Over the past millennium a lot has changed; technology has skyrocketed to next generation levels, medicine has been revolutionized to maximize human life and economic power has made the great nations of today withstand the test of time. These great features, great attributes of the modern world are only capable due to the minds of the greatest; the most intelligent people in the world. Benjamin Franklin with the founding of electricity. Rosalyn Sussman Yalow with the development of radioimmunoassay. Steve Jobs with the revolutionary foundation of the company Apple, changing the computers of today. All three of these people are incredibly intelligent and have provided tremendous contributions to today 's society. Everything has it’s limitations though, just as Einstein once said, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I 'm not sure about the universe.” Our capabilities to excel in the field of technology has its limitations. Our memorization and understanding of information is limited to the cerebrum of our brains. The intelligence of humans is outstanding, but have we humans already reached our peak of intelligence, or even worse regressed over the years? Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. Technology might speak for itself in the aspect of whether intelligence has declined over the years. The general population would think that, of course the intelligence of people hasn’t declined, look at all the amazing things
Technology has advanced a lot more in the past century than it has over a million years. There is millions of new advancements found every day, however, this is making the younger generation a lot less knowledgeable. In the book The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerkein, it states that the teens today are the dumbest generation to live on the planet. It is commonly believed that the young generation is the least knowledgeable generation because of their great reliability on technology, constant distraction by technology, and negative media influences. Although technology helps to make one’s everyday life a lot easier, it is taking away one’s intelligence.
I believe that as technology improves the human brain improves to create more things. In “Smarter than You Think” the author Clive Thompson believes that technology and humans have equal intelligence. Humans are so reliant on technology to the fact that we are constantly improving on them. Since the development of technology information has been easier to obtain and hold inside our brains. While technology is getting more complex, the human brain is also getting more complex in order to continually create new and better gear.
In Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, he discusses the negative impacts that technology has had on human intelligence and how technology is going to pass up humankind. Carr’s main point is that point is that due to modern innovations like the internet, himself and the rest of mankind have slowly lost the ability to read in-depth and focus on complex tasks. He also argues that companies like google are working to create innovations in Artificial Intelligence, causing technology to eventually pass up humanity. Carr believes that technology is important, but it will eventually lead to our demise.
Intelligence is not based on what one already knows. Instead, it is based upon our ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills towards a certain topic. In other words, how one will process and use the information that has been given to them. The learning and thinking capacity today’s generation posses is not only greater than those of previous generations but more effective as well. Researcher Mizuko Ito agrees. In her 3-year study she states, “...young people acquire various forms of technical and media literacy by
In today’s modern world, recent scientific research has been conducted, which reveals that world-wide IQ test scores have risen, and continue to rise every year. In Alison Gopnik’s article, “Smarter Every Year? Mystery of the Rising IQs,” she discussed how these recent scientific discoveries relate to our society throughout the last century. It is evident that in our society a person’s level of intelligence is extremely important in our culture which is obsessed with being knowledgable. In her article, Gopnik addresses the historical evidence that supports the conclusion that people are getting smarter as the years go on because of today’s society. Gopnik effectively explains the fact that people’s IQs are rising every year, by using the results
The definition of intelligence has strongly been debated over for many centuries, and many individuals have their arguments for what it is. So what is really the true meaning of intelligence? Some, such as college professor of psychology, Carol S. Dweck, strongly believes that intelligence is something achieved through large amounts effort and having optimistic mindsets as inferred in her article, “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids”. However, on the other hand, successful author of best selling novel “Steve Jobs”, Walter Isaacson, claims that intelligence is an abstract idea that is derived from ingenuity and applying creativity to life and other material concepts. With almost completely opposite sets of beliefs, it is likely that Dweck will not agree with Isaacson’s nation of intelligence being derived from natural intuition rather than raw intelligence.
Since our existence, humans have become smarter through evolution. Advances in technologies allow us to discover new ideas through science and other methods, allowing us to be smarter. However, these advances may also become harmful in the present and possibly the future. New technologies such as cell phones and computers have made life much simpler, but has also taken away the need for critical thinking. Instead of books and newspapers, all we really need is a metal brick and a few taps to get all the information we ever needed in our lives. This represents the current generations, such as the Millennials and Generation Z. The newest generation is the dumbest generation because of how they are very inept and ignorant.
People are not really getting smarter essentially because we rely and depend too much on technology. To further explain, technology has made our lives a bit too easy, we are no longer thinking critically and actually using our brains to function rather we rely on a computer to do the thinking for us. Smartphones and computers for example, have spell check to correct any misspelled words and the problem with this is that individuals are no longer concern with learning how to spell words because they know that their gadgets have a feature that has their back when a word is misspelled. Also, past generations of students were able to look at a text and comprehend it without the use of technology, however in today’s generation if a student is having
Do you think that our generation is not that smart compared to back in time? In article A by Tomas Chamorro a psychologist and article B by Nicholas Carr. They talk about how the internet and google is making this generation more unintelligent than other generations. However, article C talks about how the internet actually somehow making us smarter and intelligent. In my opinion the internet and devices are making our generation a little simple minded. I believe this since we now have phones, tablets, iPads, and computers these objects are getting us distracted. This makes our attention span a little smaller that ten years ago when they didn't have many touch screen phones.
Is the internet slowly decaying our brain? Granted, it has opened people ears and eyes to others divergence. However, with the internet comes the huge presence of search engine many humans rely on. Is technology adapting with human intelligence or is it replacing it? Author, Steven Pinker of the article, “Mind Over Mass Media” argues that technology is “the only thing that will keep us smart.”
In an article written my James R. Flynn, an emeritus professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand, he writes that although people today are not getting any dumber, people are not necessarily getting any smarter. He writes further that if the question is “do we have better brain potential at conception,” or “were our ancestors too stupid to deal with the concrete world of everyday life,” the answer is no. If the question is, “do we live in a time that possess a wider range of cognitive problems that our ancestors encountered, and have we developed new cognitive skills and the kind of brain that can deal with them,” the answer is yes. He concludes the article by writing that people now are more modern than our ancestors. Also, schoolchildren
Every day the world is changing and things are done differently. Technology has also affected the way students are taught and in which they learn. It has changed the classroom. Technology saves us time and allows us to access material in only minutes. “The Internet and online subscription databases, even as a supplement to the printed works in the library, allow students to see, and force them to consider or reject, points of view that they might never have encountered in decades past” (Gow 4).With all the time technology produces, it also has downsides and it also may have created a less intelligent society.
If we should compare baby boomers with the millennial babies, one would say that millennial babies are smarter. However, are people truly getting smarter? According to James Flynn, an American researcher in New Zealand in 980s found that individuals who took IQ test in 1970s did better than those who took it in 1940s. (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 63). Since IQ score is an average set to 100, Flynn noticed that the average increase of over three IQ points per decade. This became known as the Flynn effect (Heylighen, 2000). Flynn in is findings concluded that IQ test does not measure intelligence but makes us more modern since “we are not getting better at everything.”
What will end the world as we know it? It could be climate change, disease, famine, or global war. If none of those come to pass there is always the truth that we are breeding our IQ into the basement. It’s called dysgeneic fertilization, and it has been happening for as long as we’ve been recording intelligence. Although this decline can be seen across the board, not everyone is affected the same way or to the same extent. With each generation that passes a gap widens between those retaining intelligence and those hemorrhaging intelligence. Action must be taken to prevent the gap from widening in order to stem a social divide and dystopia from forming.
The evolution of technology has changed society in both positive and negative ways. People all over the world use and benefit from modern technology. Technology has simplified the access to many tools people need in education, medicine, communication, transportation, etc. However, using it too often has its drawbacks as well. In most cases, the time of finishing projects is cut by more than half with the help of technology. Many people do not realize that technology has its negative affects society as well, and its rapid advances has changed life for worse in a number of different ways.