As I sit and wait for one of my classes to start, I look around and see 10 kids typing on their laptops, undoubtedly browsing Facebook, while the rest of them race their thumbs, wildly texting their friends and significant others.
No one speaks. The professor walks in and immediately starts up his laptop to begin a PowerPoint presentation. What’s wrong with this picture? Almost nothing. Technology is a beautiful thing that has advanced this world further and faster in the past 10 years than ever before.
I often find myself wondering, though: Is technology ruining the social and interpersonal skills of people both young and old?
October 28th, 2010 at 7:52PM
“Is technology ruining the social and interpersonal skills of people both young and old?”
Based on the anecdotal evidence I’ve observed, I’d be inclined to say yes.
I teach a morning class. Most of the students are a little older. I teach from the chalkboard. When they walk in and sit down (I am often in the class already), we take a few minutes before class to talk about stuff…they ask questions about how the material we’re covering relates to other classes, they ask my opinion on experimental-design ideas. We talk.
Another class I teach is mostly “traditional” students and is non-majors. People walk in texting and they keep texting until I start class (and some keep texting while class goes on, despite my repeated stink-eyes and comments about it). I don’t feel like I “know” this class nearly as well as the other one. (Oh, there are a few students in the class – mostly they sit up front – who don’t have the gadgets and who do talk with me. But still, a lot of the class seems more anonymous to me).
I also have to say I’ve had people nearly run into me in the halls or even in the grocery store because they were too busy texting-while walking.
I think as a society we’re going to have to make a choice: either hang the gadgets up while in public, or continue down a self-absorbed, isolating path.
October 29th, 2010 at 3:37PM
Were (s)he in computer science, (s)he’d be using LaTeX/Beamer slides, which are great for showing equations to students if, like myself, you are bad at writing on blackboards.
A conference talk or a lecture is a bit of a show, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not quite like hopping around with a Les Paul slung around your neck, but still…
October 29th, 2010 at 5:12PM
It strikes me that today’s communications technology, especially in its wireless form, tends to promote what Chesterton called the “clique” at the expense of what he called the “clan”..
“The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing that is really narrow is the clique….The men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment like that which exists in hell”
October 30th, 2010 at 11:03AM
“Clique” vs. “clan” sums it up very nicely. That’s along the lines of what I was thinking but couldn’t put into words.