An e-mail which is currently doing the rounds in many countries, including Malta, consists of a series of photos of young people attentively using their smartphones while engaged in some other kind of activity. Young people are photographed in, among other places, a cafe, a restaurant, a museum, the beach and the stadium.

I cannot understand how computers inhibit creativity. Experience teaches me the opposite- Fr Joe Borg

The point being made by the person behind the series of photos is that technology is taking over. The photos suggest that young people, while in a restaurant as well as in other places, spend more time on their smartphones communicating with others far away than they spend socialising with each other.

This position can be validly taken, but the originator of this e-mail tries to read more into this practice than one could reasonable read. The originator hurries to conclude that, as a result of what is happening, this is a generation of idiots. Since this is quite a spirited assumption, the originator of the e-mail tries to attribute the conclusion to the great Albert Einstein. “I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots,” Einstein has allegedly said.

Whenever I receive such stuff, I immediately put on the hat of the sceptic. Are the photos true or are they made up? In the era of Photoshop, it is not easy to answer in a definitive manner. But let’s say that the photos are authentic as such scenes are commonplace.

My second line of inquiry is to check on the authenticity of the quote. Snopes.com, the site which aptly describes itself as “the definitive internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumours and misinformation”, has, in the past showed that quotations attributed to Einstein were either false or, at best, suspect. It has not yet investigated this quotation.

However, when I googled the present quotation attributed to Einstein, I was none the wiser. If Mr Google does not know about it, I start doubting its veracity. One can say many nasty things about our generation but describing it as a generation of idiots would be a bit over the top, not to say downright idiotic. I am certain that Einstein would not propose such a manifestly wrong assessment of our generation.

I searched some more and on one website I came upon a different quotation about technology which is reliably attributed to Einstein. “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” This quotation, in contrast to the other, is a valid inquisitor of our relationship to technology. Some people’s take on technology is very negative. In the US, the Waldorfian educational philosophy, for example, believes that education and technology do not mix. In its 160 Waldorf schools, one finds pens and paper, together with knitting needles but no computers or interactive boards or iPads or screens. The school authorities even frown on the use of such technology at home.

The Waldorfian philosophy states that computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans. Instead of the hi-tech gizmos we are accustomed to, a visitor to a Waldorf school would see blackboards with colourful chalk, bookshelves with encyclopaedias and wooden desks filled with workbooks.

Strangely enough (or is it so?), the parents of several children in these schools are executives working for eBay, Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard! Anyway, you have to be a high executive to afford these schools. The fee for primary level is $17,750 (€13,696) annually going up $24,400 for high school.

I cannot understand how computers inhibit creativity. Experience teaches me the opposite.

This October, Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman emeritus of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discussed his Ethiopian project during the prestigious Technology Review’s annual EmTech MIT conference. His position is diametrically contrary to the Waldorfian philosophy of education.

The results of his and his colleagues’ experiment in Ethiopia are quite interesting. They delivered fully loaded tablets to two villages in Ethiopia, one per child, with no instruction or instructional material whatsoever. Since the villages were not provided with an electricity supply they supplied a solar panel. The tablets contained, among other apps, an assortment of books, games, cartoons and movies.

Negroponte explained that within minutes of arrival, the tablets were unboxed and turned on by the children themselves. “They learned how to use them. After the first week, on average, 47 apps were used per day. After week two, the kids were playing games to race each other in saying the ABCs.”

This experiment has still to develop further before one can arrive at definitive conclusions. But it certainly does not lend any credence to the extreme technophobia of the Waldorf schools. These two radically different assessments of the role of technology in education give us an inkling of the different appraisals one can give to the phenomenon mentioned in the beginning of this piece, that is, people communicating through smartphone with people who are far away, almost at the expense of the people who are close by. We can only start to explain this behaviour if we accept the radical changes affected by technology.

The title of this commentary is borrowed from an article penned by anthropologist Edmond Carpenter (first anniversary of his death next month) and published both in an article in Playboy and also in book form. He explains how, in a certain sense, we start adopting the characteristics of the technology we use. This basic hypothesis is shared with the other members of the Toronto School (for example McLuhan, Innis and Havelock).

In the light of this perspective, young people mentioned in the circulating e-mail should not be accused of anti-social activity as they are being social in a different way. They have a new concept of communication, of relationships and of being social. They feel they have to be in touch with their friends/contact all the time. An off-and-on approach does not satisfy them. They value their virtual relationships as much as they value their physical ones.

Physical presence is just one aspect of their existence and relationships. They feel they are not being courteous if they abandon the instant link with virtual friends in favour of the link with physical friends. They believe they can be in contact with both at the same time. This is the multi-tasking generation. Who am I to say the contrary?

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.