Andrew Sullivan's article about decoupling from gadgets and the web
alludes to the perpetual cycle of disruptive innovation followed by
the atrophying of heretofore basic skills. Just like the industrial
revolution resulted in much of the population losing their skills of
sustainable farming, many in the smartphone age are forgetting —or not
even learning— map reading skills (replaced by Waze and Google Maps)
long-hand (replaced by micro blogging), or research skills (replaced
by search engines). It’s not all doom and gloom, however:
Matrix-like, the incredibly interconnected world accessed by our
smartphones that beguiled Mr. Sullivan also allows us to effectively
download previously hard-to-master skills by immediately calling up
the relevant apps such as star gazing, foreign language translating,
knot tying, origami, chess, drink mixing and myriad other abilities,
in addition to the actually relevant and actionable health-related
information.
Mark Gerstein
Dov Greenbaum
Unpublished letter in response to:
I Used to Be a Human Being
An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images has rendered us manic information addicts. It broke me. It might break you, too.
By Andrew Sullivan
http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-technology-almost-killed-me.html
Also see:
https://twitter.com/markgerstein/status/785124411334680576
