Home/Magazine Archive/July 2009 (Vol. 52, No. 7)/Are We Losing Our Ability to Think Critically?/Full Text
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Are We Losing Our Ability to Think Critically?
By Samuel Greengard
Communications of the ACM,
Vol. 52 No. 7, Pages 18-19
10.1145/1538788.1538796
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Society has long cherished the ability to think beyond the
ordinary. In a world where knowledge is revered and innovation
equals progress, those able to bring forth greater insight and
understanding are destined to make their mark and blaze a trail
to greater enlightenment.
"Critical thinking as an attitude is embedded in Western
culture. There is a belief that argument is the way to finding
truth," observes Adrian West, research director at the Edward de
Bono Foundation U.K., and a former computer science lecturer at
the University of Manchester. "Developing our abilities to think
more clearly, richly, fully—individually and
collectively—is absolutely crucial [to solving world
problems]."
To be sure, history is filled with tales of remarkable
thinkers who have defined and redefined our world views: Sir
Isaac Newton discovering gravity; Voltaire altering perceptions
about society and religious dogma; and Albert Einstein redefining
the view of the universe. But in an age of computers, video
games, and the Internet, there's a growing question about how
technology is changing critical thinking and whether society
benefits from it.
Although there's little debate that computer technology
complements—and often enhances—the human mind in the
quest to store information and process an ever-growing tangle of
bits and bytes, there's increasing concern that the same
technology is changing the way we approach complex problems and
conundrums, and making it more difficult to really
think.
"We're exposed to [greater amounts of] poor yet charismatic
thinking, the fads of intellectual fashion, opinion, and mere
assertion," says West. "The wealth of communications and
information can easily overwhelm our reasoning abilities." What's
more, it's ironic that ever-growing piles of data and information
do not equate to greater knowledge and better decision-making.
What's remarkable, West says, is just "how little this has
affected the quality of our thinking."
According to the National Endowment for the Arts, literary
reading declined 10 percentage points from 1982 to 2002 and the
rate of decline is accelerating. Many, including Patricia
Greenfield, a UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and
director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles,
believe that a greater focus on visual media exacts a toll. "A
drop-off in reading has possibly contributed to a decline in
critical thinking," she says. "There is a greater emphasis on
real-time media and multitasking rather than focusing on a single
thing."
Nevertheless, the verdict isn't in and a definitive answer
about how technology affects critical thinking is not yet
available. Instead, critical thinking lands in a mushy swamp
somewhere between perception and reality; measurable and
incomprehensible. It's largely a product of our own
invention—and a subjective one at that. And although
technology alters the way we see, hear, and assimilate our
world—the act of thinking remains decidedly human.
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Rethinking Thinking
Arriving at a clear definition for critical thinking is a bit
tricky. Wikipedia describes it as "purposeful and reflective
judgment about what to believe or what to do in response to
observations, experience, verbal or written expressions, or
arguments." Overlay technology and that's where things get
complex. "We can do the same critical-reasoning operations
without technology as we can with it—just at different
speeds and with different ease," West says.
What's more, while it's tempting to view computers, video
games, and the Internet in a monolithic good or bad way, the
reality is that they may be both good and bad, and different
technologies, systems, and uses yield entirely different results.
For example, a computer game may promote critical thinking or
diminish it. Reading on the Internet may ratchet up one's ability
to analyze while chasing an endless array of hyperlinks may
undercut deeper thought.