How New Technology Might Already Change our Brain
New technology allows us to perform automatically some tasks that would have required significant cognitive power. It may even lead to changes in our brain functions as we fail to exercise some of them.
Mind-altering GPSOne of the best examples is the GPS. Driving with the GPS, following instructions without having the overview of what we are doing, diminishes our navigation capabilities at least in terms of training. This is even noted in this Bloomberg article: ‘How GPS Came to Be—and How It May Be Altering Our Brains‘.
I have remarked quite often that people that use GPS systematically become utterly lost geographically if they happen not to have the small device, and can’t even guess in which part of town they are. And as GPS is now ubiquitous in our phones, we always have it close-by. But at the end, we lose our sense of orientation and our capability to map out out surroundings and build a consistent picture of geography.
It might not be a big hurdle (until the day where the GPS won’t work!) but keeping a good sense of orientation is, I believe, a good capability to have. Maybe someday we’ll have remediation practice – in any case, our technology has started to transform us.
