The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
In many ways, smartphones are a great boon to every culture. In other ways, however, they are seriously undermining the thinking process of millions of people.
For example, consider the nature of Mapquest. When people are driving somewhere, and they do not know precisely how to get there, they click on Maoquest, type in or vocalize an address in a certain town, and it instructs them how to go there: “Take the third left, go to the fifth cross-street, turn right, go to the fourth cross-street, turn left, and the house will be the fifth one on the right side.”
This technological device is failsafe. Even if the desired address is in a new subdivision, and new streets are continuously being constructed, Mapquest somehow seems to know that, and it gives newly updated directions with the passage of each day, courtesy of Big Brother in the Sky.
“So what’s wrong with that?” you ask. Just this: Mapquest neither understands nor provides north-east-south-or-west directions. It only understands left-right directions. Therefore, over the passage of years, it unintentionally removes mental maps from human heads. Directions have only a left-right meaning, not an east-west meaning. Truly to understand what “direction” means, we need either carry maps in our heads or in our hands.
“But what’s wrong if we don’t do that?” you again ask. Just this: People with no east-west//north-south orientation are constantly disoriented. To be “oriented” is literally to be “east-i-fied;” it literally means knowing orient from occident, east from west. Figuratively it means knowing, up from down, this from that. To be oriented means means knowing what’s what.
Disoriented people become programmed to pay no attention to where the sun comes up or where it goes down, or where it is located in the sky at any given hour of the day, or why it is where it is. They can’t truly understand that when or why it is winter in the northern hemisphere that it is it is summer in the southern hemisphere. Literally disoriented people don’t understand hemispheres or latitude and longitude, either. Instead, they rely on Artificial Intelligence from Googleland for nearly everything.
Furthermore, because they can look up anything they don’t know on Google, they think they are educated. They aren’t. They are merely technologically adept. They don’t rely on their own knowledge; they rely on Google to provide them whatever information they think they need.
If somehow they remember a statement from somewhere that says, “To be or not to be; that is the question,” they can Google it. In the blink of an eye their smartphone will tell them it comes from Hamlet. Perhaps they conclude that Hamlet must be the name of a small town somewhere, but at least, for the moment, they know the origin of that phrase. They may not remember it next week or next month or next year, because they didn’t file it in their gray matter, but if they need to find it again, they know where to find it again. But what, really, do they know? What knowledge do they possess?
Education is intended to turn uninformed minds into warehouses of knowledge. But if people resort to Google or Mapquest for what they want to know at any given moment, their knowledge will be momentary, and what good is momentary knowledge? If it is merely momentary, is it truly knowledge at all?
I suspect I will get responses to this one-page essay. I can anticipate many of them. It is the ones I can’t anticipate that I expectantly await.
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.