IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2015 - 8

OPINION

Liz Stillwaggon
Swan

ontrarian computer
scientist Jaron Lanier
writes, "If you observe
humans using computer programs that
are designated to be "smart," you will
see them make themselves stupid in
order to make the programs work"
("1000 Words on Why I Don't Believe
in Machine Consciousness," available
online). We think Lanier is right that
as end users of computer programs
we alter our behavior, sometimes
drastically, in order to try to accommodate them (think of a person yelling into the phone, "help with online
banking!" as the computer blandly
replies, "I'm sorry, did you say you'd
like to check your account status
but don't have your password?" or
some other nonsense reply that
doesn't at all respond to the person's needs). The central question
is this: in which ways are computers
making us stupid?
As educators, we're witnessing
a specific example of this phenomenon: the rapid deterioration of writing skills in younger people addicted
to social media.
Social media platforms force
users to think and write in bit-like
form, with acronyms substituting for sentences and emoticons
substituting for the expression of

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2015.2396049
Date of publication: 23 March 2015

Louis J. Goldberg

Are Social Media
Making us Stupid?
feelings. We are learning - some of us
more quickly than others - to adapt
to a computer-dictated form of communication. Sherry Turkle (M.I.T.) has
noted that a fluency with texting and
tweeting is commonly correlated with
a dearth of skills in face-to-face interactions. We're noting, in addition,
what social media addiction is doing
to written communication: specifically, it's eroding the traditional divide
between speaking and writing.
The philosopher Karl Popper
believed that modern human society
exists not because of oral communication, but as a result of the invention
of writing. Writing allows thoughts, as
products of mind, to be concretized,
shared, critiqued, and improved by
others who thereby advance the ability of humans to gain knowledge of
their environment and create tools
that enable us to stay healthier, and
live longer and, hopefully, more productive lives. Writing exponentially
increases the memory capacity of
human culture. Oral conversational
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

communication, by contrast, remains
immediate and shallow with limited
memory capacity. It perpetuates
untested mythologies, emotional
reactions to environmental challenges, and the repetition of non-adaptive
social behavior.
Originally, human social groups
were small. Verbal communication was immediate, intimate, and
essentially conversational. You
recognized the faces of those in
your social group and remembered
your experiences with the person
behind the face. Social communication had an adaptive purpose.
With the advent of writing came a
new form of social communication
among the highly literate: plays,
poems, written tracts, novels, and
personal letters formed social ties
among members of this often geographically dispersed literate social
group. Writing enabled communication of a form not available in
informal face-to-face vocalization.
Writing also ushered in the advent
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MARCH 2015

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