Techdirt. Stories filed under "thinking"

Inventor Of The Wind-Up Radio Complains About 'Google Generation'

Timothy Geigner — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 10:17:17 PST

I love luddites. They're just so damned consistent. I haven't completely worked out the details yet, but I'm positive there is a math equation out there that would accurately predict after what year a person thinks everything new sucks. Maybe it'd look something like: (year of current date) - (age of person) / (IQ) = (year after which everything sucks). Okay, that's clearly far from perfect (and I hear Douglas Adams may have done it better), but I would expect something along those lines could predict people like a DHS boss that doesn't use anything online ever. Or Andrew Keen and Sherry Turkle, who team up to claim that social media is making us less private, but more lonely, which seems to work at cross conclusions but the math formula is the math formula so screw social media.

Look how lonely all these people are together!
Image source: CC BY-SA 2.0

Those examples aside, I have to admit this is a new one for me. Apparently there once were radios that you had to wind up to use and Trevor Baylis, the guy that invented them, says Google is making younger generations brain dead.

"Children have got to be taught hands-on, and not to become mobile phone or computer dependent. They are dependent on Google searches. A lot of kids will become fairly brain-dead if they become so dependent on the internet, because they will not be able to do things in the old-fashioned way."

Let's see if I can break down the pure wrongness of this kind of thinking with a couple of fun little analogies.

Children have to be taught how to tend to their horses and not become dependent on automobiles or public transportation, otherwise they may not be able to ride horses any longer.
Children have to be taught how to use an abacus and not become dependent on calculators, otherwise they not be able to use abacuses in their adult daily lives.
Children have to be taught how to unhook a chastity belt, otherwise they may not be able to have sex once they are married and somehow chasisty belts come back into circulation because....yeah, because.

Get the point? Once the old way is no longer the way, we don't have to teach it any longer. I use Google searches every day, both for work (part numbers for technology parts) and for personal use (explicit search terms for naughty human parts). That's where that stuff exists, on the internet. In fact, learning how to properly use a search engine to get the most out of its results is probably one of the most worthwhile things you can teach a child today. There is nothing wrong with learning the old way of doing things, specifically if that old way builds a foundation for understanding the new way, but blaming Google for making children brain dead is just silly.

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Virginia High School Says Barring Students From Doing Outside Research Helps Them 'Think For Themselves'

Mike Masnick — Tue, 2 Nov 2010 08:46:31 PDT

A few folks have sent over this bizarre and slightly scary story of the the Westfield High School in Fairfax Virginia, which recently sent home a notice of "Expectations of Integrity" for the school's Advanced Placement (AP) World History class, which admonished students not to do any outside research at all:

"You are only allowed to use your OWN knowledge, your OWN class notes, class handouts, your OWN class homework, or The Earth and Its Peoples textbook to complete assignments and assessments UNLESS specifically informed otherwise by your instructor.''

Internet? No, not allowed. Other books? Nope. Talking to anyone? No. Not other students, friends, family, experts or even strangers. The teacher made this clear:

"You may not discuss/mention/chat/hand signal/smoke signal/Facebook/IM/text/email to a complete stranger ANY answers/ideas/questions/thoughts/opinions/hints/instructions."

The school has suggested that the letter was "a little tongue-in-cheek," though that doesn't really make sense. Yes, I'm sure the bit about the smoke signals, etc. was "tongue in cheek," but it sounds like the general sentiment remains. But, the thing is, the school's defense of the policy doesn't make much sense either:

"The idea was to think for yourself," he said, "rather than to pick up something from somewhere else and parrot it back."

Huh? If you want people to "think for themselves" and not "parrot back" what they picked up from somewhere else, I can't think of any better way than encouraging students to find multiple sources and multiple viewpoints (including differing viewpoints) so that they learn to think through things from multiple perspectives, which really pushes people to "think for themselves" by weighing the different bits of information to decide what's credible and what's not. By requiring just a single resource, none of that happens.

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BMW Trying To Patent Technological Problem Solving

Mike Masnick — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:35:36 PST

Erik was the first of a bunch of you to send in the story about how BMW is supposedly applying for a patent on a method using technology to solve problems. You can read the patent application for a Method for Systematically Identifying Technology-Based Solutions if you'd like. It's not quite as broad as the claim on Autoblog that it's a patent application on "technological creative thinking," but it is ridiculously broad. Read through the actual claims, and it's difficult to see how this deserves a patent at all. There shouldn't be a monopoly on a method for how you solve problems.

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