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Chris Andrews

Cell phones make kids faster, dumber, The Web of Language - 0 views

  • Last year the Librarian of Congress warned that texting was responsible for a drastic decline in American sentences, but that opinion wasn't backed up by any scientific evidence. Now, a team of Australian psychologists has come a step closer to proving that mobile phones are destroying our ability to think. The researchers show that children who use mobile phones respond to higher-level cognitive tasks faster, but less accurately, than those who don't.
  • Australians
  • Specifically, the psychologists found that as mobile phone use increased, children learned to perform tasks more quickly, but their ability to remember things declined:
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  • mobile phone use also correlates with impulsivity
  • (For other research on texting, click here and here; for the impact of texting on literature, click here; for its impact on politics, click here; for its impact on language development, click here).
    • Chris Andrews
       
      interesting spate of other sources, potentially.
  • But reports that cell phones are destroying our brains are premature
  • All too often, we blame our technologies for whatever ails us. According to Carolyn Marvin (1988), the telephone that Alexander Graham Bell invented -- the one with wires -- was blamed for everything from ear irritations and dizziness to nervous conditions, neuralgia, and even insanity. Wired telephones don't cause these things, any more than wireless phones cause hyperactivity, lowered IQ's, or declining grammar.
  • our modern preference for speed doesn't mean that the internet is making us stupid, either. Who's to say that in Gutenberg's day, John and Jane Q. Public (Gutenberg knew them as Johannes and Johanna von Volk) preferred the quick and often inaccurate printed word to the slower, more costly, but more-carefully-prepared handwritten manuscripts that the printing press was replacing
  • We've always been attracted to shortcuts, because time has always been of the essence.
Daniel Armstrong

Get Smarter - The Atlantic (July/August 2009) - 0 views

  • When I started taking the drug, I expected it to keep me awake; I didn’t expect it to make me feel smarter, but that’s exactly what happened.
    • Chris Andrews
       
      What role does personal experience play in argument-making?
  • isn’t just a subjective conclusion
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Whoa--experience and evidence?
  • competitive tool
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Does this put it on the same scale as competitive enhancement drugs in the sports world?
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  • stuck in overdrive
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Do you think this is better or worse than what's described in A Brave New World?
    • Daniel Armstrong
       
      I believe in some ways it is actually better, because as a society we will always be trying to advance.
  • move from the realm of extrapolation to the realm of speculation,
  • I see no good argument for why a mind running on a machine platform instead of a biological platform will forever be impossible; whether one might appear in five years or 50 or 500, however, is uncertain
  • superhuman intelligence,
  • Banal
  • The amount of data we’ll have at our fingertips will be staggering, but we’ll finally have gotten over the notion that accumulated information alone is a hallmark of intelligence.
  • What happens if such a complex system collapses? Disaster, of course. But don’t forget that we already depend upon enormously complex systems that we no longer even think of as technological. Urbanization, agriculture, and trade were at one time huge innovations. Their collapse (and all of them are now at risk, in different ways, as we have seen in recent months) would be an even greater catastrophe than the collapse of our growing webs of interconnected intelligence.
  • A less apocalyptic but more likely danger derives from the observation made by the science-fiction author William Gibson: “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”
  • The bad news is that these divergent paths may exacerbate cultural divides created by already divergent languages and beliefs.
  • What happens when different groups quite literally think in very, very different ways?
Chris Andrews

Clive Thompson on the New Literacy - 0 views

  • how kids today can't write—and technology is to blame
  • age of illiteracy
  • add up.
    • Chris Andrews
       
      What do they add up to?
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  • virtually never construct a paragraph again.
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Any problems with this claim?
Chris Andrews

Get Smarter - The Atlantic (July/August 2009) - 0 views

  • hen people hear the phrase intelligence augmentation, they tend to envision people with computer chips plugged into their brains, or a genetically engineered race of post-human super-geniuses.
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Ethos? Pathos? Logos?
  • in one sense, the age of the cyborg and the super-genius has already arrived
    • Chris Andrews
       
      In what sense is that?
  • “exo­cortical technology,”
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  • Any occupation requiring pattern-matching and the ability to find obscure connections will quickly morph from the domain of experts to that of ordinary people whose intelligence has been augmented by cheap digital tools
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Changing from the expertise paradigm--what are the implications of this?
  • co-evolution
  • Consider the Twitter phenomenon
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Example
  • filters
  • “continuous partial attention” to one we might call “continuous augmented awareness.”
Chris Andrews

Get Smarter - The Atlantic (July/August 2009) - 0 views

    • Chris Andrews
       
      In what ways does Cascio explicitly refer back to Carr's article?
  • neuro­physi­ol­ogist William Calvin argues persuasively that modern human cognition—including sophisticated language and the capacity to plan ahead—evolved in response to the demands of this long age of turbulence
  • Our present century may not be quite as perilous for the human race as an ice age in the aftermath of a super-volcano eruption, but the next few decades will pose enormous hurdles that go beyond the climate crisis.
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  • The nascent jargon of the field describes this as “
    intelligence augmentation.” I prefer to think of it as “You+.”
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Some important terms to think about...
  • we may soon have to start thinking of ourselves as living in an entirely new era. The focus of our technological evolution would be less on how we manage and adapt to our physical world, and more on how we manage and adapt to the immense amount of knowledge we’ve created
  • for millennia
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Historical argument
  • With every technological step forward, though, has come anxiety about the possibility that technology harms our natural ability to think
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Transitioning to discussing counterarguments.
  • induced form of ADD—a “continuous partial attention-deficit disorder,”
    • Chris Andrews
       
      What do you think--do you agree or disagree with this claim?
  • In reality, though, the proliferation of diverse voices may actually improve our overall ability to think
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Is this his main claim?
  • cognitive calisthenics
  • reward the capacity to make connections and to see patterns—precisely the kinds of skills we need for managing an information glut.
  • Scientists
    • Chris Andrews
       
      What claims from opposing sides does Cascio deal with in the following paragraphs? How effective are his counterclaims?
  • “fluid intelligence”
  • information overload”
Chris Andrews

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic (July/August 2008) - 0 views

  • My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Change--is it good or bad?
  • Web has been a godsend to me as a writer
  • universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind
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  • media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought
    • Chris Andrews
       
      McLuhan's not talking about "The Media" (i.e. newspapers, television and radio news, etcetera) as we popularly use the term. He's talking about the different channels through which information is passed--recorded sound, etcetera.
  • Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
  • not the only one
    • Chris Andrews
       
      What sorts of authority does the author appeal to in the following paragraphs? Does it help his argument? How?
  • a recently
    published study
    • Chris Andrews
       
      What sort of appeal does the author make here?
  • They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another sit
  • Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Pretty sophisticated point here--how does it break down, logically speaking?
  • Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged
    • Chris Andrews
       
      What kind of reading does Wolf value? What kind of people read that way?
  • And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains
  • The human brain is almost infinitely malleable
    • Chris Andrews
       
      The brain...
  • intellectual technologies
    • Chris Andrews
       
      interesting term.
  • impoverished
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Big, fat opinion. What do you think??
  • becoming
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Becoming? Or just is another place for? Or remediating?
  • When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Rough definition of "remediation."
  • reprogramming
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Frankenstein complex, anyone?
  • The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best method”—the perfect algorithm—to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.”
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Here's a "big, fat claim" if ever I saw one. What do you think? What does this claim mean? Is this a realistic assessment of the Internet? Is the comparison to Taylor's Scientific Management a realistic one, or is the author pushing things here? (And if he is, how much?)
  • It seeks to develop “the perfect search engine,” which it defines as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.”
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Good thing or bad? Why?
  • a HAL-like machine
    • Chris Andrews
       
      What kind of rhetorical appeal is this HAL reference? Ethos? Pathos? Logos?
  • or even replaced
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Can you find someone arguing this point?
  • The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Here's another big claim he makes--can you find evidence for it?
  • human knowledge (if not wisdom)
    • Chris Andrews
       
      In your opinion/experience do tools & media spread anything beside knowledge?
  • Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom.
    • Chris Andrews
       
      We can see both sides represented in this sentence--Luddites (and dystopians) as well as technological utopians. Where do you see yourself on that continuum?
  • The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Hmm... Yes? No? Problematic Assumption?
  • content
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Here's a fun question--do these diigo questions count as the kind of distracting content that Carr is writing about?
  • under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Francis Bacon complained about Information Overload, too...
Chris Andrews

Why Generation-Y Can't Read Nonverbal Cues - WSJ.com - 0 views

  • Unfortunately, nearly all of their communication tools involve the exchange of written words alone.
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Here's the question: why is this a problem?
  • The digital natives improve their adroitness at the keyboard, but when it comes to their capacity to "read" the behavior of others, they are all thumbs
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Here's your "big, fat claim." Do you agree? Disagree? Why or why not?
Daniel Armstrong

Essentials of Psychology - 0 views

  • Daniel Armstrong
     
    yadayada
Chris Andrews

What Companies Should Know About Digital Natives « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyan... - 0 views

  • live blogging
    • Chris Andrews
       
      live blogging: this means that he's blogging & posting these notes during the conference (rather than doing it reflectively, afterward).
  • age doesn’t always matter as the generation is defined on: access to digital technologies since birth, age, and have the skills to use the digital technologies.
  • Online representation is the same as physical representation
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  • Opportunity for HR departments to learn more about their employees, but guess what? They Google you too.
  • not only do they have the right to speak, but to be heard
  • Creators
  • rip, mix, burn content to encourage interaction
  • online activism
  • qualified and expert sources
Chris Andrews

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Giving up my iPod for a Walkman - 0 views

  • the iPod of its day
  • Perhaps that kind of anticipation and excitement has been somewhat lost in the flood of new products which now hit our shelves on a regular basis.
    • Chris Andrews
       
      an interesting assessment--do you agree or disagree?
Chris Andrews

OMG! Expert Says Today's Kids Are Stupid : NPR - 0 views

  • the digital generation is pretty much filled with idiots.
    • Chris Andrews
       
      Note differences between Pesca's attitude (the interviewer) and Bauerlein's attitude.
  • adult information
  • an teachers and parents in the home as well, start steering all of that online activity toward productive, knowledge-inducing activity? And I'm pessimistic.
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  • But I actually think that that's a healthy thing to happen in any society. It's good for old people to rebuke adolescents precisely for their adolescence, and it's good for adolescents to resent the elders for, perhaps, their rigidity about things, or their authoritarian attitudes. I think we actually need a lot more statements about young people not knowing enough history, not reading as many books, work harder, come on, grow up.
  • it doesn't seem that adults are really that much brighter when it comes to civics or general world knowledge than students are
Chris Andrews

'Digitally addicted kids threaten to return civilisation to the Dark Ages' - Online, Media ... - 0 views

  • he consequences of online technology for reading
    habits, literacy, and education
    • Chris Andrews
       
      What are those consequences?
  • The news, I am afraid, is
    bleak.
  • Mark
    Bauerlein demonstrates how the internet is making young people increasingly
    ignorant about almost everything except online video games and the
    narcissism of self-authored internet content
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  • the rise of digital literacy and the
    decline of cultural literacy
    • Chris Andrews
       
      What's the difference between digital and cultural literacy?
  • causal relationship
  • objective world
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