[435] Good Question

Is smart technology making us dumber?

This was the question during a debate that I think speaks to a place where my thoughts have begun to converge. It's a place that's reminded of how important it is to clarify questions and work out definitions. It's a place that often wonders whether there are any real “debates” and not simply opportunities to be spoon fed good or bad “arguments” towards presumed fair estimations of where someone is coming from.

To me it's a little like asking the alcoholic if they're an alcoholic, or if they're in denial. “Yes,” they may say, “but I feel perfectly fine!” A presumed acceptance of the question and understanding of both alcoholism and denial, but an entirely different mechanism of reasoning is used to justify continuing the behavior.

Take having a car. I'm in the first couple chapters of “One Dimensional Man” by Herbert Marcuse. In it he criticizes “modern” commercialization of the 60's that's eerily on point today. He asks if having a car has enabled us and made us more “free.” Conceptually, it's tied us to fossil fuels. Personally, I've got no bigger burden financially than paying when mine breaks down. To the extent that it arrests your willingness to walk, it's not freeing up the mobility of your muscles. If you primarily use it to drive yourself to a job you hate or other obligation that you couldn't reach without one, the snowballing seems readily apparent.

It's the same kind of catch-all-isms that I read about “Millennials.” For my part, born in 1988, I can draw dramatic differences between me and even my brother born in '91. Also, people who were old enough to have truly suffer the death of Kurt Cobain seem to share a kind of nostalgia or reference package slightly removed from mine. Kids born in the mid-late 90's are practically alien to me, and my forays in trying to work with or converse with them (as they creep into the bar scene and apply for jobs I post to Craigslist) have made me long for an era of relative complacency when it came to contemplating your place in a job.

But how would I even arrive at asking a better question without the little extrapolations and focusing in the broader theme? I don't know, that's why I feel frequently compelled to write. Nothing about my experience on reddit or facebook prompts me to explore the degree to which I hate the word “Millennial.” If anything, those places would suggest no one cares what I think or am abjectly unreasonable for framing the question in such an obtuse way. To the extent you agree with that level of “critical analysis” you'll perhaps allow yourself the window as to why I side with the “smart technology makes us dumber” camp.

Of course reading and comprehending something are two different things. Merely engaging verses applying. And I think it's a question that is almost impossible to answer “in general.” I also think this is kind of unfortunate, as there are new studies frequently speaking to our interrupted attention and impediments of retention. Yet, at least with me, when I feel the information overload, I put it down to examine it. I shut the smart stuff off and look for a compatriot to talk to or give myself time to decompress. I'd argue it's making “us” dumber, but has allowed me to be “smarter.”

Access isn't style when it comes to engagement. I use my car to make money in time efficient ways. I hate paying to fix it, I hate more not being able to conceive of the money fixing it as an investment. If I only drove it around town, which has buses and nowhere I'm contractually obligated to show up, and it cost me $1000 a year to maintain, my car would be making me dumber. Because I fix it to make a few grand every month, I internally estimate more freedom than burden. It's worth noting I hate being tied to money in the first place, but one level at a time I suppose.

Of course big questions like that are supposed to comment about culture though. We can justify anything to ourselves. How would we make a meaningful contribution as to how to conceive of society? Would it even be meaningful? Are you going to be burdened by the knowledge that the “overwhelming consensus” is that you're dumber by being on your phone? It seems we're not persuaded, at least in the U.S., that even things more tangible and obvious like climate change matter. How then to prioritize where my pocket window of “sociability” fits?

A lot of questions, not a lot of answers. And I think that's the kind of pool from where we can hopefully get glances at wisdom in a way you can't by looking at the internet. The internet is, perhaps arbitrary, answers. The internet is our pre-planned and publicized selves. It's the internal monologues thrust at each other under the guise and respectability of the word “debate.” I often lament that I don't know what people are thinking, which is the most depressingly ironic thing you could ever say in the modern era. I know they think they're correct. I know they think what they say matters. I know sometimes they feel motivated to share a link that allegedly encapsulates the depth and capacity of their position. But I rarely get a feel for what they're actually thinking.

And I think the degree to which we lose those distinctions will speak to whether the big picture question leads towards “dumb or smart.” Just because a new technology is here and people always complain with the same complaints doesn't mean those complaints don't hold water. Maybe TV when used to marathon shows for weeks on end was/is as culpable as dumbing things down as the internet for some people. Maybe the radio too when it wasn't employed to give fireside chats.

It seems the best thing you can do is to try and practice awareness. Think about when you're overloaded. Think about whether the answers you're always finding are actually speaking towards meaningful decisions and opportunities in your life. Think if your conception of “friends,” “thoughtfulness,” or “freedom” are enriched or sinking into a pit of endlessly reinforced noise. And if you're not the kind of person to do that before new technologies, I doubt you'd take anymore from this digression or that sentiment given your “modern sensibilities.”