Intro to Lit 2:00 - 3:15

Thursday, February 3, 2011

The Dumbest Generation


Today in class, we were presented with a little "quiz". We were asked five questions about subjects from today that many people know such as sports and characters on tv. Then came the challenging part, five questions from historical occurences. As you can imagine, much of the class got the first five questions correct.. as for the last five not so much. At this day in age, we are reffered to as the dumbeset generation.. This quiz has truely shown me why we tend to say that. I wouldn't go to the extent of calling us the dumbest generation but definitely the laziest. We have everything basically handed to us and it's always right there in front of us. All we need is a little motivation and we are some of the smartest most talented human beings. What do you guys think?

When I read the articles online about how we were called "The Dumbest Generation," a couple quotes stood out to me. First was this quote from the Newsweek article: "When the tasks are at all challenging, there is a big drop in performance with multitasking. What kids are doing is learning to be skillful at a superficial level." I feel like we don't stop performing when we have to multi task but we aren't very comfortable with doing it. I know for a fact It's hard to do more than one thing at a time. I can't listen to music and read or watch TV and read at the same time. Some people just aren't good at it. It's not like we don't want to or we're lazy it's because we aren't all comfortable with doing so. 
Another statement that caught my attention was "The jury is still out on whether these technologies are positive or negative" says Ken Kosik of the University of California, "But they're definitely changing how people's brains process information." our generation is filled with all sorts of electronics to fit our needs. Having all the information you can possibly need is just one click away. Search engines such as google, yahoo, ask, or msn just to name a few is everyones answer for everything. Students dont need to know what the largest lake is, or who our allie was in WWII. All they need to do is type it into the computer and you have an answer in less than a second.
I am going to post a video in this blog about some people doing some pretty dumb things. This is mostly our generation but it's not exactly what we were talking about in class. It's to kinda make things a little interesting and have something to talk about. DUMB

5 comments:

  1. I agree with many of your points! I think most us are very intelligent and talented in many ways. I also think it doesn't make us "dumb" because we aren't the best at multitasking, although some of us are! Many like to listen to music, while doing their homework or some even like reading while listening to music! I believe our generation is very bright but not necessarily at knowing particular facts about history. We are all different! I think we all are skilled and knowledgeable in different subjects. Calling us a "dumb generation" is wrong. We are far from dumb.

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  2. I agree with you Chris, that we are actually the smartest generation right now. Like I said in class we are too accesible to technology and have no need to actually retain the information because it's so easy to look up. I mean the pop quiz just proves my point. We have free time to watch tv and movies so we don't spend our time reading books because well it's more boring to us. Basically everybody got most of the second half of the quiz wrong because we are not involving ourselves with that material. So we may look dumb but were actually smart and lazy ha, if thats any better.

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  3. I have to say I do agree with that our generation is kind of becoming a "lazy" one. It stinks to admit it but it is true. With the technology we have today, everying is available with a touch of a button.. no wait needed. I feel like many of us these days do not have the patients for things that take some time to wait for. We all just want or are interested in immediate outcomes. It is kind of like if we cannot get something using the technology we have today.. then we don't want it. Or if something we want is not easy to purchase or obtain.. we don't want it. I guess this does kind of make us lazy, but on the other hand this is bound to happen with all of these advancements in technology unless we take it upon ourselves to change this.

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  4. I feel redundant saying this on everyone's blogs, but we all made similar points about how lazy our generation is. Besides the availability of internet, why exactly are we so lazy in comparison with the other generations? Any ideas? I'm puzzled. In regards to multitasking, I feel like many people do multitask depending on what tasks are at hand. Obviously everyone is different and has different habits. Personally, I cannot have the TV on and study at the same time. If I have homework that does not require reading, I often do have the TV or music on. I like the background noise-- it helps me focus (which is quite ironic because it should be the other way around). In reference to the technology quote, it is a double-sided argument. One side saying how easy the technology has made everything, which is very true. On the other side, it has also made us incredibly lazy. It could be argued either way. Personally, I think it is more of a positive than a negative.

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  5. Referring to what you said about the quiz, I will bring up a point I have addressed many times already. I do not believe that just because we know more about what is going on in our lives today than historical events means we are dumb. It just means that we pay more attention to the here and now than to what happened many, many years ago. Now, I want to talk about the video you posted. I think that right there is one of the main reasons people call our generation dumb. Not only do we do stupid things, we are dumb enough to put them on the internet for all the world to see. Maybe that is why we are looked at as dumb. I'm sure people before us did dumb things, there was just no way to let the whole world see them. Now with technology, everyone can see someone trying to flip into a pool and banging their head on the side of the pool.

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