Quote:
Originally Posted by Bagor
You deviate from what I would consider clever. Again speed or efficiancy does not equate to cleverness. The individual is not responsible for the efficiancy, the machine/software (or the individuals that designed it) are. Comprehension equates to cleverness IMO. Just because someone like Phanuthier (an individual) can help to provide a tool that makes a task quicker does not make the end user himself cleverer. They exercised significantly less brainpower to obtain the same result.
And what make you think that people that plotted graphs on pen and paper stopped short of the interpretation process?
Technology IMO no doubt has huge benefits. It's also responsible IMO for a lot of dumbing down of society.
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I think you missed what I meant about the cleverness and the tools, I believe that the end user who saved time by using those tools can now apply that brainpower and time on different problems. Consider the advent of the computer, did the workweek really get shorter because of it, or did we just find more things to do in a workday, thereby forcing people to developer broader skillsets.
I would imagine the work asked of administrative secrataries of the 60's or 70's are much different than those today because of their ability to utilize new tools and are forced to maintain wider skillsets to be employable.
Stopping short of the interpretation process has more to do with the time involved, I would stop because I was tired of spending 3 hours solving some graph, take a break and then work. With technology, the graph is made in 10 minutes (with rendering time, it's a big graph) and spend the remaining 2 hours and 50 minutes figuring out what to do with that information.
Your opinion of technology dumbing down society is also interesting. I would imagine many people would have forgotten how to add fractions properly since they probably haven't executed that skill in a long time. However a quick reminder would most likely be all it would take to relearn and perform fraction operations again.
Is being clever exemplified because someone can do it without the use of technology, or being able to learn how to do it in the first place? Regardless of whether or not they have forgotten it.
Have some people allowed technology to do things for them that they shouldn't... probably, but it is hard to say those individuals makes an entire society lazier, less capable than a previous.
Consider us having this conversation? is this dumb because Internet makes it easier to have this conversation? Or rather than me sitting here watch Harry Potter without doing anything, someone is forcing me to reconsider my views.
Perhaps it is how individuals utilize tools that decide what is clever and what is not... I can think of a bunch of ways the internet would make me dumber. That thread on gelinas coming back is one.