10 signs tech is making you dumb
Now that technology can do so much, it’s amazing we can do anything for ourselves (edited version cross-posted to TechRadar.com)
We’re all used to the idea of progress through technology, but is that actually true? To find out let’s just see how many of these tech-induced maladies you’re already fallen victim to:
1. You can’t remember anything
Before mobile phones were invented you practically had an contact book in your head - you knew all the phone numbers of your friends and family off by heart and could happily walk into a public telephone box, stick in 10p and call anyone of them. Now the only number you can ever remember is the one for your local pizza parlour. But that’s only because it has six ‘7’s in it. And unless your Blackberry tells you it’s your birthday you’d probably forget that too.
2. You have no sense of direction
For hundred of years man has known how to navigate by tracking the relative position of the sun, the moon and the stars. How you envy those migrating animals now. These days you can’t even figure out how to get to Asda without technical assistance. It’s lucky then that DougDoug (or whatever his name is) still knows his way from A to B, even if does force you to drive wrong way down one-way streets, wade through perilous fords or career through people’s front doors. In your Hummer. And now thanks to GPS in phones you don’t even have to remember how to walk to the car. Brilliant.
3. You think you can sing, but you can’t
Close-harmony singing, remember that? You’d be standing round the piano at Christmas time, yodelling your hosannahs with your other three Barber Shop owning friends. Now all we get is excited yelping and a horrible kind of mew / squall that sounds like a cat being slowly turned inside out. You say the iPod is the best thing ever invented. We’ve heard you on the bus. We beg to differ.
4. You can’t reach the remote from the sofa
Remoteitis is a terrible muscle-wasting disease that first came to the fore in the late 1970s. Before this date people had to get up from the sofa to watch a different channel on TV, and some crazy audio buffs even had to ‘turn an album over’ to carry on listening to the second half. These two actions alone are half the reason why there were no fat people before punk. The other half is the sheer amount of the physical effort required. There weren’t any soft touch buttons then. You had to use real force to switch from BBC to ITV, and then probably get someone to help you when you wanted to change the channel back again.
5. U TXT therefore U is
SMS. It’s only two characters away from being the international call-sign for distress - which explains a lot when you think about it. Instead of the fully-formed vowels, consonants, word, verbs, subjects and sentences, we end up with this: RU come down Baa Bar L8R? CU 7 ;-). It’s why aliens haven’t invaded. They’ve already probed all our minds and couldn’t find anything worth nicking.
6. You have a short attention span
Do you need to be constantly entertained? FLASHING LIGHTS Then you’re suffering LOOK AN AMAZING DANCING BEAR from an inability THESE SEXY GIRLS WOULD LIKE TO MEET YOU to pay any attention GOT ANY ALCO-POPS to anything for more than LIKE THIS ONE, BOOM-LANG-A-LANG-BOOM-LANG-A-LANG five minutes. Has he stopped now? We blame kids’ TV.
7. You didn’t know there was so much you didn’t know
You work hard, study hard, play hard. So why do you feel like a doofus that doesn’t know anything. Two words: The Internet (or is that three words? The Inter Net, you’ll have to look it up on Google. Is that two words?) Anyway you keep coming stuff across every day that shatters every bit of knowledge you’ve ever accumulated, and it gives you a shed-load more than you didn’t. Do you feel ignorant now, well do ya?
8. You think you’re famous
You work in accounts, but you’re so totally famous. That’s not only because you’re always being ‘papped’ by your friends, but also because you film every waking moment of your life on your camera phone and then stick it up on YouTube. Some of the stuff you’ve put up there is cool, man, like when your girlfriend did that thing to your… You know the police are keeping an eye on your profile. But that’s OK, at least it means that someone is watching you.
9. You troll
Once upon a time you went on the internet to learn about people, their cultures and to discover their way that they do things abroad. Not any more. Now you just sit on websites and forums waiting for the ‘morans’ to turn up so you can bait them, flame them and generally get on their tits. At least you’re pretty democratic about it - you hate everyone. And since you sent her that horrible email, everyone including your mum, hates you too.
10. You can no longer distinguish between video games and reality
Last night you tried to buy a gun from the security guard at Woolworths not realising that GTA IV stopped where the outside world began. You’ve taken to wearing a wizard costume when you go swimming. And you can’t understand why you were rubbish during cricket practice last Sunday, when you know for a fact that your Wii-bat is awesome.
How did you do? If you scored mostly A’s then… oh dear, all this technology has totally stuffed the old brain. Why not write in with your responses below.
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