An interesting take on computers, multitasking

 Posted by on 20 March 2009  Modern Life
Mar 202009
 
Photo from the Citizen page, by Eric McCandless

Photo from the Citizen page, by Eric McCandless

Robert J. Sawyer, one of Canada’s most prolific authors, (and a guest speaker at Brandon’s inaugural Words Alive Festival) wrote an op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen about the use of computers and what he feels is the antiquated approach to learning.

Sawyer starts by saying there seems to be an “epidemic of attention deficit disorder– or, at least, we have an epidemic of diagnoses of that condition.” Sawyer feels that instead of looking at computers as a deterrent to learning, and feeling that multitasking is bad for us, perhaps we need to adjust the status-quo.

But is there really something wrong with huge numbers of young people today? Has computer use rotted their brains? Or is it — perhaps — that there’s something wrong with how we’re defining normal?

Our psychological tests for measuring attention were developed between the 1950s and the 1990s. But that was an aberrant period in human history. It was the era of the boob tube and couch potatoes, of people sitting passively in front of television sets for hours on end. Now, in a world in which young people constantly shift their attention from one thing to another, we brand them as ill if they don’t sit still in class.

He feels that instead of passively listening to a professor drone from a textbook, and be required to memorize facts and data, education should be more interactive and memorization should be taken out of the equation. As he says:

Just as pernicious as the canard about multitasking is the claim that Google is making us stupid. Again, the old model of learning — rote memorization — was a product of information scarcity. Does it really make sense to spend days in school memorizing the names of prime ministers or state capitals when literally the moment you ask the question you can have the answer?

…

We shouldn’t pack our brain full of facts and figures; instead, we should train ourselves to be able to quickly absorb and synthesize all the myriad sources of information that are available to us.

At first I didn’t quite agree with this, but the more I sit here and think about it, the more it seems to make sense in our Internet-driven world.

Overall, I think his stance is interesting, and I agree that instead of labeling every kid as having ADD, maybe we should start to recognize that the way in which kids learn and interact in their everyday lives isn’t the same as when we were kids, and that we should start to approach multitasking and computers less negatively.

Amy Breen

  • http://www.absurdintellectual.com/ Grant Hamilton

    Wow — that’s actually really cool way of thinking about it.

    I mean, there’s something to be said for remembering things, and there’s a definite benefit to being able to sit and concentrate on one task for a while. And, if I recall correctly (heh) there have been studies that show multi-tasking actually causes you to perform worse.

    But in this day and age of Google everywhere, the memorization of trivial facts just no longer makes sense.

  • MPot

    What he ignores is that the research has conclusively demonstrated for well over fifty years that passive approaches (such as lecturing) are spectacularly ineffective for nearly all people. Very little is remembered, and what is remembered is shallow and generally unusable. That isn’t true for this generation only — it’s true for people born in the 1930s all the way up to the present. John Dewey predicted this fairly well around 1910.

    Research on attention spans is much the same. Age, generation, use of computers — none of these have a significant effect on attention span, generally speaking. The average attention span has been hovering between 12-25 minutes or decades, according to the empirical research. Anecdotally and logically, it’s likely been true throughout history.

    Sorry. This is a big issue for me! It’s my job to a) convince faculty that just because they were lectured at throughout their degrees doesn’t mean they should inflict such torture on others, and b) teach them how to teach more effectively.

    Good post!

  • Juel

    “epidemic of attention deficit disorder– or, at least, we have an epidemic of diagnoses of that condition.”
    I find that statement very intersting as sometimes it seems when kids are just being kids, or when they are perhaps under-disciplined, they are labeled ADD. Children are not meant to sit still for hours on end.
    I remember going on shopping trips to Winnipeg with my mom when I was a child. She was shopping mostly for clothes for herself. My sister and I had to stand around The Bay and Eatons womans change room and wait and wait and god help us if we fussed. Then up and down Polo Park Mall…ah, torture.

    As for lectures, I myself in grade school, university and even work meetings now, struggle to stay focused. I find my mind wanders to other things and I don’t hear the speaker.

    Interesting post.