A Critical Evaluation Between Technology And The Human Brain

Us as humans, have started to rely on our machines for a great deal (internet, comfort, relationships, solitude, etc.); we used to think that spending quality time together meant actually acknowledging each other, but thanks to robots, we now spend quality time in the same room, but on our devices. Turkle provides a great example of this when she states, “we romance the robot and become inseparable from our smart phones. As this happens, we remake ourselves and our relationships with each other through our new intimacy with our machines” (Turkle 86). She also discusses how obsessed we have become with our devices. The average person frequently checks their phone multiple times throughout the day. This has become quite a habit, because it has been molded into our minds. In the third paragraph of the article, Turkle provides clear evidence that humans rely too much on robots. The author adds sarcastic tones and phrases when she states, “our population is aging; there will be robots to take care of us. Our children are neglected; robots will tend to them” (Turkle 87). If people become preoccupied in their virtual world, they will start to begin to lose their humanity. Normal day activities will become a thing in the past because now, we can do it all on our

“The Human Brain”, by myPerspectives, is an informative article that claims that the brain is a complex organ that is truly impressive. The brain is a key part of the central nervous system, that controls the entire body’s activities, to simple things such as breathing. These actions are fired through neurons, that quickly travel through the spinal cord. Surprisingly, the brain transmits these messages at an unimaginable rate, at 150 miles per hour, through 85 billion cells, called neurons. These neurons can form up to 10,000 synapses, or connections to each other. By itself, the brain can create billions of synapses, which change the structure of the brain every time new information is learned. However, there is still much that scientists

Only recently has the topic arisen in its modern interpretation, but mankind has long pondered over the possibility of automation. For centuries, scientists, authors, and philosophers have discussed the potential creation of automatons, or automated machines, as well as the possibility that the processes of the human mind are mechanical, and could perhaps be replicated artificially. In his 1748 materialist work titled L’Homme Machine, or “Man a Machine”, philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie describes “that thought seems to be a property of matter, like electricity, power to move, impenetrability, extension, etc” (de La Mettrie 30). De La Mettrie negated the ideals of Descartes, who had previously stated that the functions of the mind were of a different nature. This new way of thinking helped to get the scientific ball rolling for the future creation of intelligent machinery. For the majority of history, such matters would be considered supernatural or simply out of the realm of foreseeable scientific accomplishment, in that they were merely works of fiction and such technology was too far out of reach. However, with the development of computer technologies in the 1900’s, suddenly the sky became the limit. With the help of computers, new innovations quickly advanced the technology industry, allowing for much more efficient

Even though smart phones are supposed to make working easier, studies have shown that they actually hurt our performance. In 2015, a Journal of Experimental Psychology study had 166 people to test. The experiment was to have the participants work on a challenging task while their phones start beeping and buzzing. The results showed that the worker became messier and had their attention elsewhere, whether or not they checked their phone. Dr. Adrian Ward is a psychologist and marketing professor at the University of Texas at Austin, he has been working with the effects of smart phones on our thoughts and decision making. Dr. Ward believes that we have grown so attached to our phones that they reduce our intelligence with their presence. To test this theory, Dr. Ward and three colleagues began a clever experiment to test his idea. They decided to enlist 520 undergraduate students at UCSD and make them perform two standard tests of intellectual acuity. The first test evaluated “available cognitive capacity”, it’s a test to measure how fully a person’s mind can focus on a single task. The second test gauged “fluid intelligence”, a person’s ability to understand and answer an unfamiliar problem. The only difference was the location of the student’s smart phone. Some students had their phone on the desk, while others had it in their bag or pocket. Others were even asked to leave their phone in a different room. The results of this test showed that “As the phone’s proximity increased, brainpower decreased” (pg.3).

With every passing year, it seems as though humans are becoming more attached to their electronic devices as technology advances at an astounding rate. As a result of this, many people believe that the trade off for having such advanced technology is a decrease in overall brain function, a point that is essentially what Nicholas Carr is arguing is true in his essay Is Google Making Us Stupid?. However, a majority of Carr’s argument lies in the fact that people do not read as much because of the Internet, only want information directly given to them instead of having to read through pages of words, and are becoming dangerously reliant on artificial intelligence. However, based on the recent surge of technological

Pat Galagan, author of Technology and The Interrupted Brain seeks out a professional to explain this. Dan Willingham, professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia states, “Data from the last thirty years leads to a conclusion that is not scientifically challengeable: thinking well requires knowing facts, and that 's true not only because you need something to think about. The very processes that teachers care about most—critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem solving—are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory (not just found in the environment)” (Galagan). This generation of adolescents is so used to looking up everything in the internet that their brains don’t go the extra mile to think and develop. Therefore, they don’t possess the amount of factual knowledge needed to mold higher level thinking and analysis.

This video is about The Behaving Brain; it explains how the brain and amnesia work. According to the video, neurons duties are to receive information from other cells, process this information, and transmitting it to the rest of the body. This is done by traveling through dendrites, to the soma, to the axon, to the terminal buttons. Constant nerve flow helps regulate our metabolism, temperature, and respiration. It also enables learning and the ability to comprehend. The brain is connected to the brain stem, which is connected to the cerebellum, which is connected to the limbic system. The limbic system is made up of the amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and thalamus. The cerebrum is the largest part of the brain, where things are

Everyday humans pass hundreds possibly even thousands of their acquaintances staring into the brightly lit screens of iPhones and Androids. What could they possibly be doing that makes them so oblivious to the bustling world around them? Technology is to blame. iPhones, Androids, Blackberries, and the occasional flip phone are amongst the technology taking over the everyday lives of humans. It's the future, lifeless objects taking the lives of humans.

When smartphones became smarter, distractions in our daily life grew. Some believe that the smartphone has become the archive of the self, recording and distributing the sounds, words, and images that ultimately control who we are and what we experience (Natalie Carr 1). Since the transition from only having landlines to a small device that can

When children is overexposed to technologies at a young age, it can affect their brain development because the area of the brain that has dopamine, the pleasure center, tells the brain to keep using the electronic devices which abuse the dopamine level causing children to spend more time on their electronics devices and become more attached to it, leading to long-term mental health effects. The developing brain does stop maturing until the age of 25.

switches. Neurons are not on or off they can receive information from thousand of other

The invention of technology has benefited the people in many ways. With the improvements of technology, people are now able to connect with everyone from all parts of the world. The use of technology is improving one’s thinking abilities, and in addition to that, technology use can benefit the brain in many ways. Therefore, technological usage deserves to be praised instead of discredited.

Further neuroscience research shows that extensive use of the internet may physically be changing our brains. Our minds adapt to new ideas and concept everyday and when introduced to a new task or job, our brains change as “new neural pathways that give instructions to our bodies” (“What…Plasticity?”) open up. Brain plasticity, “the capacity of the brain to change with learning” (Michelon) can occur at any age and is responsible for instructing our brains to perform a task. New neural wires are created when you learn something new, but those same connections can also be destroyed, for instance when you forget a person’s name, signaling the failing of a person’s memory (“What…Plasticity?”). The more time spent on the Internet, the more our brains grow more accustomed to processing simplified snippets of information very quickly, and because Internet articles become easier to read and skim over, it appeals more to the mind than denser and longer printed text.

If we look at the brain as if it were a central computer that controlled all of the bodily functions, then we would refer to the central nervous system and the network that relays messages to and from the

In the future, we may be able to build a computer that is comparable to the human brain, but not until we truly understand one thing. Lewis Thomas talks about this in his essay, "Computers." He says, "It is in our collective behavior that we are most mysterious. We won't be able to construct machines like ourselves until we've understood this, and we're not even close" (Thomas 473). Thomas wrote this essay in 1974, and although we have made many technological advances