It`s a well-known fact that technology makes you stupid. The earliest example I can recall of this cornerstone of ageism was the refusal by the Cape provincial education department in 1985 to let us use calculators in math exams, since this would atrophy the part of your brain that puts two and two together.
It was thought sophisticated at the time to sneer at anything the department did, and so we sneered at this. "Make us stupid, indeed. Nothing can make you stupid," we said, before we`d thought it through too well. But something made me leave the calculator alone, and as a result, I can add and subtract pretty well, although nobody marks my work anymore, and it`s hard to tell without using a calculator.
They were right, of course. I know of other examples too. In the 1990s, everyone knew cellphones fried your brain. Nobody measured the power output and radiation, because we had nothing to compare the newfangled milliwatts with. But all around, people were putting little fish-like buttons on their phones to absorb the death rays.
There are infinitely more gadgets now than we ever had, things to help you turn your brain to mush with, in new and interesting ways.
Carel Alberts, journalist, ITWeb
Peculiar thing, though - it was only the nerds, I remember, who put themselves through this. As it turned out, nobody got fried too badly, not so as you could tell. But then, we knew that you only need 10% of your brain, so it turned out not to be such a big deal after all. We knew this, because we`d heard it from many people, whose names we can`t remember.
Oh, we were stupid, all right. And it was probably all the fault of calculators and cellphones.
Infernal ringtones
But the world has changed for good. There are infinitely more gadgets now than we ever had, things to help you turn your brain to mush with, in new and interesting ways. Everyone has got gadgets. Sometimes, we carry this state of being into adulthood, and to such adults I`ll refer to as "the new children".
Part of the reason kids today (including the new children) are even more stupid and weird than we were, if that`s possible, is the fact that they like such weird things.
Take ringtones. Ringtones will soon outsell CD singles, putting the Britpop scene squarely at the mercy of consumer communications and phones that today can manage more than one bleep at a time. Of all the incredibly dumb, derivative, tone-deaf things I`ve ever heard, this must be the dumbest. I can understand if kids want to listen to tragically vacuous, prefabricated 16-year-old Pop Idols, grinding their little hips to the keening of their own piping little voices. Because kids don`t know any better. But ringtones?
It gets better. Another essential icon of the musical rebellion of youth is the pop chart. Well, it`s about to be upstaged. Britain is soon launching a ringtone chart. Perhaps all music ever was to teenagers was the chance to be really, really irritating. I can respect that. It`s a hallowed tradition.
But then there`s the fact that mobile phone camera sales will this year exceed sales of film cameras and digital cameras together. If you`ve ever seen the quality of images from most camera phones, you`ll know it`s not time to buy one yet. And not only are these phones selling billions and billions more every year, they`re taking sales away from perfectly good digital cameras and film cameras, previously bought by enthusiasts. Now that`s really dumb.
The really unsettling thing is that only some of the buyers are children, and an increasing number is made up of the new children.
It`s spreading.
Share
