Regular followers of this (approximately) five-year-old blogspace are undoubtedly aware of our adamant reservations concerning the surrender of humanistic capabilities to the more facile and efficient digital facilities. We have expressed our affirmative support of general advancement, but have expressed our profound concern regarding the irresponsible lack of attention accorded by Silicon Valley to the humanistic impact of their ubiquitous “advancements.” Plainly expressed, we have been concerned that the exaltation of capability is far above that of the empirical, humanistic impact; i.e., the vital concepts of “can,” and “should.”
Regular readers are, predictably, surfeited with our ubiquitous observations of societal and individual damage (especially to the personality-formative young) resulting from the surrender of salubrious, interactive, human conversation to the presumably more facile “smartphone,” resulting in a notably impactful lack of intellectual and communicative capability; the sine qua non of society.
To responsibly audit our expressed views on the subject of Man’s digital substitution of human activities, we performed some cursory, armchair research into various authoritative publications on the subject, and were profoundly shaken by the reported extent of adverse empirical impact ot such digitalized, algorithmic “advances” on society and individual sapient life.
Our previous writings emphasized the societal degradation and personal loss of humanism, specifically brought about by the use of hand-held appliances (“smartphones”); the context of this writing (with the aid of our aforementioned “armchair” readings) is relative to the authoritative findings of mental and intellectual regression implicated in the ubiquitous use of computers, especially A.I., on the human brain.
It has been reportedly determined, with the aid of electro-encephalograms, that the popular use of A.I.K. in the writing of essays and reports, lowers the activity in the brain networks associated with cognitive processing, attention, and creativity. An additional and worrisome finding is a notable lack of recall of what was written.Such external assistance reportedly limits the ability to synthesize information and that of weighing competing views to enable the formulation of an opinion. We are creating dystopic generations that have a limited capability of understanding, of relevant subject matter, nor, indeed, an empirical perception of the world and its place in it.
Professional sources advise that while the human brain likes shortcuts, it needs “”friction to learn. We must, in the interest of the salubrious existence of man and his society, responsibly consider the vital difference between “can” and “should” in the profit-making aspiration for innovation and profit; otherwise, we will harvest a bumper crop of haplessly ineffectual, stupid progeny.
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