Last week, as my boss mentioned the new
Smart Art graphics in power point presentations is making most
presentations look the same. I had to agree with him, in the name of
improving productivity the dependency on tooling is only dulling our
creativity and other mental faculties.
Number Crunching - Thanks to
caculators and excel sheets, even basic arthimetic has become
impossible, both shop keepers and customers alike are clueless
without technology.
Birthday Reminders – There was
once a time, I could remember the birthdays of all my close friends
and family members, then with the advent of social networks facebook
and orkut, the dependency on social networks to remind us of
birthdays leading to a large gap in memory.
Spelling – the most disturbing
dependency I have fallen prey to is the spell check options in MS
Word or even on google search. Now there are words for which I dont
ever know the right spelling, just depend on auto corrections. My
biggest fear now, writing an written exam on pen and paper.
Limiting Social Interactions –
This is the most disturbing
dependency which we have grown so fond of , when we could meet face
to face, we have moved to cell phone conversations, from cell phone
conversations, we have moved to text messenging and most uncapable to
making human contact anymore.
Tablets / Smartphone fixation
- Steve Jobs proudly claimed the iPad is the definitive post PC
device and it is the end of the desktops and laptops. Although I
agree desktops and laptops are clunky devices but typing on a glass
surface is even more difficult. It is scientifically proven, devices
like tablets and smartphones are more suited for passive consumption
rather than comfortably typing or creating inputs.
Although technology is definitely taking
humanity ahead, there are several de-humanising and limiting effects
as well so that mental crutches we have grown to depend on needs to be reduced if not eliminated altogether.
