The Pros And Cons Of Interface Culture

It seems as though the human population, especially in recent years, has lost the ability to qualify imperfection; incapable of going any amount of time without a source of electricity-driven entertainment of some kind. In light of recent technological advancements I ask: “Is every waking moment absent of any iPad or iMac device a moment wasted?” The twenty-something sitting by his or her lonesome at your local Starbucks would most definitely have you believe so. Society’s glutinous ideals and increasingly sheep-like mentality are pushing the modern world into a state of technological dependence; a situation not unlike a drug addict, hooked on the blissful ignorance which comes paired with the awful withdrawal effects. Nearly gone are the days

Some critics might even go as far as to say that as technology continues to advance at an exponential rate, humans will begin to steadily lose traditional and almost basic skills such as being able to maneuver one’s home town without the aid of GPS or being able to sustain a session of reading for ten minutes or longer before checking their Facebook wall. Steven Johnson, writer of “Interface Culture”, even says that he could not fathom taking notes without his computer and has to consciously “think about writing,” which indicates a certain crutch-like dependence we, as a society, have placed upon technology. Moreover, Esther Dyson, author of “What We Believe But We Cannot Prove: Today’s Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty”, likens the problem to “a sort of mental diabetes”, of which all of society is doomed to suffer due to the lack of well rounded mental exercise such as reading and, as Dyson says, “playing with non-interactive

While this may be true, there seems to be no evidence to prove that technology in schools has a significant, - if any - direct correlation to academic success. In fact, according to “New Technology In Schools: Is there a Payoff?”, a study by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), availability of computers in school most likely plays a largely insignificant role in students’ academic success. Additionally, it includes an even more concrete study in which the government funded a large-scale “computerization” effort in many elementary and middle schools to facilitate a controlled comparison between schools that received funding and those that did not. No evidence was found that could prove that increased educational use of computers raised students’ test scores. Moreover, Yong Zhao and Kenneth Frank, writers of “Factors Affecting Technology Uses in Schools”, claim that even though that in the 20th and 21st centuries, massive investments in technology with the goal to improve education were made, a significant and/or lasting impression has yet to be achieved. This is likely because technological resources within schools have been discovered to be underused or even unused completely. Clearly, technology is not the solution