Here’s an email from a colleague that got me thinking about “people as a tool-using species.” My response follows in the next post.
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This is an interesting blog post. The full article referenced is here. This came to me from an alum who owns a tech company. He pointed out this comment in light of a discussion we had at lunch:
“I wonder if the ‘app-ification’ of computing is turning out to be the same thing: a powerful, knowledge-destroying idea that is actually crippling our collective ability to use computers as tools of creation rather than merely as vectors of consumption.”
We had been talking about the changes even in the last year or 2 and how the iPad was a consumption/not creative device and that we were beginning to the see the dumbing down of people. I made a comment about how one of the best professional video digitizing tools, Final Cut Pro, had been dumbed down for the masses to the point that professionals who have been using it for years can’t use it any more. This is a larger topic that we have discussed about kids wanting the answers given to them instead of working hard to find the answer. Very interesting thought being hypothesized that the thing that was supposed to bring so much creativity has had to be dumbed down to where it can’t be used that way.