When I was growing up I remember our generation was termed, GenX, neXgen
or something like that I recall from the plethora of
ads showered upon us by the multinationals.
The next in-thing was the Information generation - this is the breed of next generation youngsters who have all the information in the world at the tip of their fingers by means of device they prefer calling smart phone. Mind you the important word here is "information", which is far from "knowledge". Gone are the days when people would plan in advance for long queues by bringing along novels newspapers or something creative to do.
In the metro ride last week, there was a 40 year old lady trying to use her Nokia small screen, a guy in thirties on his Blackberry and then this teenager on his Nokia browsing Facebook. The guy had his dad talking to him all the time but not once did he peep out of his smarty device. Texting his friends, messaging them, talking in the cryptic messenger language [ttyl, brb, gtg and what not] - was very abyssal to say the least.
I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. A nice argument on : Is internet the best way to assimilate information and gain knowledge. The argument against the internet went something like this "when you research information on internet, you are faced with a huge amount of information which is most of the time superficial. Also the number of links for any topics are so many that the mind wanders from page to page and grasping is at a very amateur level. The probability of this information being retained is significantly lower. " In a more traditional way, when the information is obtained from books, the understanding is in much more depths because of the power of concentration.
This brings me back to the information generation and its future. Convenience is one thing, but if people start spending their spare time Facebook-ing and twittering on 3-inch screened smart devices, they are going to develop the attention span of a raccoon. Technological enhancements are going to make things easier for us, but what are we going to end up with?
Smart Phone and Dumb People ??
The next in-thing was the Information generation - this is the breed of next generation youngsters who have all the information in the world at the tip of their fingers by means of device they prefer calling smart phone. Mind you the important word here is "information", which is far from "knowledge". Gone are the days when people would plan in advance for long queues by bringing along novels newspapers or something creative to do.
In the metro ride last week, there was a 40 year old lady trying to use her Nokia small screen, a guy in thirties on his Blackberry and then this teenager on his Nokia browsing Facebook. The guy had his dad talking to him all the time but not once did he peep out of his smarty device. Texting his friends, messaging them, talking in the cryptic messenger language [ttyl, brb, gtg and what not] - was very abyssal to say the least.
I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. A nice argument on : Is internet the best way to assimilate information and gain knowledge. The argument against the internet went something like this "when you research information on internet, you are faced with a huge amount of information which is most of the time superficial. Also the number of links for any topics are so many that the mind wanders from page to page and grasping is at a very amateur level. The probability of this information being retained is significantly lower. " In a more traditional way, when the information is obtained from books, the understanding is in much more depths because of the power of concentration.
This brings me back to the information generation and its future. Convenience is one thing, but if people start spending their spare time Facebook-ing and twittering on 3-inch screened smart devices, they are going to develop the attention span of a raccoon. Technological enhancements are going to make things easier for us, but what are we going to end up with?
Smart Phone and Dumb People ??
No comments:
Post a Comment