Brain Dead

Julia Chaffin

Ms. Pratscher

British Literature – Period 4

11 September 2014

Brain Dead

It seems that with each passing year, our country becomes ever more dependent on technology for their information, rather than the traditional newspapers and books. People are moving away from newspapers, magazines, and books, in favor of computers, phones, and mobile devices. Although there are benefits to using these tools, incessant communication, immediate gratification, and the pursuit of mindless information is becoming such an engrossing activity that it is diminishing our attention span and affecting the intelligence of the human race.

Barry Schwartz, author of “Attention Lessons: A Need We Must Heed”, expresses his belief that society is catering to the faltering intellect of it’s members because we are making it easy to forget about books and more traditional forms of communication by supporting and encouraging the development of new apps, and minimizing by half the written word used to describe an event. Analysis and description that would typically occupy several columns or pages is now expressed in a few fragmented phrases or brief sentences.

I am in complete agreement with Schwartz and his opinion. We are making a huge mistake in nurturing the excessive use of technology, and it needs to be controlled. Authoring and communicating information is a skill that has to be taught, coached and then practiced regularly. We pursue the simplification of ideas, events, and concepts so that the brain only has a small amount of information to take in and register.

In order to take control of the worsening situation, we should strive to integrate a more aggressive learning tactic into school curriculums that will encourage students to expand their knowledge beyond scrolling through 140-character posts on Twitter or blogs such as Tumblr. Due to the amount of time saved by business professionals, it will be difficult to encourage working adults to take a step back...