In response to the articles we read and the videos that we viewed I would have to say that I somewhat agree, yet there is a large part of me that disagrees. The part of me that agrees uses the argument that there are a lot of people in our generation that can be categorized as dumb. They spend all their time on facebook, socializing or they are just plain ignorant to the world around them and make embarrassing remarks as the Miss. Teen contestant made. It is comments like these that older generations use to base their opinion on the whole generation. This is unfair. My counterargument would be that there is a large majority of people in our generation that are intellegent, hard-working human beings that do not get the credit they deserve because of the technology that we were and are being brough up with. I believe that all generations will judge the generations that come after them no matter what generation is being considered. I'm sure when our generation is old enough, we will be calling the generation after us dumb as well.
This generation may seem dumb to people like Bauerlein because we can adequately use the technology that is thrust upon us. Our generation is extremely technologically savy, where generations before us never had to be, because they did not have the technology that the competitive world has today. If our generation does not keep up with the new developments in technology, then we will fall behind.
Lee Drutman's article "The Dumbest Generation' by mark Bauerlein" was quoted "...the new digital world really is changing the way young people engage.." I'm not entirely sure that this is a bad thing. We can communicate with people throughout the world and gain perspectives and knowledge that we would not be able to obtain without technology. Sure like Bauerlein said, we use the internet for socializing, but we also use the internet for education. It is hard to have a class now-a-days that doesn't have any integration with the internet.
I'm glad you brought up the fact that almost all classes have online components. This in itself reflects the fact that older generations are being careless. If technology is the root of all evil, or whatever, why are they set on the fact that we need to use it to learn? Maybe that was a little dramatic, Bauerlein says that if we were surfing educational websites, such as those of a museum it would be justified. Being online at all is a temptation, at least i know it is for me, to check social networking sites or any other mindless task that suits me at the time. It just seems that if technology is burdening our society that things should be taught manually instead of online. Take mathlab for example, you can get the correct answer by using the help tool, but that doesn't mean you know it. So why advocate something of that nature, if that too is making us stupid?
ReplyDeleteI think that as generations we are not getting dumber or less intelligent, I just feel like we are doing everything the easy way as a society. I agree that our classes all utilize the internet. Every single class I have right now I have to be on the internet for one thing or another. I think that he needs to consider the fact that we are pretty advanced when it comes to operating technology. That is the way our society is moving and we are the leaders when it comes to being able to use technology.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that Bauerlein ever directly said technology is bad. He is trying to say that they way in which we are using the technology we have is useless; He is not trying to say technology is bad. I think what he means is that there are so many things intellectual ways you can use technology and we are limiting ourselves to mostly using it as a way to socialize.
ReplyDeleteI agree I think that some people in our generation can be categorized at dumb and spend to much time socializing on the web. I think that's the part of our generation that the older generation puts a spotlight on and just assume we're all like that. Which is unfair. I also think because we're kind of the technology generation that we're getting judge more.
ReplyDeleteI think it is easier to think of the technology at hand as an annex to the memory that actually exists in our heads. I don't like this though but it is definitely the direction that most people are going. The technology that we use everyday to acquire information is so easy connected to that it really can be taken for granted as a reliable memory source. This allows for the memory we're not using for storage as a means for contemplating/ problem solving. This is an advantage. However, the problems rise when we do not have that technology available to us to find the factual information. What would happen if we lost our connection to easy accessible information? Is it likely? These are all important questions to be asked when deciding whether our dependence of technology is problematic.
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