Debate on "Dependence on technology is making humanity less intelligent "
Answers
We are certainly becoming less intelligent, if some reports are to be believed. Two indicators of IQ are attention span and reaction time. Microsoft in Canada published research showing that since 2000, attention spans had fallen from twelve to eight seconds. They say a goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds. Now, it’s important to say that all work in this area is highly controversial and widely open to interpretation.
In the last 100 years we can say confidently that reaction times have increased, from about 186ms to 250ms.
From observation, we don’t seem to be smarter, given the way we spend our time pointlessly addicted to social media and email. We interact with our mobile device around 250 times a day, it seems, with the young doing so even more frequently. This is having a dramatic effect on our ability to communicate verbally, face to face.
We certainly think we’re smarter, yet take away the technology and we’re pretty much toast. There isn’t a single person on the planet who could make, say, a computer mouse, using only their own knowledge, or that acquired from the literature.
Can we sustain the technology is maybe the issue? To do so would rely on increasing economic growth indefinitely. There’s a growing weight of opinion that this isn’t possible - the “Growth is Over” school. The respected american economist Robert J Gordon has a paper that’s worth a look: Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds The concept of economic growth was invented by economists who thought it would continue for ever. However , since nothing increases like this in the natural world, why should it? A good place to see what the mathematics is that questions growth is Tom Murphy’s excellent Using physics and estimation to assess energy, growth, options-by Tom Murphy Human progress has never before grown in this manner - it comes irregularly in “giant leaps forward”.
There is also the added confusion of a rarely quoted figure for the number of people killed each day by their use of social media - over 14,000 (from memory), over 5 million each year. It’s a figure that is controversial, but takes into account the time and energy invested in a purposeless activity, and at the very time we should be focusing on a number of existential threats we face for real.
It’s hard to view our behaviour as “intelligent”, in my opinion, it’s just “human” - it’s what we do.
It seems we are facing an “intelligence deficit” of considerable proportions, despite thrashing our higher education system to produce more graduates. The problem is, our systems are becoming so complex, and with the advent of platform technology and AI, that what we really need are cleverer graduates, and not that many of them. Producing more graduates is pointless.
Given the above, the only thing that might help us is Ray Kurzweil's “Singularity”. And personally I have more faith in seeing a tooth fairy galloping past riding a unicorn, chased by a yeti. But that’s just an opinion.