Inventor Of The Wind-Up Radio Complains About 'Google Generation'
from the wait,-you-used-to-have-to-wind-up-radios? dept
I love luddites. They're just so damned consistent. I haven't completely worked out the details yet, but I'm positive there is a math equation out there that would accurately predict after what year a person thinks everything new sucks. Maybe it'd look something like: (year of current date) - (age of person) / (IQ) = (year after which everything sucks). Okay, that's clearly far from perfect (and I hear Douglas Adams may have done it better), but I would expect something along those lines could predict people like a DHS boss that doesn't use anything online ever. Or Andrew Keen and Sherry Turkle, who team up to claim that social media is making us less private, but more lonely, which seems to work at cross conclusions but the math formula is the math formula so screw social media.
Look how lonely all these people are together!
Image source: CC BY-SA 2.0
Those examples aside, I have to admit this is a new one for me. Apparently there once were radios that you had to wind up to use and Trevor Baylis, the guy that invented them, says Google is making younger generations brain dead.
"Children have got to be taught hands-on, and not to become mobile phone or computer dependent. They are dependent on Google searches. A lot of kids will become fairly brain-dead if they become so dependent on the internet, because they will not be able to do things in the old-fashioned way."Let's see if I can break down the pure wrongness of this kind of thinking with a couple of fun little analogies.
- Children have to be taught how to tend to their horses and not become dependent on automobiles or public transportation, otherwise they may not be able to ride horses any longer.
- Children have to be taught how to use an abacus and not become dependent on calculators, otherwise they not be able to use abacuses in their adult daily lives.
- Children have to be taught how to unhook a chastity belt, otherwise they may not be able to have sex once they are married and somehow chasisty belts come back into circulation because....yeah, because.
Get the point? Once the old way is no longer the way, we don't have to teach it any longer. I use Google searches every day, both for work (part numbers for technology parts) and for personal use (explicit search terms for naughty human parts). That's where that stuff exists, on the internet. In fact, learning how to properly use a search engine to get the most out of its results is probably one of the most worthwhile things you can teach a child today. There is nothing wrong with learning the old way of doing things, specifically if that old way builds a foundation for understanding the new way, but blaming Google for making children brain dead is just silly.
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Filed Under: generation gap, luddite, thinking, trevor baylis
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hmm
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As for bayonets there was that incident in London where a Guardsman used one to good effect, convincing someone not to approach the Queens vehicle.
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It's funny how knowledge can be soo...situational.
If he wants them to be taught, then it's simple, learn the most relavent things first, then learn how-to-learn the rest. Should be happy and excited the first things he learned are not the first things kids learn.
As long as they are smart enough to learn how to function without the internet as needed, what's wrong?
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I think the more disturbing trend is that people rely on something like Google, or computers in general, with no idea of how they work under the hood. I'm not saying everyone should be a programmer, but at least knowing how a computer, or any piece of software, superficially works can immensely help a kid understand what they're being fed and give them the tools to parse information from misinformation. I took C++ classes in high school and just a simple knowledge of computer language helps me "talk" to a computer better than say, my mom or my dad, or most of my other tech-savvy, wired hipster friends, always with the latest geegaw, who've never even heard the word boolean.
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It really isn't fair to ask everybody to become conversant with the underlying technologies behind everyday conveniences. The world is becoming much more complicated. I know the most basic aspects of how my truck works, but I would not trust myself to do any major repair work. Asking a non-techie to learn the basics of Java, C (and its cousins), Assembly, etc. is just asking for trouble.
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Do you know how to put gas in it? Change the wiper blades? Check the oil? Change a tire? These are things that would be completely unknown to 95% of the population, if they had the same level of knowledge about motor vehicles as they do about computers. In fact, most of them probably wouldn't even know where the hood release was or how to put the flashers on.
Things that the average computer user should know, like how to create their own shortcuts, or how to change file associations, are like magic to most people. In general, they only know two things about using a computer;
1. Double-click an icon.
2. Insert a disc and wait for Windows to ask what to do.
They may know how to use specific programs (to some degree), but as far as dealing with the computer/OS itself, that's pretty much all they know. If their camera software doesn't provide a 'library' function for their photos, they have no idea where they are or how to find them with Explorer, nor would they know how to install a third-party image viewer. If their web browser doesn't provide a link to the download directory, they have no clue where the files they downloaded were saved to.
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So IMO, there is nothing wrong with the general population having a basic idea of how the internet actually works. Maybe there should be a lesson during grade school. At some point in grade school, you typically have an exercise of setting up a "store" and selling things (within the classroom, not to the public). There are other exercises that teachers have students do to learn various lessons about the world.
Maybe there could be an internet lesson about disassembling a paper, routing these "packets" and reassembling. It's not much of a leap for students to understand that instead of paper, a CD or DVD (music, movie, etc) could be split up and routed through this network to another point.
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With modern cars you probably can't due to all the computers. With a few cars you can't open the bonnet (hood to you Americans), it requires special tool only availble to the dealers.
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The same is true with computers- people need to know the bare-bones relationship between CPU, RAM, hard disks and OS, as well as how to use common OS features. I'll admit the bar is still pretty high, but without this sort of understanding you will never be able to get more than the minimum out of your computer.
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Nxt thng
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Anyone with a smartphone could technically do any job now o.o (only problem is finding someone with the drive to do it, AND the proper licenses/school degrees >.>)
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bayliss crank radios
I've owned a couple, they were quite cool as conceptual objects.
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Re: bayliss crank radios
Crank radios were common in WW2.. Not sure how much further back they go then that, but I'm somewhat unimpressed. He did make money off selling his patent of a different version... I guess, for what thats worth.
The fact that this guy patented his invention in 1991
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If children never learn their multiplication tables because it is assumed that they will always have access to a calculator... They would never know that 5x5 does not equal 30 because they accidentally hit a 6 instead. Only by knowing approximately what the answer should be in the first place, will they be able to quickly catch and troubleshoot errors in their work.
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Learning to do math, for instance has many applications in current life and with just training your mind in general, whereas learning to do your math using a slide rule instead of a calculator, on the other hand would probably be mostly pointless today.
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- Joe Flintstone, cave dweller
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What about Blackberry Pi, Arduino, etc?
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Re: What about Blackberry Pi, Arduino, etc?
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Re: Re: What about Blackberry Pi, Arduino, etc?
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Yes, because nothing is as conducive to learning as manually searching through card catalogs for hours.
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An admission of age, I learnt to use a slide rule, as calculators were expensive luxuries. This included the various tricks to be able to estimate a result by mental arithmetic, or quick pen and paper calculations. (With a guessing stick, an order or two of magnitude error is all too easy, the user has to track the decimal point.) This is still useful, even though I use a calculator app for calculations these days. It gives a quick check, or prediction of an answer, and catches typos.
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I grew up just past the slide rule age. I did learn some about how to use one, but it was on my own rather than in school. At this point, calculators, like ball point pens, are so common (even in the most basic of cell phones) that I think the grade school drilling on arithmetic is almost pointless. I know people once were shocked at the idea of not teaching how to do square roots by hand, but that's been true for a long time now. I don't mean not to teach arithmetic, just not to spend vast time becoming very fast at it as though it's going to become a daily life skill -- it isn't. Another increasingly unimportant skill is penmanship. Everyone types now. "Keyboarding" is taught in grade school when my daughter was in grade school a decade ago.
The world changes. Don't be shocked. There is limited school time. They need to focus on what will be important, not what we thought was important when we were kids. And certainly not what we think is important just because we have a romantic or nostalgic attachment to it.
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Also many of the ways of making things from around 1900 are useful to the individual, as while they may be slow, they require a minimum of tools. Books from this era are more likely found in a library.
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Google Search
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Re: Google Search
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Wait, no, that's not right at all.
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Google is the most important skill
So, yeah... knowing how to operate the search interface to the sum of all human knowledge is one of the most important, if not the most important, thing you can learn how to do. It frees your mind from useless rote memorization and puts almost limitless information at your fingertips so you can use your brain to do analysis and interpretation
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Re: Google is the most important skill
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I agree that people (whether the "youth of today or my age or whatever) should know how to do some things on their own. You should know how to change a tire, put gas in your car (check youtube for the moronic people who just can't see to manage that) drive a nail in and hang a picture, etc.
You should have a basic understanding of how your computer/tv/DVD/etc. works vs. just where the power button is and how the UI works.
If your response to every question is lmgtfy, then you're probably spending a whole lot less time thinking critically than you should.
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I was taught to perform calculations on a slide rule. I'd like to teach this to my nephews at some point, not because I think they'll ever need to use a slide rule for calculations, but because for me, it was one of the best ways to internalize some knowledge about the nature of logarithms.
I was taught typesetting by using lead type on a for-real printing press, placing them by hand. I'd like to teach this to my nephews at some point, not because I think they'll need a printing press, but because I know it's a good way to develop a real feel for when ligatures make sense, what kerning is all about, et cetera.
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See how that works?
Want to learn how to use a slide rule? Search "how to use a slide rule". I'm guessing that is a bit easier than waiting for a tutorial on a wind up radio.
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I do Reenactment, and guess how one does find out how things were done in the past?
How do you tie a knot to fasten a sword-sheath? How do you nalbind viking stockings? How do you cut and fold paper-cartridges for mini� balls? Good luck finding even books without the internet and search-engines.
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I sort of get what he is saying.
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The survival of the species
There's strength in diversity. Always good to respect people's opinions, however totally freakish and stupid they are (as in this case)!
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The survival of the species
There's strength in diversity. Always good to respect people's opinions, however totally freakish and stupid they are (as in this case)!
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Re: The survival of the species
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Re: The survival of the species
What will we have to blame when the technology's all gone, I wonder?!
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Trevor is right
They never learn to think analytically.
Here is a fundamental example: I hire many developers. My first interview question is to ask how the operating system handles multi-threaded applications. The best developers know the basics of an operating system. The mediocre developers - the ones that produce race conditions, code with security vulnerabilities, bloated data structures and crappy db access are all people like Timothy (the author) that laugh at "luddites" like Trevor.
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