Devolution
Topic: Technology
We're intellectually devolving. It's been happening over a long time, but it's been happening. It started, probably, with the written word.
I know that seems counter-intuitive. The written word allowed communication, and records. It allowed history to be historical, and not just malleable word-of-mouth, shaped by each person's perceptions as they passed it on. With the written word, we didn't have to remember everything. We just had to write it down so that later generations would have the benefit of knowing it, without being told it.

But that's just the point. We didn't have to remember it, or pass it on verbally. Our brains didn't have to do as much work. It gets worse. We invented clocks. Time pieces that allowed us to determine exact times, or at least regular intervals. An hourglass might measure only 58 minutes, and another might measure 64 minutes. But it was close enough. Moreover, it was the same amount of time for each individual hourglass, every time it was turned over and a full bulb began filling an empty one. We didn't have to estimate the time, or derive it by solar reckoning. We would, within reason, know.

Abacus variations were created, and we had calculators. We didn't need to do the math in our heads or with pencil and paper. Now, we use computers to perform complex functions, instead of filling a chalkboard with equations.
We have computers that track shop inventory, order new inventory when a particular item gets low on supply, and even track losses due to breakage and theft. We don't think about these things any more. We don't have to.

And it's making us less intelligent in many ways.

I'm trying to avoid a slippery slope argument here, and also to avoid sounding like a Luddite. Understand right now that I'm in favor of technology.* But the point I'm making is that we learn higher functions, and rely on our technology to do the lower functions. We also rely on it to perform the highest functions, all so we don't have to. We've learned how to find the volume of an irregular solid using mathematics. We need a calculator to do the actual addition and multiplication, though. Essentially, although we can hit a comet from millions of miles away with a rocket (thanks to our computers), we can't balance a checkbook. But we don't need to... there's software for that.

I get a little jolt of satisfaction when I can get the check at a restaurant, glance at it, and give the server my money card. By the time the server has come back, I've already figured out the tip and the total. I just write them down and I'm done. I do this in my head without any tip calculators, or digital calculators, or anything but neuron-power. I enjoy the reactions of people I'm with when they see me do that, because they think it's hard. It's not, but they don't try to do it, because they don't have to. Why bother? There's a calculator on their watch.

We don't even have to remember our appointments. The dentist calls us, and reminds us the day before. Well, mine does, anyway. This is good for me, because I don't use my digital planner as well as I should. Luckily, their appointment schedule is computerized, and they can bring up the next day's appointments on a screen and call the people. I bet there's even a program function that will dial the number for them.

Someone in my home has photographs ready for pickup from Walgreen's' photo center. Their computer called the house... not a person looking at a screen, but an actual computer called the house, and a pre-recorded voice said they were ready.

We haven't reached a state where machines run our lives yet. They make our lives as we know them possible. We don't need to think. If we have digital television, we can even pause the program and go to the bathroom, instead of waiting for a commercial. And, if we do that, it creates a "buffer" which allows us to fast-forward through the commercials when they do come up.

We no longer need to change to suit our environment. We have the ability to change our environment to suit our needs. We don't have to find a cave because we can build a shelter. If it's too hot, we don't have to evolve more efficient means of cooling our bodies, because we have air conditioning. We don't evolve physically any more. We can only evolve intellectually, psychologically, or emotionally. And these evolutions require thought.

However, thanks to technology, we don't have to do that one thing that we should be doing, which is thinking. On the one hand, that seems to mean we don't exercise our brains enough. It's not a good thing.

On the other hand, that means our imaginations are more free to ask "What if..." and to postulate, conjecture, and wax philosophical. We can think in abstracts and develop new ideas which can then be tested with the technology designed to do the "grunt-work" of intellectual invention. This is a good thing.

Unless you have no imagination. Then it's a bad thing again. Please think. Imagine. Wax philosophical. Exercise your grey matter. The mind you save will be your own.

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*If you haven't figured that out by now, considering this is a weblog, then it may be too late for you.

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