Technophobia

[nicknards17]

In the article “Does The Internet Make Us Stupid” by Hermann Maurer, he states that information and communication technology advances have negatively affected people’s memory, mental concentration,  and attention span. This comic shows a college aged teen who spends all of her time on the internet. Her father then proceeds to prove the point as to how generation y’s memory and attention span can be affected. 

[nicknards17]

The comic portrays the life of a college age student who spends all of his time on the computer instead of going outside and talking to people. In the piece, “Internet, Society and Culture: Communication Processes Before and After The Internet.” by Tim Jordan, he reports on a communication study of todays teens vs those before the internet. The study shows that peoples communication skills today are significantly less then in past generations. When people behave like the comic character there communication skills are dramatically worse the in previous generations. Yet, if they were to go out and interact in the world there skills can increase.

[nicknards17]

The comic brings to mind the problem that some students use the internet to complete homework assignments instead of acquiring and using their own knowledge. Ian Leslie, the writer of the article “Google Makes Us All Dumber: The Neuroscience Of Search Engines,” states that, “The Internet can make us feel omniscient. But it’s the feeling of not knowing which inspires the desire to learn.” The students that use the internet to complete their homework using the internet have a false sense of knowledge. Students think that they know what they are doing because they completed the homework, but they know nothing and that is shown on the exam. Learning the information by completing the homework is beneficial for learning.

-Matthew Grooms

[nicknards17]

The problem of using the internet to study is presented in the comic. In Herre von Oostendorp’s book, Cognition in a Digital World, he says “Communication, and maybe even more, competence development on the Web, build on an implicit assumption that everyone wants to cooperate, contribute, and give and take. However, it can be expected that some users will only take without giving.” The use of the internet in studying is not a very productive way to learn because most people do not use it to try problems and understand the work, they just see how others complete problems instead. Using physical tools and doing practice problems to practice the work is better than using the internet.

-Matthew Grooms

[nicknards17]

In the article by Ian Leslie, “Google Makes Us All Dumber: The Neuroscience of Search Engines”, he states that people today are using search engines to answer all of their everyday questions. This comic shows a teen who is not happy presumably because search engines are not adequately helping him. The Nobel Prize winning therapist tells him that the internet is making him unhappy because it is making him less creative. When people do this they are brought to an straight answer which ends the discussion. Yet when people answer their problems in more traditional ways they achieve better results and create a drive to learn more. 

-Nick Nardslico

[nicknards17]

This comic argues the point that using the internet to complete assignments does not have the same benefits as doing assignments by learning the information. Betsy Sparrow, a Ph.D. graduate of Harvard University, wrote the scholarly article “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips.” In her article she talks about her research by saying, ”Participants apparently did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statements they had read.” The use of technology while doing homework does not help people learn because when the brain knows that information can be looked up again at the click of a mouse, it is less likely to remember the information. When people can actually get away from technology to learn, there is a better chance of remembering information.

-Matthew Grooms