How good software makes us more stupider

[thewayne]

(poor grammar intentional)

Interesting story on the BBC site that the better software is, the less we think and the poorer our problem solving skills become. It had an interesting bit about London cabbies: the part of their brain that deals with spatial reasoning, i.e. city maps, is much better developed than most people. They have to pass a test showing that they know the city before they can get their license, and they have to do it from memory: no GPS satnav device. It would be interesting to know if they've ever been studied as a group for onset of dementia and Alzheimers as they age to see if their rate differs significantly from the general population.

I can partially agree with the conclusion:
Mr Carr says that this simple experiment could suggest that as computer software becomes easier to use, making complicated tasks easier, we risk losing the ability to properly learn something - in effect "short-circuiting" the brain.

"When you think about how we're coming to depend on software for all sorts of intellectual chores, for finding information, for socialising - you need to start worrying that it's not giving us, as individuals, enough room to act for ourselves."

I qualify it with 'partially' because the test that they performed can't be applied universally across all life, and they state that it was a simple experiment specifically about software. In my job, as a database administrator, I need to know how to do the most important parts of my job, and I need to know how to quickly find what I don't know how to do exactly off-hand. I don't need to immediately know how to set up replication as this is not something done on a regular basis, but I can find it quickly and get the job done pretty efficiently nonetheless.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11263559

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/09/13/1342209/How-Good-Software-Makes-Us-Stupid

Comments

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

OPAC? Wasn't that built by Oompa-Loompas for Mr. Wonka?

[silveradept]

Stop that! Stop that! NO Singing!

Also, "OPAC? What's the library doing raising money for Barack Obama?"

For the un-acronymed, whenever they may be reading, OPAC = Online Public Access Catalog. It's the computers that replaced the card catalog.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I spent a lot of time going through card catalogs as a kid, heck, even as an adult. And I always enjoyed browsing encyclopedias. It's easy to go between related articles on Wikipedia, but not as much fun as a heavy book.

Have you seen the new book publishing feature in Wikipedia? Pretty cool!

[silveradept]

No, I haven't seen this new feature.

There is some part of the serendipity of browsing an encyclopedia, but I happen to like hypertext better. Although, it does lead to the problem of TV Tropes Will Suck Your Soul.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

The Wikipedia feature is major cool. You can select an article or multiple, then download them all as a PDF. You can also send said collection to a Wikimedia print site and get it hard-copy and bound for what I think is a quite reasonable rate.

The selection can be re-ordered, divided in to chapters, and you can create a cover for the whole mess.

I liked the serendipity of looking stuff up in an encyclopedia, I suppose a lot could be what you grew up with. I was quite amused by the fact that my parent's encyclopedia pre-dated the end of the Vietnam War! Made for some interesting reading. And that is the big weakness of the printed encyclopedia, you have to buy the yearbooks and put the little stickers in your originals to cross-ref them. Not viable long-term.

[silveradept]

Ah, that is quite interesting. I wonder how many people would take advantage of having a static copy of Wikipedia articles. That will then change on them almost as soon as they're printed. As you mentioned, the big encyclopedia drawback is that with time, your information becomes riddled with the needs of cross-references to the point where you have to scrap it and start again. Electronic, subscription-based stuff updates automatically. Although then you don't actually own the stuff, so it disappears if you stop subscribing...

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

A lot of the update-vs-stability point of Wikipedia depends on the current topicality or controversy of the subject. For example, I'm taking a comparative religion course right now, and though the articles might be updated, they're not going to fundamentally change as the subject matter is pretty stable.