
How good software makes us stupid - _grrr
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11263559
======
jdietrich
I am bloody sick of that troll Nicholas Carr.

Exactly the same things were said of printing - conservatives said that we
would lose the ability to remember things when all knowledge could be looked
up in a book.

Exactly the same things were said of slide rules and calculators - that we
would lose the ability to reason as our ability to calculate atrophied.

The obvious debunking of Carr's argument is the incredible level of skill so
many computer users exhibit. Obviously we HNers are all aware of how bloody
difficult programming is, but we forget just how complex a lot of very
ordinary software is. Watch a skilled Photoshop operator or a really good
Starcraft player in action and you'll see Carr's hypothesis go down in flames.
Something as mundane as Excel is easily more complex than any system in the
world just a few decades ago.

Carr is at the bottom of a very long line of dreary, reactionary trolls,
cursing that the young people today don't know how easy they've got it, that
they're going soft with their newfangled tools.

~~~
sabat
_I am bloody sick of that troll Nicholas Carr._

Couldn't have put it better myself. He really thinks he's good at being
reductive.

 _cursing that the young people today don't know how easy they've got it_

Every generation is sure that these young kids today, with their hair and
their clothes, just don't appreciate how hard things used to be. Every
generation is wrong about that, of course.

~~~
Qz
_Every generation is wrong about that, of course._

Actually, they're right -- it's just that in the grand scheme of things, how
much easier we have it today than the last generation, is insignificant
compared to how hard life is in general. We do have it better, but it doesn't
make us dumber because the world still needs smart people to keep it going.

~~~
sabat
Meh. I'm old enough to have been aware of what things were difficult for the
previous generation and how they're easier now. And: there are new things that
we have to deal with that the previous generation could never have conceived.
In my experience, life never gets easier; it just changes.

------
rflrob
"It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by
eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the
habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case.
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we
can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like
cavalry charges in a battle--they are strictly limited in number, they require
fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments. "

Alfred North Whitehead, <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead>

------
metamemetics
> _"Months later - the people who had the unhelpful software actually could
> remember how to do the puzzle, and the people with the helpful software
> couldn't."_

In the real world people with helpful software can take advantage of their
time saved by tackling even harder classes of problems that people with
unhelpful software never even had the time to get to.

------
alexandros
Socrates was grumbling that writing things down was impairing our ability to
learn things by heart.

As far as I am concerned, the more rote memorization that things machines can
take off my brain's to-do list, the more time+space I can devote to higher-
level thinking.

~~~
Chris_Newton
> As far as I am concerned, the more rote memorization that things machines
> can take off my brain's to-do list, the more time+space I can devote to
> higher-level thinking.

I agree up to a point, but someone who understands lots of grammar but has no
vocabulary is just as poor a communicator as someone with lots of vocabulary
but no grammar, or perhaps even worse. I am concerned that modern trends in
education could create a generation with lots of ideas but no practical
experience or background information to put anything in context. They can't
look _everything_ up every time, and they are going to need a certain level of
knowledge to appreciate the significance of the ideas they are learning.

~~~
ams6110
This is why I don't use editors with IntelliSense-like capabilities, or if
they have it I disable it.

------
schwanksta
All of these dire predictions of better technology dumbing us down are getting
tiresome.

People who are lazy, and wouldn't bother memorizing a route anyway, will be
helped by something like SatNav or Google Maps -- and yes, probably use them
as a crutch. But it's better than them _not being able to get anywhere_. Me?
Having instant access to a birds-eye view of every road in my city (Los
Angeles) has given me the tools I need to memorize many routes, and is one of
the reasons I can drive around this city so effectively.

Technology is a tool. Use it how you will.

------
daychilde
But they've missed the true comparison.

The question isn't: "Would a London cabby using satnav software without having
learned the city do better than a London cabby who learned the city?"

The question is: "Would a London cabby using satnav software do better than
one without - both having learned the city?"

In other words: Assuming good satnav software that knew current traffic
conditions and historic average speeds of the roads, with an easy interface to
offer multiple routing options that are easily changeable (for instance) -
wouldn't that be _helpful_ to a cabby vs. a cabby that didn't have that extra
tool?

I don't think it's fair to compare human+tech vs. human-only performance with
no tech. Better to compare them _with_ tech, since the whole point is that
technology is available and used.

------
cageface
We're heading towards a mental man-machine symbiosis. Think of all your
gadgetry as a co-processor.

~~~
metamemetics
We're already there. Man has always existed in that symbiosis since he's been
man. Man is defined by his exceptional tool use, so I will claim man has never
not existed in symbiosis with machine and been just "man".

A ship that can carry a settler across the ocean is a prosthetic foot that
extends his powers of travel. Eye-glasses are prosthetic eyes that extend your
power of vision.

With the internet we are basically building improved books with better lookup
features, they both are still prosthetic memory storage communicating
information visually.

~~~
cageface
True, but I think we're crossing one of those historical barriers where a
quantitative difference becomes so large that it becomes a qualitative
difference. The kind of symbiosis you achieve with devices that connect you
instantly to every other person on the planet and to which you can offload all
kinds of calculation and information gathering is truly new.

I'm not a triumphalist about it either. Technology gives but also takes.

~~~
metamemetics
Well "instantly" here probably means a response time of ~ 100-3000ms depending
on the amount of processing being offloaded for an internet service.

I agree it's new to be measuring this in milliseconds and discussing fiber
optics rather than hours and the transatlantic-cable (or days and the pony
express).

If we're in the long view and talking about evolution, I disagree that the
underlying process driving this has changed.

I guess it's just a discussion of the merits between looking at the position
of a car vs. one of its derivatives such as acceleration. You need to know all
of them to predict its future position and there are possibly an infinite
number of derivatives.

------
adnam
The Knowledge is a very hard test. It can take 3 years to pass, and you need
to learn 320 set routes within 6 miles of Charing Cross. My aunt did The
Knowledge anf now drives a black cab by day, and a rather expensive Mercedes
sports car the rest of the time.

~~~
cturner
Despite the trade protection their firm gets, the money is low, particularly
considering outlay, hours and conditions. Yet the quality of the experience is
consistently good in a city where service is often poor.

I'm interested to know what causes this: whether it's due to the discipline
(the thrill of navigating a puzzle, like a unix operator gets), or the
institution (feeling like you're part of something important).

I had a freaky conversation with a driver last winter about messaging systems.
He knew all the right questions after I told him what I did, and made comments
about the particular technologies. It came out that we were working on the
opposite ends of a big integration between firms. He was unhappy with that
life and very comfortable at the prospect of spending the rest of his days
driving a cab around.

~~~
adnam
The money is actually pretty good. You can earn way above the national
average, you're your own boss and can work the hours that suit you.

------
scott_s
Give me studies, not arguments. Using tools - and "good software" are just
tools - that free us from having to use intelligence for a task allows us to
direct that intelligence to _other_ tasks.

Yes, I'm not as good at arithmetic as a technical person from 50 or even 30
years ago. But I'm freed from having to do all of that myself so I can focus
energy to what I actually care about.

------
djhworld
This article makes no real sense, does the author (of the book) have any
scientific evidence for any of his claims?

------
slantyyz
Perhaps an alternative view: Good software makes the lazy lazier?

