- Joined
- Aug 20, 2000
- Posts
- 60,434
To preface, I am not writing this post on my phone with autocorrect, so I don't have any excuses for any mistakes herein.
In 2001, I would squirm every time I would mistakenly type in "teh" or "waht" quickly clicking the edit button to fix the mistake. Today, these issues are mostly forgotten as we have autocorrect to replace the mistakes, but at the same time, they often replace what the autocorrect cannot parse as predictable English. For example, if you want to write swathes of people, it may autocorrect to deaths of people.
Smartphones became widespread around 2006; they are now old enough to marry and have children in the eyes of some religions. We use our technology to augment our brains, but only to a point - and that is only to the point that we need it to. A superficial level, glossing the surface of any topic.
And I am saying this as someone who isn't battling people on social media, but rather still engaging people face to face in the winter of my youth, as a reluctant member of Generation X. Fro the millennials the reality is that they probably buffer the gaps in knowledge quicker with superficial and impermanent data. No need to memorize. This is equivalent to disregarding the multiplication tables because you always had a calculator handy.
TL;DR: technology as a whole has dumbed humans down to the docility of Brahman cows, self-invested in the sacredness of their own existences.
How has technology weakened your brain stats?
In 2001, I would squirm every time I would mistakenly type in "teh" or "waht" quickly clicking the edit button to fix the mistake. Today, these issues are mostly forgotten as we have autocorrect to replace the mistakes, but at the same time, they often replace what the autocorrect cannot parse as predictable English. For example, if you want to write swathes of people, it may autocorrect to deaths of people.
Smartphones became widespread around 2006; they are now old enough to marry and have children in the eyes of some religions. We use our technology to augment our brains, but only to a point - and that is only to the point that we need it to. A superficial level, glossing the surface of any topic.
And I am saying this as someone who isn't battling people on social media, but rather still engaging people face to face in the winter of my youth, as a reluctant member of Generation X. Fro the millennials the reality is that they probably buffer the gaps in knowledge quicker with superficial and impermanent data. No need to memorize. This is equivalent to disregarding the multiplication tables because you always had a calculator handy.
- For me, I used to memorize phone numbers, but now I just remember numbers from before 2001.
- I know the difference between your and you're, but autocorrect doesn't, so I usually look stupid, but it doesn't matter, because so does everyone else.
- I can talk about think and share opinions on matters that I lack any deep understanding of, thanks to wikipedia, and argue with other people who have no understanding either, because neither of us give a shit enough to spend the time and learn, as we don't need to in order to "win".
TL;DR: technology as a whole has dumbed humans down to the docility of Brahman cows, self-invested in the sacredness of their own existences.
How has technology weakened your brain stats?
I blame autocorrect on my diminishing spelling skills. People like to point at social media as the fall of civilization, but I put way more blame on autocorrect.