The other day, I stumbled on this book, “The Dumbest Generation” written by Mark Bauerlein, some professor at Emory. Essentially, the book argues that people under 30 are less smart than previous generations because of things like the internet and video games and facebook and wikipedia. And we don’t read as much. Of course, the book is sprinkled with lovely statistics about how no one can name all the supreme court justices and other vitally important facts about our lives, and how knowledge retention is vital to the nation’s survival.
The thing is, it could be argued that developmentally, our generation is much better off than our parents’. I did a class in this recently in university about how our generation’s brains work differently than the previous ones.
Basically our brains have adapted to our short attention spans and we’ve developed the ability to absorb information not so much better, but differently. We can multi-task efficiently and still retain information, whereas the generation before us would have to read and re-read something, highlighting it several times, quiz themselves several times etc.
Due to our relatively shorter attention spans and the amount of information we have access to, and the speed that we can get it at, we’re able to retain it… differently?
For example, I have a little nuance where I tend to highlight text as I’m reading it on a website, clicking and double clicking sporadically, which I guess is a way I focus on something I’m reading (I’m sure lots of you do that). If I’m trying to show my mom something to read, she’ll be reading over my shoulder and I’ll be highlighting away and she’ll get frustrated at me and tell me to stop because she can’t concentrate.
How many web pages do you have up in different tabs and windows right now? How many different programs do you have?
Videogames and computers haven’t necessarily rotted our brains, it’s fine tuned it, in a way.
And when it comes down to it, years from now, there will be technology that allows information to be instantly uploaded into the brain. All the oldies will claim the new generation is less intelligent because they gain information too easily. “Sure they have knowledge, but they have no EXPERIENCE! If knowledge comes too easily, surely creativity and invention will die” They’ll all say.
Shit changes you old farts, usually for the better. Deal with it.
And they used a Gundam on the cover… what the heck?!
