Technology destroying the ability to think?

[Dan McFeeley]

It's not technology alone, there is also our wired up, start/stop lifestyle that plays a role. A few years back, I was talking with a professor at a nearby college and he had noted a change in student response to lecture. Attention span is shorter, they need more of the "bells and whistles" of multi-media approaches, otherwise they get bored too quickly.

 

[Oskaar]

Damnit!! Where's my remote....uh...what were you saying Dan?

 

[mminuet]

someone, someday, will look back at our time now with surprise, wonder, and maybe some envy for our abilities.

You can tally me as one who is presently envious of your writing abilities. You have a beautiful turn of phrase, and I'm crazy about the interesting word usements you structure.

 

[Angus]

Language is a touchy subject in my family due to my mother's education and current employment (she works for a newspaper as a proof reader). I spent all of my life being corrected in my grammar, spelling and usage (e.g. when to use 'fewer than' instead of 'less than'). My counter argument was always that if language did not evolve as society advanced, the whole world would be grunting at each other, or speaking some early Sumerian dialect. The problem now, as has been pointed out below, is that people are becoming too lazy to learn the basics.

Computers have taken over the task of correcting spelling and grammar, which is fine, but they cannot ensure the correct word is being used. This is a pity since language, properly used, is a beautiful thing that should be encouraged. Our future, I fear, will devolve in2 ez & fast txt msg's...lol :-\. Are computers entirely to blame though? As David pointed out, language seems to have been declining in importance for longer than the PC has been a part of our lives. Could there be another suspect?

Perhaps mass media entertainment has slowly eroded the need for people to read. Books are no longer the primary source of entertainment, and it is from the printed word that people learn how to use the English language properly. Another friend of mine has a son who refuses to read a book since "everything you need is out there on the internet already". As expected, he is currently flunking English in school. Now, this does not mean that I reject the value of the internet or my television. After all, without one, I would not be able to watch the Mythbusters or Extreme Engineering. But, along with the good programming, come shows like Sweet Sixteen, which teach our kids nothing of value other than how to behave like a spoiled brat. What will the future generations opinion of us be when confronted with that sort of horrible "entertainment"?

Angus

P.S. I mispelled both usage (useage) and opinion (oppinion) in just this short entry. My mother would be so proud

 

[WRATHWILDE]

Writing ability, and the expectation of such, has declined considerably in the video age. People seem to have become much more visually oriented, and the media has become much better at exploiting it. You can see it in the progression of film and television over the years. The dialog and story line of most any movie pre 1960 is better than most anything you'll find today, but the audience was different, less visual with a shared set of values and expectations. Characters that inspired, and people aspired to emulate... elegant, educated, sophisticated and suave. To the visual set, these are cold, boring people, shallow, vain and disconnected from their true nature. The visual set seem to find truth in immediate observation, feeling and actions... not contemplation, logic and rhetoric.

Unfortunately, I'm off to work, I'll expand on this later.

Wrathwilde

 

[lostnbronx]

You can tally me as one who is presently envious of your writing abilities. You have a beautiful turn of phrase, and I'm crazy about the interesting word usements you structure.

Sea, cuz I is so whell red is why I is a riter, is why I is. :-X

Thank you!

-David

 

[Muirghein Tarot]

I know that some of you are older than my own 35 years and, have seen more of life than I have. Some of you attended colleges where your minds got filled or emptied depending on what kind of school you went to. But if you will allow me to put my spin on this.

In my life I have seen TV go from three channels you had to get up to change, to in some cases over 900 channels you can change from anywhere in the house. Delivered to you with multiple surround sound systems than mimic the best movie theaters in the world.

My voice is preserved on several reel to reel tapes from when I was two. Now I can have it on something the size of a match box. I remember trying to record onto cassettes from the radio and thinking that was the greatest thing in the world. To listen to a song when every I wanted to. Now, I can have my whole music collection on something smaller than a pack of cigarettes!

And the Phone! Oh my god! It has gone from being stuck to the wall and no body wanting to answer it to containing more computing power than the Apollo moon lander! It takes pictures, It played music, It tells you the time, It gives you the news, and about a million other things. No matter where you go no every body has one. The next generations going to be born with their heads tilted!

Are me a generation growing up to lazy to use a dictionary? Are we to lazy to pay attention in class so that we learn when 'I' goes before 'E'? Are we going to lose the ability to read and write coherent sentences?

No. Yes. Maybe.

We are the generation that has been burned out by a never ending assault on our mind!. If I had the time to find my dictionary and go back threw every thing I type I would have time for the million other things I'm behind on. It takes me around a minute to spell check a post or a letter. It would take considerable longer for me to use a dictionary.

That is minutes out of my life I don't have to give. I took up mead making as a way of slowing my life down some. Since it takes so long to make it makes me look beyond the end of the next work week. Will my spelling and use of grammar be as precise as say my grandfathers? Maybe not, but I am living a better life than he did. I didn't spend my youth picking crops in someone field for pocket change like he did.

I honor the generations before mine. They did things I never will. By the same token I have in my few years done things my grandparents never could have. Here I am typing a post on a computer they could never have envisioned to people a world away. Probably going to be chastised by those very people for my lack of grammar but hey. It's my best and that is all that can be ask of any person.

What will the future generations opinion of us be when confronted with that sort of horrible "entertainment"?

Three generations ago they considered public hangings and freak shows to be quality entertainment. Do you think less of them for that? Not really. It was what they did in their time. So it will be for us when I bones are dry.

And yes I will use a spell checker on this one as well or you would see that my spelling would make what David just posted look perfect.

Tarot.

Ps David- I know people who talk just like that! Lol

 

[WRATHWILDE]

I know that some of you are older than my own 35 years

36 years here.

If I had the time to find my dictionary and go back threw every thing I type I would have time for the million other things I'm behind on. It takes me around a minute to spell check a post or a letter. It would take considerable longer for me to use a dictionary.
That is minutes out of my life I don't have to give.

Apple's OS X has the Oxford American Dictionary/Thesaurus built in, all I have to do is left click and choose (Look Up in Dictionary). No more time wasted pulling out the dictionary. ;D

I'm a fanatic about using words that convey precisely the meaning I intend. Usually my posts will get two scans for readability before I post them, and the OS is set to automatically flag misspelled words as I type. Growing up my father always insisted, from a very early age, that we say what we mean, and mean what we say. It did cause some problems growing up, I tended to take what people said literally, and thought they meant what they said.

Then you run across people who think they know the meanings of words but either the word makes no sense in the context it was given or more frequently the word has a meaning opposite of the one the conveyor believed. I think this comes from hearing and/or reading a word in such a way that you think you comprehend its meaning, but never bother to look it up.

I had a roommate that this happened with all the time. For some reason during her learning process she had assumed definitions of numerous words that were 180 degrees of actual. There was constant confusion when topics were revisited. If I summarized her position, she'd say that's not what I said. When I'd quote her back word for word, she'd say right, that's what I meant. When I'd point out that both were stating the very same thing, she'd insist that they weren't. When I'd define the word in question and show her that what she said was 180 degrees of what she intended, she would claim... "Well you know what I meant." Which wasn't always the case. Great Gal to party with though, and intelligent when not using the words she had "learned" wrong.

I enjoy taking life slow, so I always have time for myself and the time to do things right.

Wrathwilde

 

[DeltOgre]

Wrath, you said it, brother...

All I'm seeing, thus far, on this thread, is a list of excuses as to why no one bothers to polish their communications these days.

I don't have time. (A minute?)
I don't need to. (Why not?)
No one cares. (Further evidence of the degradation of the fabric of society.)

The facts are as follows:

1. Up until the computer age, people were much more cognizant of their communications. People wrote eloquently, communicated effectively, and weren't ignorant of their language.

For instance, do you really think "threw" when you mean "through," Tarot? Your spell checker didn't catch it, since it's spelled "correctly," in spite of the fact that it is the wrong usage of the word. I "got what you said," but it didn't convey the actual meaning that you meant to impart, threw a wrench into the works, and derailed my thought process just enough to keep me from giving much credibility to what you wrote.

None of that is likely fair to you. I can imagine that you are an exceptionally intelligent man, but without effective communications in this format, it's difficult, at best.

2. Sorry, Bronx, but I have to disagree on your assessment that this has been a gradual process. Certainly, certain subgroups of the general population have been experimenting with different colloquialisms throughout human history, but the actual degeneration of the language is a new phenomenon. Think of it this way; some bebop jazzy beatnik-type from the 1920s might have said, "Get on the trolley, hepcat," but he sure as hell would have been able to spell it correctly, and punctuate it, to boot!

Ever since the dawn of rapid-fire communications, which is a relatively recent development, people have been giving up on giving a crap, which leads others to give up, since no one else seems to care, which leads yet others... You get the drift. THAT'S degradation.

And it's happening at an incredible pace. Before you know it, people who can diagram a sentence won't exist, and we'll be back to telling stories by carving totems.

3. I apologize for picking on you, Tarot, but you've illustrated the previous points, as well as this one, perfectly with the following paragraph:

"We are the generation that has been burned out by a never ending assault on our mind!. If I had the time to find my dictionary and go back threw every thing I type I would have time for the million other things I'm behind on. It takes me around a minute to spell check a post or a letter. It would take considerable longer for me to use a dictionary."

- "Never ending" should be one word.
- "!." is completely unnecessary.
- "threw" we've covered...
- "...I type COMMA I would..."
- "considerable" should be "considerably."

That took me around a minute. Smell me, right?

The points to make are that we have given up on our own abilities, and we are making ourselves overly busy.

On the first point, if you would take the time to type correctly, think your thoughts through, and put them down in an orderly fashion, then the extra minute or so you were spending would save you the ten minutes of editing, correcting, etc. Do it while you write it. The problem is that most people just never bothered to learn it in the first place. So why did so many "uneducated" people a mere 50 years ago have that ability, but we don't?

On the second point, I've been in the hectic business world for a while, now, and I'm always astonished at the people who equate "running late" and "too busy" with "success." I could honestly take a day to discuss this particular phenomenon... Suffice it to say that there is no reason in the world to exhaust oneself in the name of "success." If you are too busy to take a minute to properly edit something you've written, then your life needs some rearranging...

Naturally, that's just my opinion, and what do I know? I'm "only" 29...

 

[WRATHWILDE]

Hey DeltOgre,

I was going to ask where you reside, but I think I've got it worked out. Cow-Lumbers translates to Columbus and Ohio translates to Blow-hio. I was thinking a bunch of us could get together for a Great Lakes Area Mead tasting... maybe in October, or possibly next spring to give your batches some more time to come into their own? Anybody interested, and know of a good location to hold it... preferably somewhere around the southern shores of Lake Michigan.

Wrathwilde

 

[yabodie]

I might be opening myself up for a few rants on this thread’s topic.

Regarding spelling: I admit I am a horrible speller, and if it was not for spell checker in MS word, I would be doomed. I too, always have spell checker on auto check. I happen to have a difficult time spelling English words when they are not spelled how they sound. I much prefer phonetic spelling of a word. That is why I like how Russian words and most German words are spelt. I can’t speak for the other languages as I am not familiar with them. This is why I try my best to type my posts in Word, have them spell checked and hope I did not miss anything in my dyslexic melon.

Regarding punctuation and grammar: I also have to admit I have never once stepped into a grammar class in my life, even after 22 years in school. The one class which killed punctuation for me was in undergrad. Our papers were graded out of 4 points and we were docked 0.5 points for every comma splice, but no points were taken off without a comma in its proper place. Thus, I stopped putting commas or any punctuation in my papers for that class. This practice, unfortunately, carried through to this day. I have to remind myself that yes, commas to exist and they should be used. So I have taken the stance on trying to relearn, or undo, what I was taught in school. The next couple generations are even worse off with text messaging and shorthand messages. Should be interesting to see how they turn out in a few.

Anyway, that’s my loose change. Feel free to rant…

I am off to enjoy the simple things in life, my homemade mead and my family.

Cheers.

 

[Muirghein Tarot]

3. I apologize for picking on you, Tarot, but you've illustrated the previous points, as well as this one, perfectly with the following paragraph:

"We are the generation that has been burned out by a never ending assault on our mind!. If I had the time to find my dictionary and go back threw every thing I type I would have time for the million other things I'm behind on. It takes me around a minute to spell check a post or a letter. It would take considerable longer for me to use a dictionary."

- "Never ending" should be one word.
- "!." is completely unnecessary.
- "threw" we've covered...
- "...I type COMMA I would..."
- "considerable" should be "considerably."

Correct on all the above except for the "!". It was placed at the end of that sentence to emphasize the statement I was trying to make. For a tenth grade drop out who failed English freshman, and sophomore year I don't do to shabby in making myself understood. It was not technology that led me down the paths I have walked in grammar, but a understaffed, under-budgeted school system. The school I went to had a freshman class of 400+ and a senior class of twenty. That and I'm a southern boy with a slow drawl. ;D
Tarot.

PS Reading back that sentence to myself I say never ending quite distinctly as two words, and My dictionary doesn't list it as two. Shrugs.

 

[DeltOgre]

Wrath... Where are you, bro? I thought more toward the middle of the country... Definitely up for a mead tasting, though, to be sure!

Yabodie... You were docked for commas? The horror!!!

Tarot... Thanks, first off, for being a good sport. It shows what a Southern Gentleman you are, and I, for one, appreciate that. (My family is from Harlan County, Kentucky.)

As far as that "!." was concerned, the period was what I was referring to... Anyways...

More importantly, I saw your post as the perfect reference piece; you had admitted that you had used the spell checker, and yet it was rife with errors...

Anyways, peace to all y'all (Tarot knows EXACTLY what I mean, there...) and I hope we can all get together for some serious drinkin' sometime soon...

 

[Muirghein Tarot]

As far as that "!." was concerned, the period was what I was referring to...

I just had to check that one three times to see what you were talking about. Good eyes. That would be a 'typo'. I don't know if I would have seen that one if I had checked it myself. I don't quite hen peck the keys but I do have to look at where my fingers are going. :-[

Tarot.

 

[yabodie]

DeltOgre,
Yup, we were docked for every misplaced comma. So, to the detriment of my punctuation, I worked the system to pass the class, by avoiding punctuation altogether. Sad thing is the issue was not dealt with by any professor from that point on in multiple university systems. It seems like grammar has fallen to the wayside. Maybe we should go back to sending snail-mail and actually hand-writing letters, etc. Then, maybe, we can get back to better penmanship, and figure out why the MPG average calculated by an onboard computer differs from the average number of miles driven on a tank of gas…

Now, back to my mead…

 

[DeltOgre]

Yeah... let's get back to the things that matter the most!!!

I, for one, have FIVE BRAND NEW ONE GALLON JUGS WITH MATCHING RUBBER STOPPERS AND AIRLOCKS THAT ARE JUST DYING TO BE FILLED!

I think I should get right on that.

Also wik: Wrath, hombre, the missus says that we are in dire need of a mead tasting, as we are yet to have a taste of anyone else's mead. Thus, we are very unsure as to the quality of our own. We like it, but is it really mead-like? How will we know without ever having tasted yours?

You see, if I were to follow your directions for, say, a homegrown orange tree to the letter, except that I had accidentally planted apple seeds, instead, and I had never, ever in my life seen either, how would I know that the thing that I was calling an orange was really an apple? My perception (That being that I had planted an orange tree...) would be faulty, and I would have attributed the wrong moniker to the poor, defenseless plant.

This, folks, is what fraternity living, impetuous youth, and a philosophy-heavy liberal arts education cause...

 

[WRATHWILDE]

Also wik: Wrath, hombre, the missus says that we are in dire need of a mead tasting, as we are yet to have a taste of anyone else's mead. Thus, we are very unsure as to the quality of our own. We like it, but is it really mead-like? How will we know without ever having tasted yours?

DeltOgre,
I'm in Dubuque, Iowa. Angus is in Milwaukee and I'd wager that he'd be up for a Great Lakes Mead tasting. I'd like to see if we can get Dan McFeeley to join us... I believe he's in Illinois somewhere. I think GrantLee63, David Baldwin, Kace069 and ScottS are all in Michigan. ScottS spends most of his time moderating the Mead Forum over at winepress.us, but he's also a member here. I'm sure there are other members in the area that would enjoy getting together.

I'll start a new thread to see what we can come up with. Great Lakes Mead Tasting

Cheers,
Wrathwilde

 

[Oskaar]

Wrath,

I saw an http error in your tags so I made the fix for you. Hope you don't mind. :-\

Also, if you can con ScottS into being there he'd be a great asset to the tasting. Scott is very knowledgable and a great guy to boot. He's also running his own family farm, producing honey, making mead commercially and generally kicking ass and taking names. Get him there if you are able, you won't be sorry!

Cheers,

Oskaar

 

[DeltOgre]

Shoot (Which, according to George Carlin, is really a familiar four-letter word with two Os...), we should just have the tasting at his place!!!

I, unlike the better part of Central Ohio, actually like Michigan, and enjoy all the time that I've spent there. Besides, Ted Nugent is from there. It can't be all that bad...