster than the stock market in 2008.
Today, we see kids holed up in their homes, glued to the shiny iPads and Xboxes their parents use as pacifiers, and as a result, we have a generation growing up with a lack of emotional stimuli, failing to form that innate bond with the outer world that we came to find through a childhood spent playing in the great outdoors and interacting with peers. Human interaction is the price we pay for an easy way to quiet the child during feeding time. Adults aren’t any better off, though.
From the amount of time we spend fidgeting with our smartphones, double-tapping on Instagram, swiping down on Facebook, tap-tapping away on WhatsApp, I predict the next evolutionary change in our features will be a permanent downward bend of the neck. These addictive habits are feeding our tendencies towards procrastination, making it seem like we’re doing something while we actually aren’t. With multiple avenues of distraction and our increasing inclination to multi-task, it’s no surprise that our deadlines have become scarier and it becomes harder to figure out where the time’s flown away.
Studies have proved that a growing dependence on search engines for our purposes of research is, in fact, causing a degradation of our ability to commit things to long-term memory, and is also messing with our short-term memory. Flipping through a colossal amount of data in a single day, it’s no surprise that our brain finds it difficult to retain any of it, especially since there is no revision or analysis done once the quick search is done.
Here’s yet another way humanity has scored in the Stupid column: going to bed with our smartphones glued to the tips of our noses. The blue light these devices emit suppresses melatonin, a hormone that helps with our circadian rhythms and sleep timing. Messing around with smart gadgets before sleep destroys the body’s chances of having a healthy reboot and the next day, our productivity takes a bigger dip from a lack of restful sleep.
To state a blatant fact, we’ve done a terrible job handling the huge power surge our tech has given us.
Are we getting dumber whiles devices are getting smarter? No. The direct correlation is just hyperbole. But the indirect repercussions are grave and scary. We have become lazier, less inclined to engage in human interactions of a fruitful nature, more prone to sabotaging our own health, and more dependent on our digital appendages to get through the day. Does all of this, together, make us dumber? Perhaps.
Writer: Anjana Soman
Editor: Vedika Agarwal
