The essayist Joseph Epstein writes in the Weekly Standard of a conference at which of all the presenters he was “the only one who did not avail himself of audiovisual aids. The reason I didn’t is that I don’t have any; nor have I any wish to possess any.” One fellow speaker used a PowerPoint presentation to compare the human brain to a smartphone with accompanying “apps” for things like morality and self-preservation. Epstein observes:
One might say that is brilliant except that it is stupid. The human brain isn’t in the least like a smartphone. A smartphone doesn’t have courage isn’t capable of evil knows nothing of altruism cannot innovate or create and of that great human capacity for wondering called consciousness it is completely void.… But up there on that big screen with the speaker clicking and app-ing away for a moment or two it seemed an interesting connection. The human brain the smartphone — yeah baby it all seemed to make sense — except that it doesn’t.
During this presentation it occurred to me that audiovisual aids far from being an advance in pedagogy may well be nothing more than another form of dumbing down.… Some learning can doubtless be accomplished visually. But that it can doesn’t necessarily mean that the visual is the best way to accomplish it. The visual has its limits and they may be more extreme than devotees of the audiovisual know.
Readers of this column may have noticed a pattern here over time: the attempt to build a case against what technological advancement seems to be doing to us as individuals and as a society. That’s not at all to say there aren’t people for whom one or another aspect of the digital age has been an absolute lifesaver. There are undoubtedly those who cannot learn and thrive other than by visual means just as there may be those whose circumstances make smartphones et al an absolute necessity. And for all of us it has meant heretofore undreamed of convenience and efficiency.
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