Cognitive processes are associated with the way human beings reason and behave towards certain issues in life. They involve the understanding of how people acquire knowledge and use it in their day to day activities. With the increased advancement in media and current technologies especially in the last two decades, many debates have erupted concerning the effects of these new technologies on the cognitive processes of human beings. Some of them argue that the effects are positive while others feel that the technologies are negatively affecting man’s way of thinking.
One such argument has been put forward by Steven Johnson in his article entitled “Watching TV makes you Smarter”. In this article, he argues that TV helps one to think harder in order to integrate more information contained in the TV programs such as “24” drama series. He adds that to understand such dramas, one has to pay attention and make interferences leading to what the writer calls a Sleeper Curve.
This Sleeper Curve he continues, is the a strong force which is contentiously altering the way young people think thus changing their cognitive processes in a positive manner. He adds that television shows have the ability to cultivate a substantial level of intelligence to the viewer. This intelligence emanates from the words and the actions portrayed by the characters on the screen. The more witty the words used, the more they provoke intellectual thinking in the viewer’s mind. The writer further says that, a more intellectual kind of thinking which can be compared to reading has emerged and it involves paying attention, being patient retaining and passing the narrative threads.
This kind of intelligence is seen in multi-threaded dramas which have several episodes and the viewer is expected to coordinate all the happenings from the first to the last episode in order to get the actual entertainment. This require high level of intelligence and it puts the viewer’s mind to work with all the effort to remember the past episodes and trying to reconnect them with the current and the future episodes of the same drama. He adds that today’s reality TV shows are much better that the earlier television shows because they have greatly borrowed ideas from games. The reality TV shows such as “Joe Millionaire” are intriguing to the human brain as one watches people held up in highly complex situations find their way into safer grounds. This gives the viewer vital clues and ideas on how to survive in real life.
The sleeper curve he says, is increasing the cognitive complexity, making the culture sharper and smarter while at the same time, the innovators are getting money for their innovations. He concludes by saying that the interactive games have served the role of training the new generation to overcome complex situations and to become sharp thinkers.
From a critical point of view however, much of this positive contribution of the media and current technologies on the human cognitive processes is not seen by the society today and instead, the media is seen as a source of immorality, violence, drug abuse and other evils in the society which are particularly prevalent among the youth. Johnson responds to this by saying that, though the media has been associated with many negative effects, the positive impacts of television and video games are also evident when explored from the Sleeper Curve point of view.
Despite the clear and detailed arguments on the positive impacts of media and technology, this view has had several criticisms. For one, it can be argued that the same way the human brain is able to register good things like tactics fro reality TV Shows on how to solve complex situations in real life, it is also capable of registering the violence and immoral activities depicted in the shows.
For instance, the kind of tricks depicted by the commonly watched TV series known as “Prison Break” can give ideas to those people who are involved in crimes on how they can break away from prisons. In addition, most TV shows portray scenes of violence, drug abuse, terrorism and so forth and this images have the potential of registering in the subconscious human mind and one may later on be tempted to apply what he or she watched earlier on television. This is quite common among the young people who are ambitious and in the mood of carrying out risky adventures.
Another article written by Nicholas Carr (2008) has a different view from the one discussed above. According to this article titled “Is Google making us stupid?”, the media and current technologies are increasingly affecting the ability of the human brain to concentrate for long hours. He argues that in the recent past, Internet has become an integral part of human life and this has come with as many disadvantages as the advantages. For one, the Internet has made it very easy to get access to information and a research which could have taken days to complete now only requires a few minutes.
However, the addiction which comes with the over dependence to Internet technology is slowly chipping away the brain capacity to concentrate on long pieces of work. The writer’s primary is derived from his own personal experiences as well as those of his friends, acquaintances and other net bloggers who have confessed on being unable to concentrate for long hours when reading or writing unlike earlier. He however quickly adds that, only neurological and psychological experiments can provide a clear and definite illustration of how the cognitive processes have been affected by excessive use of Internet.
More researches which Carr considered when writing this particular article also showed that the use of Internet has created a skimming type of reading instead of the way people used to read and understand in earlier days. Neurologists have also discovered that the brain tissues in adults just like in children are very plastic and readily adapt to any change. For instance, in the old days when there were no clocks, people had tuned their minds on when to wake up, sleep or do all other important things. However, with the continued use of technology in modern times, people have stopped listening to their senses and have instead become wholly dependent on the clock and other technologies.
The Internet is threatening to have even more far reaching effects on the human cognitive effects since it is becoming more and more advanced as days go by. The founders of Google search engine claim that the it has the intelligence which is equal or more than that of human beings and with this kind of artificial intelligence, it is no longer important for human beings to keep thinking since Google will think on their behalf. This is bound to render the human brain passive and very forgetful. He concludes by saying that the continued use of current media and technologies have made people to become like machines and the human intelligence has been flattened into artificial intelligence.
Although Carr’s view is very true, one is tempted to argue that with the use of Internet and other forms of technology, more information is being read and passed on unlike the earlier days when forms of communication were quite limited. Moreover, the type of information found in the Google search engine adds more knowledge to the human brain concerning things which were not previously known. This is quite true and it is a positive impact of the Internet but on the contrary, too much dependence on it makes one not to think even on simple issues which could be previously solved without it.
In my opinion, the article by Nicholas Carr provides a more comprehensive and stronger case against the current media and technologies. This is because, he provides great primary evidence on the increasing over reliance of the human brain on modern technology and it is clear that it has become very hard for man to survive without technology.
In conclusion we can say that, though technology is good and it has led to very many positive developments all over the globe, its negative effects on the human cognitive processes are quite evident and indisputable.
Works Cited.
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” 15 Sept 2008 <<http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google>>.
Johnson, Steven. “Watching TV Makes You Smarter.” 15 Sept 2007 <<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/magazine/24TV.html?pagewanted=5&ei=5090
&en=e0bc7c1e7acbb59&ex=1271995200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>>.