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zieak
Member

Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Petersburg, AK
Posts: 131

Just moments before I read that article I thought about the seminar I'll be instucting at our state Parks and Recreation conference. I'm calling it "The pros and cons of carrying your brain in your pocket." Catchy huh?

05-29-2001 10:28 PM

ragamuffinn
Member

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Mililani, HI, USA
Posts: 256

not either/or

quote:
Originally posted by ragamuffinn
I thought I remember reading somewhere that a doctor or other claimed that PDAs are actually making us dumber...Nowadays I don't absolutely disagree with him.

Judging from the responses to the "pda's make you dumb" statement that I made earlier, there seems to be an either/or approach to this problem. However, I didn't say that a PDA makes you less efficient or effective, or that you can't keep track of more bits of information in an organized way. In fact I think exactly the opposite. I don't think this issue is either/or. It's both/and. But before I continue I should qualify the term "dumb." Of course I didn't mean that you become stupid and lose IQ points (although this could be an eventuality). I meant that our dependence on this device requires us to excerise our minds less. Sure, we're freed to focus our energies on "more important things" (MIT), but that doesn't negate the fact mental laziness can certainly result from pda usage, despite being able to tackle more tasks.

How many of you have simply stopped memorizing phone numbers or other kinds of information that we--perhaps only 5 years ago--used to commit to memory effortlessly? Is this phenomenon really the result of using our minds for MIT? As I recall, memorizing phone numbers was not a hard thing to do, and it certainly didn't prevent me from keeping track of MIT. Of course I'm not talking about memorizing your whole phone book. But I'm talking about memorizing numbers that we frequently call--but have to reference our PDAs first--because we've grown too lazy to keep it in our skull.

Some have argued that paper planners have only been replaced by the PDA and that there is little other consequence besides from increased productivity. But I think the very reason this "pda dummy" question has even surfaced (and not just by me) is because the PDA is so darn efficient (read fast) that it's ten times easier to use a PDA rather than a day runner to keep information. So where before it was easier to keep a number in our heads than in our paper planners, now it's easier to keep a number in a pdas than in our heads. The net result is that we can't rely on our minds as much as we used to because we now rely on the box. You lose the box--you lose your head (almost). I know, because I've left my Visor in the cradle on a few occassions, and those days were basically very bad ones. This is not everyone's experience, I'm sure. But I bet that many of you out there know exactly what I'm talking about.

05-30-2001 12:44 AM

nreimer
Member

Registered: Aug 2000
Location:
Posts: 1

re: my better third

So let me get this right. Your 8MB visor accounts for one third of your memory. I assume your memory is typical of others. So we only have about a 24MB memory capacity? And this diminishes with age. How depressing. I'll have to allocate my memory more carefully in the future.

05-30-2001 01:53 AM

narnia_77
Member

Registered: Apr 2000
Location: Inglewood, CA, USA
Posts: 390

Re: re: my better third

quote:
Originally posted by nreimer
So let me get this right. Your 8MB visor accounts for one third of your memory. I assume your memory is typical of others. So we only have about a 24MB memory capacity? And this diminishes with age. How depressing. I'll have to allocate my memory more carefully in the future.

LOL! It's not a third of MY brain, but it's definitely the "file cabinet".

05-30-2001 02:31 AM

emtetede
Member

Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 8

I've used my visor to look up my own home phone #.

Scary...

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emtetede

05-30-2001 02:45 AM

BobbyMike
Member

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: "Children are a gift from God, they are a reward"
Posts: 1049

I wish I could 'download' some of the 'useless' data I still have into my brain. Then I could back it up and not have it cluttering up my brain!

Things I learned that I can't seem to forget (and how long it's been lodged 'up there':
1) How to disassemble and assemble an M16 blindfolded (15 years apprx.)
2) The feeling of an 'indian rug burn' (27 years apprx.)
3) How I look in a brown western tuxedo (20 years)
4) How it feels to wake up with a hangover in Gilleys parking lot, and not knowing where your pants are. (Has it only been 13 years?)
5) The taste of soap (32 years)
6) All my past addresses and phone numbers, excepting my present ones, from the age of 7 (a very long time)
7) The taste of peppermint scnapps (20 years)

You get the picture. I don't feel that PDAs make you dumber, as much as they free you up from remembering things you can more easily store in them. The downside is, as people have mentioned, not having your PDA with you when you need some crucial info.

Pastagrrrl wrote:
"But I don't mind, it's a matter of evolution. Maybe someday we will be talking about how much it will cost us to have our PDAs surgically inserted into our forearms or something."

As scary as that sounds to me, I can definately see that happening. (I'm not scared of the technology advancing towards that point, I just don't think I want to be an 'Early Adopter')

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05-30-2001 04:50 AM

ToolkiT
VisorCentral Staff

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Sydney Australia
Posts: 1883

OH my god, don't let my wife see this article...
Your story sounded a bit to familiar...

My wife keeps complaining that now my visor broke, I keep forgetting everything...

Oh yeah, I found a solution for the license plate/anniversary problem. My license plate says FN 24 05, our initial, may 24 (international date layout). This way I only have to remember 1 thing versus 2.. And my wife thought it was very romantic too ...

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05-30-2001 05:38 AM

ToolkiT
VisorCentral Staff

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Sydney Australia
Posts: 1883

quote:
Originally posted by chitown
The stolen flilofax movie was "Taking Care of Business" starring Jim Belushi and Charles Grodin.

In Europe that movie was simply called 'Filofax'
Very funny indeed.

But do you keep you credit card and house keys in your visor? The guy in the movie kept them in his filofax...

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05-30-2001 05:40 AM

recordond
Member

Registered: Jan 2001
Location:
Posts: 278

If you still have your springboard blank keys will fit in it.

--David

05-30-2001 05:41 AM

narnia_77
Member

Registered: Apr 2000
Location: Inglewood, CA, USA
Posts: 390

quote:
Originally posted by BobbyMike
Pastagrrrl wrote:
"But I don't mind, it's a matter of evolution. Maybe someday we will be talking about how much it will cost us to have our PDAs surgically inserted into our forearms or something."

As scary as that sounds to me, I can definitely see that happening. (I'm not scared of the technology advancing towards that point, I just don't think I want to be an 'Early Adopter')

I remember an episode of The Outer Limits where everyone had these devices attached to their heads. It was kind of like a wireless internet where all information was immediately available to everyone. If someone recommended a book to read, you could "download and read" it directly into your brain within a matter of seconds. This went on for years.

There was one guy that didn't have the device (D.B.Sweeney, I think) because he had some sort of accident when he was a child and his brain wouldn't accept it. He worked in a library and read just about everything he could get his hands on. (They were slowly phasing out paper books.) He was considered "slow" by society because he didn't have quick access to information like everyone else.

The super computer that ran everything started causing some people to go crazy - basically stuck in a computer type "loop", and had to be shut down. (That was the bulk of the episode - this guy trying to sneak around and shut down the computer without its knowledge, because it "saw" everything and people still hooked up to the system were trying to stop him.) At the end, the guy ended up becoming a teacher because no one else knew how to read anymore. Scary stuff....

05-30-2001 05:47 AM

halldp
Member

Registered: Sep 2000
Location:
Posts: 41

I call mine an Auxillary Brain Pack after a cartoon in Dilbert many years ago. I'd hate too think what would happen if I ever lost my Prism. Thank God for the backup module. Now I just have to remember to do it often enough.

05-30-2001 11:50 AM

John Nowak
Member

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Redwood City CA
Posts: 472

Darn.

I wanted to share my thoughts on this, but I didn't enter them into MemoPad so I forgot them.

05-30-2001 01:37 PM

septimus
VisorCentral Staff

Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Them Twin Cities
Posts: 1758

There's a new book called "The 7 Sins of Memory" from a guy in the psych dept. at Harvard. Says something that makes sense: unles we're investing something into the information we're receiving as we're receiving it, such as attention or connections to past information, we're not likely to encode that memory. So when I learn a new phone number, I simply put it in the visor--nothing's invested & no lasting memory is created. That's just how the brain is set up so that we are not filled with useless facts and data that would stymie us in every day life. So not being able to remember phone numbers isn't a huge deal so long as you've got your little reminder/visor.

The real question, as I see it, is what happens when you've spent 30 years not applying your attention to these little facts, if your memory-making faculty gets dusty. What then?

(p.s. the "sin" of memory here is absent-mindedness.)

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05-30-2001 01:48 PM

dick-richardson
Member

Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Aberdeen, SD
Posts: 2531

I've started thinking that maybe I'm my visor's accessory. If they come out with a springboard with arms and legs, I'm history.

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Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

05-30-2001 04:21 PM

Winchell
Member

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Baltimore MD, USA
Posts: 717

quote:
Originally posted by narnia_77
I remember an episode of The Outer Limits where everyone had these devices attached to their heads. At the end, the guy ended up becoming a teacher because no one else knew how to read anymore. Scary stuff....

Heh. There is an ancient but famous SF short story by Isaac Asimov called A Feeling of Power. In that one, everybody has super duper pocket calculators. And they've had them for so many thousands of years that they've forgotten how to do simple arithmetic.

One fine day, a fellow playing with his calculator deduces the rules for addition and subtraction. It is all jolly fun, until the military get's interested...

The last line of the story is very telling.

Try to find a copy, it's been anthologized in quite a few books

Nine Tomorrows, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959
The Mathematical Magpie, ed. Clifton Fadiman, Simon & Schuster, 1962
Spectrum II, ed. Kingsley Amis & Robert Conquest, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963
Science Fiction Through the Ages 2, ed. I. O. Evans, Panther, 1966
Opus 100, Houghton Mifflin, 1969
The Stars Around Us, ed. Robert Hoskins, Signet, 1970
Out of This World 10, ed. Amabel Williams-Ellis & Michael Pearson, Blackie, 1973
Past, Present, and Future Perfect, ed. Jack C. Wolfe & Gregory Fitz Gerald, Fawcett Premier, 1973
Inside Information, ed. Abbe Mowshowitz, Addison-Wesley, 1977
--
SURREAL SAGE SEZ: He knows so little and knows it so fluently.

05-30-2001 05:43 PM

septimus
VisorCentral Staff

Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Them Twin Cities
Posts: 1758

Thanks for the reference, it's a good story, and you're right about that last line.

I don't know if anybody has the copyright on it, so I won't post the link--but I found it pretty easily.

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05-30-2001 06:05 PM

dick-richardson
Member

Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Aberdeen, SD
Posts: 2531

quote:
Originally posted by Winchell
Heh. There is an ancient but famous SF short story by Isaac Asimov called A Feeling of Power. In that one, everybody has super duper pocket calculators. And they've had them for so many thousands of years that they've forgotten how to do simple arithmetic.

One fine day, a fellow playing with his calculator deduces the rules for addition and subtraction. It is all jolly fun, until the military get's interested...

The last line of the story is very telling.

Is that the one where they use humans instead of computers to fight wars because human life is cheaper?

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Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

Last edited by dick-richardson on 05-30-2001 at 06:26 PM

05-30-2001 06:13 PM

septimus
VisorCentral Staff

Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Them Twin Cities
Posts: 1758

quote:
Originally posted by dick-richardson

Is that the one where they use humans instead of computers to fight wars because human life is cheaper?

yep.

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05-30-2001 06:14 PM