How many times has a new technological advancement been such a distraction, such a pretty object that it makes the mind forget about reality? How many examples are known in which reality was menacingly distorted through technology to make the consumer believe in a fact that may be completely false? There are infinite amount of ways to answer both of those questions. The real question would be, do the positives of new devices outweigh the drawbacks in everyday life and education? While society is continuously changing, there are still traditional practices that should be kept for the fact that they are more efficient. The conventional pen-and-paper, textbook learning style is one of the traditional practices that may not be as popular as the …show more content…
A habit that is seen regularly with technology is dependence. The human population becomes so dependent on using the technology that it becomes hard for them to function and complete the same tasks without it. An example of unhealthy dependence is shown through a quote from Johnson which states, “Even jotting down a note with pen and paper feels strained…. I have to think about writing.../...There is none of the easy flow of the word processor, just a kind of drudgery, running against the thick grain of habit.” (Source D). Technology has progressed dependence to the point where the basic act of writing (an elementary task) is being thought of as miserable. The need to use the internet to look everything up is also allowing intelligence to regress instead of opening the mind to retain more. Students are being cheated of a proper education instead of benefitted because the information they are learning is only needed for the short-term and they do not retain it for long, therefore it is not helping them become any smarter. Gelernter also disagrees with connection dependence, “They are bad at science, useless at mathematics, hopeless at writing - but if they could only connect to the latest website in Passaic [New Jersey] and Peru, we’d see improvement?” (Source E). Another poor habit would be allowing our individual thought processes (one of