Technology Is Making Me Dumb

Posted by Raul on February 24, 2010

It is so easy to feel smart when we can get something done with just a couple of clicks in the computer; so easy to feel entrepreneurial when text messaging or using the cell phone throughout the day at any time for whatever we just remembered to ask to someone away, but then, what if we had to go on with our lives without all the technology available today?

No microwave oven, no refrigerator, no telephones, no email, cars, etc. So easy to destroy an entire civilization…just turn off the electricity for the next six months!

Only a couple of decades ago many people could cook something simple, but not today; many people could fix basic stuff in their vehicles and around the house, yet today seems to be tasks for experts to call in.

Technology allows us to do more things in less time, which is a good thing, but if we rely too much in it we pass to the point where we become unable to live without it, we become dependant and requiring its existence in our surroundings in order to survive and keep going.

We don’t need memory anymore, we don’t need to calculate, we don’t need to create plans, all we have to do is use our technology to do that for us, and for everything else we can “Google it”

What would happens if suddenly, for whatever the reason, we loose all technology available and have to go back to the times when we had to cultivate the land for food and create our clothing from animal skin? Even not going so extreme but just thinking of having only the technology available to us in the 50’s? And to a bigger extreme; taking out of the equation cell phones, GPS, personal computers, etc, just going back to the 70’s would be catastrophic for many.

It is so easy to feel smart when using all these new technologies we have access to nowadays yet if we think of what could we do without it. Even in small, little details, like when we don’t have a car because of repairs being performed and we have to go somewhere, how complicated it becomes. Or when we don’t have electricity and still have to cook and do our normal activities at home; don’t you still flip the switch when entering a room at night, even if you know that there is no electricity at that moment?

We become so dependant on technology that we stop thinking of living without it and what it’ll be like. Some time ago, with this expanding fear of terrorist attacks, when people I know were talking of a possibility of the city being bombed, some of them hurried up and got prepared for the destruction fitting an extra refrigerator in the basement and stuffed it with frozen food for that possible occurrence; but there’ll be no electricity! Are they going to eat all that frozen food in one day?

I’m not saying we should go back to live without technology; that would be impossible and not logic anyway, but at least, shouldn’t we think of how would we perform our daily activities and how those activities would be changed due to not having the aid of this beloved technology of ours.

If we think about it, in general we don’t know how to cultivate the land, how to care for animals, and then process them for food, we don’t know how to build a house starting from cutting the trees and making furniture using just a bunch of hand tools. (There’ll be no “Google” remember?)

Think of it as going back to living like in “Little House on the Prairie” TV series. It looks pretty nostalgic but how many of us could make it without going nuts, at least for a while.

With this, I’m not saying we should cut off technology and go back to the beginnings so to be prepared, but rather just take a moment to think and stop asking for more solutions from our devices and start seeing them as for what they are, tools to make things faster and better, but not a replacement for our brains and thinking capabilities so we don’t loose our memory, our capabilities of association and our dexterity and therefore we can keep learning and having control of our lives.

And if you excuse me now, I’ll press “Enter” to publish this post automatically