This debate over whether technology makes us more stupid has been waged for at least 2400 years.
Plato wrote (in Greek) in his dialogue “Phaedras” about Socrates’ expressing his concern that the invention of writing would cause people to lose their ability to remember things. Plato says Socrates said, "This discovery ... will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves ... [Writing will] give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing."
On the other side, often quoted, Albert Einstein supposedly said, "Never memorize something that you can look up." There is some debate about whether Einstein actually said this. However, in a 1936 essay, Einstein did write: "It is not so important to know an answer as to know how to find it." This writing is often interpreted to mean that it is better to focus on understanding concepts and how to find information, rather than memorizing facts and figures, revealing his philosophy of education and his belief in the importance of critical thinking.
As an aside, although Einstein wanted to be cremated on his death in 1955, and most of him was, the pathologist, Thomas Harvey, could not bring himself to allow that brain to turn to ashes and dust, so he removed and pickled it, carving out some portions of it and mounting them onto microscopic slides that he sent to others to study, retaining most of it for himself to investigate, and later to be given by his son to the Princeton University Medical Center where it resides today. Harvey damaged portions of the brain in removing it from the skull and the formalin pickling juice caused what was undamaged to shrink, so it is difficult to know whether his brain was larger than average, whether it was organized differently than those of the rest of us, whether the parietal lobe was larger, whether it had more or less neurons in certain nuclei, or whether his dyslexia required or allowed his brain’s plasticity to develop strong visual and spatial reasoning abilities.
While Stephen Hawking was already an accomplished mathematician, theoretical physicist and artist before he developed Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, its onset and progression required his brain to strengthen its visual and spatial reasoning abilities.
One thing we do know is that brain activity increases its interconnectivity in the areas of those activities. Areas of inactivity reduces those connections.
So the question is not whether we will become “stupider” as machines take over functions heretofore required of our brains for our specie’s survival and becoming what we are today, but whether those activities will be missed and the relative value of what will be gained compared to what will be lost.
Critical thinking skills will still be required, even need to be strengthened, if we are to know where to look for information and to evaluate whether what our machines retrieve is from credible sources or questionable ones.
The spelling aspect (and subsequent competitions) seems to really only have been an issue once dictionaries began standardizing word spelling. One can find words spelled quite differently from the current times back to the 1700s. A prime example is "choose" in which I have seen writings from 200-300 years ago use "chuse"
This debate over whether technology makes us more stupid has been waged for at least 2400 years.
Plato wrote (in Greek) in his dialogue “Phaedras” about Socrates’ expressing his concern that the invention of writing would cause people to lose their ability to remember things. Plato says Socrates said, "This discovery ... will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves ... [Writing will] give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing."
On the other side, often quoted, Albert Einstein supposedly said, "Never memorize something that you can look up." There is some debate about whether Einstein actually said this. However, in a 1936 essay, Einstein did write: "It is not so important to know an answer as to know how to find it." This writing is often interpreted to mean that it is better to focus on understanding concepts and how to find information, rather than memorizing facts and figures, revealing his philosophy of education and his belief in the importance of critical thinking.
As an aside, although Einstein wanted to be cremated on his death in 1955, and most of him was, the pathologist, Thomas Harvey, could not bring himself to allow that brain to turn to ashes and dust, so he removed and pickled it, carving out some portions of it and mounting them onto microscopic slides that he sent to others to study, retaining most of it for himself to investigate, and later to be given by his son to the Princeton University Medical Center where it resides today. Harvey damaged portions of the brain in removing it from the skull and the formalin pickling juice caused what was undamaged to shrink, so it is difficult to know whether his brain was larger than average, whether it was organized differently than those of the rest of us, whether the parietal lobe was larger, whether it had more or less neurons in certain nuclei, or whether his dyslexia required or allowed his brain’s plasticity to develop strong visual and spatial reasoning abilities.
While Stephen Hawking was already an accomplished mathematician, theoretical physicist and artist before he developed Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, its onset and progression required his brain to strengthen its visual and spatial reasoning abilities.
One thing we do know is that brain activity increases its interconnectivity in the areas of those activities. Areas of inactivity reduces those connections.
So the question is not whether we will become “stupider” as machines take over functions heretofore required of our brains for our specie’s survival and becoming what we are today, but whether those activities will be missed and the relative value of what will be gained compared to what will be lost.
Critical thinking skills will still be required, even need to be strengthened, if we are to know where to look for information and to evaluate whether what our machines retrieve is from credible sources or questionable ones.
The spelling aspect (and subsequent competitions) seems to really only have been an issue once dictionaries began standardizing word spelling. One can find words spelled quite differently from the current times back to the 1700s. A prime example is "choose" in which I have seen writings from 200-300 years ago use "chuse"