Saturday, April 30, 2005
Email Destroys Your IQ: Official!
Posted by Jonathon Watkins in "THOUGHT" @ 03:00 AM
At Pocket PC Thoughts, we regularly touch on the topic of computers & technology and their wider role and impact in and on society. We've often debated how software and shiny gadgets and gizmos affect us, sometimes negatively. Does the following surprise you or had you always suspected it?:
"Modern technology depletes human cognitive abilities more rapidly than drugs, according to a psychiatric study. . . Email users suffered a 10 per cent drop in IQ scores, more than twice the fall recorded by marijuana users, in a clinical trial of over a thousand participants. Doziness, lethargy and an inability to focus are classic characteristics of a spliffhead, but email users exhibited these particular symptoms to a "startling" degree, according to Dr Glenn Wilson. The deterioration in mental capacity was the direct result of the trialists' addiction to technology, researchers discovered. Email addicts were bombarded by context switches and developed an inability to distinguish between trivial and significant messages."
The Register reckons that we are awash with facts and have forgotten how to think. So, putting your 'Thoughts' thinking caps on, does that seem fair, or is there more to this than meets the eye? Are computers the cause or the symptom of our ever accelerating culture and our manic muddling and juggling multitasking?
"Modern technology depletes human cognitive abilities more rapidly than drugs, according to a psychiatric study. . . Email users suffered a 10 per cent drop in IQ scores, more than twice the fall recorded by marijuana users, in a clinical trial of over a thousand participants. Doziness, lethargy and an inability to focus are classic characteristics of a spliffhead, but email users exhibited these particular symptoms to a "startling" degree, according to Dr Glenn Wilson. The deterioration in mental capacity was the direct result of the trialists' addiction to technology, researchers discovered. Email addicts were bombarded by context switches and developed an inability to distinguish between trivial and significant messages."
The Register reckons that we are awash with facts and have forgotten how to think. So, putting your 'Thoughts' thinking caps on, does that seem fair, or is there more to this than meets the eye? Are computers the cause or the symptom of our ever accelerating culture and our manic muddling and juggling multitasking?
