Question Technology

Growing Up Distracted

The New York Times has continued its "Your Brain On Computers" series with a piece on the digital distractions facing today's students: Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction.

Speaking of distractions, here is how the story is presented in my browser. Can you find it?

The twitterati are already having conniptions over the article. Cue the breathless rebuttals from people who apparently didn't read it carefully. It's the next Zadie Smith/Facebook. (Example of that sort of rebuttal: Literary Writers and Social Media: A Response to Zadie Smith.)

Robot teachers are on the way

There's an interesting article in the New York Times today about robotic teachers. An excerpt:

Researchers say the pace of innovation is such that these machines should begin to learn as they teach, becoming the sort of infinitely patient, highly informed instructors that would be effective in subjects like foreign language or in repetitive therapies used to treat developmental problems like autism.

Several countries have been testing teaching machines in classrooms. South Korea, known for its enthusiasm for technology, is “hiring” hundreds of robots as teacher aides and classroom playmates and is experimenting with robots that would teach English.

Already, these advances have stirred dystopian visions, along with the sort of ethical debate usually confined to science fiction. “I worry that if kids grow up being taught by robots and viewing technology as the instructor,” said Mitchel Resnick, head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “they will see it as the master.”

Most computer scientists reply that they have neither the intention, nor the ability, to replace human teachers. The great hope for robots, said Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, “is that with the right kind of technology at a critical period in a child’s development, they could supplement learning in the classroom.”

Link: Students, Meet Your New Teacher, Mr. Robot.

I don't think you can fault the individual computer scientists' intentions here, and it may well be that robots offer unique value in certain special situations like working with autistic children. But I have to agree with those who find this trend disturbing. I don't think Resnick's worry about seeing robots "as the master" is the worst problem. Our society values technology more than it values teachers. These robots aren't solving a problem that couldn't be solved better with people. And down the road it's not hard to see the day when cheap robots become much more than just a supplement.

To repeat a quote I posted 5 years ago:

"In the end, it is the poor who will be chained to the computer; the rich will get teachers."

Stephen Kindel, quoted by Todd Oppenheimer in The Flickering Mind: Saving Education From the False Promise of Technology.

Debunking the idea of "Digital Natives"

A good article in The Economist: The net generation, unplugged.

(via Putting People First)

What's troubling about WolframAlpha

From an AP review (dated May 13) of WolframAlpha by Brian Bergstein:

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit that I'm troubled by the potential for WolframAlpha. I fear the implications of an information butler that is considered so smart and so widely applicable that people turn to it without question, by default, whenever they want to know something.

What's that, you say? We already have such a service?

Well, for all the fears that Google is making us stupid by making it too easy to look up information, at least Google and its rivals enable the critical thinking that comes from scoping out multiple sources.

Unlike search engines that deliver links that match keywords in your query, WolframAlpha is more of a black box. If you have it perform a calculation, it gives you an answer, along with a small link for "source information." Open that and you'll generally be told the data was "curated"—found and verified—by the company behind WolframAlpha. In other words, "trust us."

The site does suggest ways to track down similar information from other sources, including government statistics, proprietary databases, almanacs and the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia. To confirm WolframAlpha's data I went a suddenly old-fashioned route—through Web searches on Google and Yahoo. I didn't find any errors, but taking that step made me wonder why I didn't just use Google or Yahoo to begin with.

Link: Review: Flaws in Web's much-touted WolframAlpha.

Rory Litwin has posted similar comments at Library Juice: Wolfram Alpha: Bad Idea!

Dave Eggers Defends Print and Reading

Novelist Dave Eggers, in a speech excerpted in the New Yorker:

To any of you who are feeling down, and saying, “Oh, no one’s reading anymore”: Walk into 826 on any afternoon. There are no screens there, it’s all paper, it’s all students working shoulder to shoulder invested in their work, writing down something, thinking their work might get published. They put it all on the page, and they think, “Well, if this person who works next to me cares so much about what I’m writing, and they’re going to publish it in their next anthology or newspaper or whatever, then I’m going to invest so much more in it.” And then meanwhile, they’re reading more than I did at their age. …

Nothing has changed! The written word—the love of it and the power of the written word—it hasn’t changed. It’s a matter of fostering it, fertilizing it, not giving up on it, and having faith. Don’t get down. I actually have established an e-mail address, [email protected]—if you want to take it down—if you are ever feeling down, if you are ever despairing, if you ever think publishing is dying or print is dying or books are dying or newspapers are dying (the next issue of McSweeney’s will be a newspaper—we’re going to prove that it can make it. It comes out in September). If you ever have any doubt, e-mail me, and I will buck you up and prove to you that you’re wrong.

Link: Dave Eggers will prove you wrong (The New Yorker via MobyLives).

"826" is 826 National, a fantastic nonprofit that runs writing and tutoring centers for kids. Eggers was being honored for the project at this event.

Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era

A syllabus by Robert Lanham in McSweeney's: go read the whole thing.

(via Nick Carr)

Twitter on the primary school curriculum

From the you've-gotta-be-kidding department (aka is it April Fools already?): The Guardian reports that a new plan for the UK school curriculum will add twitter and Wikipedia and drop the requirement to study Victorian history and WWII. Excerpt:

Children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war under proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum, the Guardian has learned.

However, the draft plans will require children to master Twitter and Wikipedia and give teachers far more freedom to decide what youngsters should be concentrating on in classes.

The proposed curriculum, which would mark the biggest change to primary schooling in a decade, strips away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11 to allow schools greater flexibility in what they teach.

It emphasises traditional areas of learning - including phonics, the chronology of history and mental arithmetic - but includes more modern media and web-based skills as well as a greater focus on environmental education.

The plans have been drawn up by Sir Jim Rose, the former Ofsted chief who was appointed by ministers to overhaul the primary school curriculum, and are due to be published next month.

Link: Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary shake-up.

See also BBC: Pupils "should study Twitter".

Is twitter really that hard to learn? From personal experience, I'd say: Hard to learn? no. Hard to understand the point of? maybe.

I signed up recently (karthur), mostly because it seems like a lot of interesting people whose blogs I read are now posting there instead (particularly in the design/UX world I follow for work-related stuff). I don't know if I'll start tweeting much myself.

The experience has been interesting so far, and slightly useful. It's a quicker way to keep up with the buzz in the webosphere than by trying to follow the 300+ blogs I've subscribed to in Google Reader. I feel like I'd have to be constantly connected to really get it, though, instead of just reading it once or twice a day like I'm doing. The format is a little unfriendly -- so many blind tiny-urls!

Tech terms push out nature terms in kids' dictionary

Some Canadians are upset that the new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary, a sort of practice dictionary for seven-year-olds, has dropped several words from nature in favor of tech terms. From the Canadian Press:

VANCOUVER — A B.C. environmental group is flabbergasted that the publisher of the Oxford Junior Dictionary has sent words like “beaver” and “dandelion” the way of the dodo bird.

In the latest version of its dictionary for schoolchildren, Oxford University Press has cut nature terms such as heron, magpie, otter, acorn, clover, ivy, sycamore, willow and blackberry.

In their place, the university publishing house has substituted more modern terms, like the electronic Blackberry, blog, MP3 player, voicemail and broadband.

Canadian wildlife artist and conservationist Robert Bateman, whose Get to Know Program has been inspiring children to go outdoors and “get to know” their wild neighbours for more than a decade, said the decision is telling kids that nature just isn't that important.

“This is another nail in the coffin of human beings being acquainted with nature,” Mr. Bateman said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“If you can't name things, how can you love them? And if you don't love them, then you're not going to care a hoot about protecting them or voting for issues that would protect them.”

[...]

“I don't want to sound like an old you-know-what, but I have a feeling that quite a number of decisions are made by 20-somethings or 30-somethings,” he said. “There are a whole bunch of them out there who were raised on Saturday morning cartoons and video games and not out in nature.”

Mr. Bateman plans to fire off a letter to the university press brass in protest.

“I find it frightening what is happening, that people are losing a connection with nature,” he said.

Link: Nature lovers livid as 'blog' replaces 'beaver' in Oxford's junior dictionary.

I think the uproar is a bit silly, but still... broadband? Blackberry?

The photo of blackberries (the old-fashioned kind) is from wildmanstevebrill.com.

Lewis Lapham on the humanities in a technological age

This is from Lewis Lapham's preamble in the current issue of Lapham's Quarterly. The theme of the issue is Ways of Learning.

From time to time in the scholarly journals and the alumni magazines I come across articles that might as well be entitled “What in God’s Name Are the Humanities, and Why Are They of Any Use to Us Here in the Bright Blue Technological Wonder of the 21st Century?” The question suggests that within the circles of informed academic opinion the authorities construe the humanities as exquisite ornaments, meant to be preserved, together with the banknotes and the jewels, in the vaults of the university’s endowment—an acquaintance with the liberal arts one of those proper appearances that must be kept up, together with the house in Southampton and the season’s subscription to the Metropolitan Opera. Apparently content to believe that man’s machines have vanquished nature, subjugated the tribes of Paleolithic instinct, and put an end to history, the oracles in residence walk to and fro among the old trees sold to the alumni as naming opportunities, speaking of tenure and tables of organization, of Rembrandt’s drawings and Shakespeare’s plays as pheasants under glass. Their piety recalls the lines of Archibald MacLeish:

Freedom that was a thing to use
They made a thing to save
And staked it in and fenced it round
Like a dead man’s grave.

To bury the humanities in the tombs of precious marble is to fail the quiz on what constitutes a decent American education. Like the sorcerer’s apprentice, our technologists produce continuously improved means toward increasingly ill-defined ends; we have acquired a great many new weapons and information systems, but we don’t know at what or at whom to point the digital enhancements. Unless the executive sciences look for advice and consent to the senate of the humanities, we stand a better than even chance of murdering ourselves with our own toys. Not to do so is to make a mistake that is both stupid and ahistorical.

Link: Playing with fire.

Nick Carr's sources for "Is Google making us stupid?"

Nick Carr has posted a comprehensive list of sources and related readings for his Atlantic piece "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" This is excellent and worth digging into: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?": sources and notes.

As I wrote before, I think the key question is whether there is scientific evidence for these effects or not -- and Carr references one study and a book (Proust and the Squid) that claim such evidence. That's the most powerful part of Carr's article, in my opinion, and I haven't seen a rebuttal that doesn't ignore it (and thus fail as a rebuttal) -- to wit, the bloviating, er, debate about this article that continues at The Edge and other such forums.

The Tender Ears of the Blogosphere

Pretty much everyone and their dog has commented on Nick Carr's piece "Is Google making us stupid?"  Most offer up banal anecdotes to counter Carr's claim but ignore the primary sources/studies he mentions.  I didn't offer my own opinion because I don't think this is a matter of opinion, it's a matter of science.  Either research shows there is a new effect or it doesn't.

Two responses in particular bother me.  First, Seth Finkelstein criticised Carr for not being "technology-positive" enough and for writing too much in the style of "fogeyism."  His worry is that techies won't listen to people who sound old or cranky.  That may be true but the answer isn't to water down criticism.  Part of growing up is learning to listen to people unlike yourself -- even people you disagree with.  A technology background does not teach you to think critically about technology and society; if anything it leaves you with a deficit (yes, I speak from experience).

Link: http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001349.html

The second response is by Danah Boyd and I don't know whether she's talking about Carr's piece or something else, but I'll assume she is (my second guess is Mark Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation).  Her post is another meta-comment and is about how to respond to "quasi-legitimate trolls in an attention economy."  She characterizes some writers as attention-seeking trolls and is having trouble ignoring them so asks for advice.  I asked in a comment for clarification of what defines a troll vs. a rational critic you disagree with and also what books she was talking about.  I was rebuffed so I won't ask again -- I'm afraid of appearing to be a troll myself.

My problem with Boyd's point is that it's grossly unfair to call Carr or Bauerlein trolls (Keen and Siegel may be a little closer, but still don't meet the definition in my opinion).  To be a troll (a term borrowed from the Internet, of course) implies an irrational attention-seeker who ignores logic and simply repeats their opinion to annoy someone.  These writers, however, are drawing on real evidence to support their arguments and are engaging in rational discussion.  They may be wrong but they deserve an intelligent response.

There's an irony in Boyd's post -- she claims Internet-style trolls are showing up more and more in real life.  What she misses is that maybe real life is the same and what has transferred over from the internet is the habit of labeling people as trolls as an excuse not to listen to them.

Link: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/06/22/feeding_quasile.html

I started this blog three years ago to try to point out the many good books that have been written on technology's impact on society, as well as the excellent work that continues to be done by people in fields such as science and technology studies.  What still surprises me is how shallow and closed-minded most discussion on the Internet tends to be.  Most of the smartest stuff is still offline.

College Without Technology

Wyoming Catholic College limits students' use of cell phones and computers, and the students seem to be doing just fine.  From the Casper Star-Tribune:

In an era when technology is king, Wyoming Catholic College is positing an against-the-grain conviction: that great advances in technological achievement, while widely celebrated, might not in fact be good for people. And they might actually get in the way of education.

Here, students are encouraged, and in many ways required, to forgo the world of virtual connectivity, and engage with the actual world -- to go out into the woods, the mountains and the horse stables and experience what college officials refer to as "God's first book."

Student Hannah Gaddis of Casper said the school's curriculum kept her so busy and engaged that she never had time to give the school's strict technology policy a second thought.

"You kind of realize how much you don't need these things," she said.

Link: An Audacious Experiment.

I learned about this first from an NPR story (No Tech U) in which they interview a student who clearly gets that technology skills are not that big a deal and not hard to learn when you need them. 

Of course there are other aspects of this school that may not be everyone's cup of tea -- like the exclusively religious and "great (Western) books" curriculum and the apparent endorsement by Bill Bennett.  In America those don't raise eyebrows (not that they should, necessarily) -- but banning iPods sure does.

Negroponte's $100 laptop is no longer about learning, if it ever was

Ivan Krstic, formerly the director of security architecture for the (now failing rather spectacularly) One Laptop Per Child project, has some strong words about the project's philosophies, its leader, and the free-software gurus who hijacked the project to push their own agendas.  From his blog:

I quit when Nicholas told me — and not just me — that learning was never part of the mission. The mission was, in his mind, always getting as many laptops as possible out there; to say anything about learning would be presumptuous, and so he doesn't want OLPC to have a software team, a hardware team, or a deployment team going forward.

Yeah, I'm not sure what that leaves either.

There are three key problems in one-to-one computer programs: choosing a suitable device, getting it to children, and using it to create sustainable learning and teaching experiences. They're listed in order of exponentially increasing difficulty.

[...]

That OLPC was never serious about solving deployment, and that it seems to no longer be interested in even trying, is criminal. Left uncorrected, it will turn the project into a historical information technology fuckup unparalleled in scale.

As for the last key problem, transforming laptops into learning is a non-trivial leap of logic, and one that remains inadequately explained. No, we don't know that it'll work, especially not without teachers. And that's okay — the way to find out whether it works might well be by trying. Sometimes you have to run before you can walk, yeah? But most of us who joined OLPC believed that the educational ideology behind the project is what actually set it apart from similar endeavors in the past. Learning which is open, collaborative, shared, and exploratory — we thought that's what could make OLPC work. Because people have tried plain laptop learning projects in the past, and as the New York Times noted on its front page not so long ago, they crashed and burned.

Nicholas' new OLPC is dropping those pesky education goals from the mission and turning itself into a 50-person nonprofit laptop manufacturer, competing with Lenovo, Dell, Apple, Asus, HP and Intel on their home turf, and by using the one strategy we know doesn't work. But hey, I guess they'll sell more laptops that way.

Link: Sic Transit Gloria Laptopi,

via Fake Steve Jobs.

New Book: The Dumbest Generation

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) by Mark Bauerlein is released next week.

From the book's website:

The dawn of the digital age once aroused our hopes: the Internet, e-mail, blogs, and interactive and ultra-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their know-how and understanding of technology to form the vanguard of this new, hyper-informed era.

That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen.

The technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their minds had the opposite effect.

According to recent reports from government agencies, foundations, survey firms, and scholarly institutions, most young people in the United States neither read literature (or fully know how), work reliably (just ask employers), visit cultural institutions (of any sort), nor vote (most can’t even understand a simple ballot). They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount foundations of American history, or name any of their local political representatives. What do they happen to excel at is – each other. They spend unbelievable amounts of time electronically passing stories, pictures, tunes, and texts back and forth, savoring the thrill of peer attention and dwelling in a world of puerile banter and coarse images.

Anyone who thinks this is mere intergenerational grousing, the time-worn tradition of an older generation wagging its finger at a younger one, should think again.

Drawing upon exhaustive research, detailed portraits, and historical and social analysis, The Dumbest Generation presents an uncompromisingly realistic study of the young American mind at this critical juncture. The book also lays out a compelling vision of how we might address its deficiencies.

To fail to do so may well mean sacrificing our future to the least curious and intellectual generation in national history.

Interested in a print version of the radio series "How to think about science"?

If you've checked out the CBC Ideas radio series (and podcast) called "How to think about science" I'd appreciate your thoughts on this question.

The show's host David Cayley sent out some email asking people if they think the CBC should produce printed transcripts and/or a book version of the series.  I think it's a great idea but I'm just one listener.  (See this earlier post for my thoughts on the show.)

If you have an opinion, please cast your vote in the newfangled widget thingy below and/or in the comments to this post.  (If you're reading this on a feed reader I doubt that the widget will work properly there, so please click through to the original page to vote.)  Thanks.