Is Your Brain Lagging Behind the Pace of Modern Technology?
With every generation, there is a new technology that changes our lives. This has been true since telephone, radio and television were introduced to the world. Nowadays, it seems as though a new piece of technology is invented every other day – smartphones, tablets, social media, etc. These technologies have helped us in many ways. They have made our lives easier and more convenient. This is one of the reasons why these inventions have become so popular. But when you stop to think about it for a second, are these technologies really helping us? Is our brain lagging behind the pace of modern technology? The answer is yes.
It might not seem like much at first but after some time you will start noticing that your memory and your ability to concentrate are deteriorating. One study showed that people who regularly use their smartphones can only remember 2-3 things on average when they are asked not to use their phones. That’s because when you check your phone every minute or two (I know I am guilty of this one), it makes your brain work less than it should. You are not giving your brain enough time to process information which leads to poor memory and concentration. There is also a link between smartphone addiction and
The speed of technology is increasing exponentially. So much so that your mind is lagging behind the pace of modern technology. The tech industry is moving at a faster rate than your brain can keep up with. We measure this gap in the number of years, which we call the Technological Singularity.
An example of this would be the rate of growth in artificial intelligence (AI). In 1993, IBM’s Deep Blue beat world champion Gary Kasparov at chess. Only four years later, IBM’s Deep Blue was able to beat a world champion at “Jeopardy!” as well. And just recently, Google’s AI has been able to beat one of the best players in the world at the ancient Chinese game Go, a game so complex that even computers had difficulties mastering it.
But perhaps more interesting than AI beating humans at games is how AI has started to outperform humans in many other areas as well. For example, IBM Watson is helping cancer doctors make better treatment decisions by reading and understanding millions of pages of medical journals and research papers that took years for humans to write. Watson has even won awards for its cancer-detecting abilities.
As another example, consider how self-driving cars are replacing drivers
Modern technology has changed the way we think, learn and interact with others. Through these changes, has our brain adapted accordingly?
The way we use our brains in the modern world is not so different from how our ancient ancestors used their brains. Our brains are still very much like those of our primitive ancestors. The typical human brain today has the same size as it did 100,000 years ago, while most of us are aware that our intelligence may have considerably increased over this period. Changes in the environment and lifestyle can cause changes in the structure of our brains, but this happens very slowly.
There are vast differences between the way we use our brain in modern society and the way humans used their brains during our early history. We now live in a more complex society that requires more abstract thinking than ever before and there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that our brain is lagging behind at keeping up with the pace of technological change. We have difficulty staying focused on tasks and struggle to remember information due to an overload of information from modern technology.
Our external environment is changing at a pace that our internal environment, our brain, cannot keep up with. Our internal technology, our brain, is simply not keeping up with modern technology. Because of this gap between the internal and external world, there are many people who struggle to keep up with a rapidly changing world that is full of modern technology.
We all know that technology is progressing at a rapid rate. We’re creating more and more powerful technologies every year, and they are advancing in their abilities and features. There is a lot of speculation that our brains have not adapted to this pace of technological development, and it seems as though we aren’t adapting well to the new ways of life that technology demands of us.
Technology is not the problem. In some cases, we may be falling behind because we simply don’t know how to use these new technologies properly. We don’t know how to take advantage of the power that these technologies place in our hands. And even if we do learn how to use them, there will always be an adjustment period during which we feel like fish out of water because our brains haven’t had time to adapt to the new situation. This can create a sort of anxiety around using these new technologies, making it difficult for us to learn how best to use them.
It’s important to remember that technology is just a tool — it’s not going to make you smarter or more capable. It’s not going to make you adapt faster or think better; those skills come from within you, not from the tools you use.
So while technology may be changing at a rapid rate, your brain
The pace of technological change is picking up speed. New technologies, products and services are being released at an ever increasing rate; it’s hard to stay on top of the changes.
As technology progresses, it will affect our everyday lives. How we work, shop, socialise, communicate and travel will all change as a result.
Even now, the internet is playing a large role in how we do things: shopping online, social media and cloud computing are just some of the ways that technology has already changed our lives.
We live in an age where the pace of technology is changing at an accelerating rate. The term for this phenomenon is called technological singularity, which is the idea that technology will be advancing beyond our control. This means that in the future, technology might be able to create more intelligent beings than ourselves.
Software is already eating the world by enabling us to do things faster and cheaper than before. For example, you can now learn how to code for free thanks to online courses such as Udacity, Udemy or Khan Academy. But it’s not just about learning how to code; we can also learn how to sing from YouTube tutorials on singing lessons with Mariah Carey or Justin Bieber (seriously!).
The pace of advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are also increasing rapidly; so much so that we might soon see machines that are smarter than humans by 2030 according to Ray Kurzweil, Director of Engineering at Google.
In addition to AI making leaps forward with machine learning algorithms such as deep neural networks and self-driving cars, there’s also been tremendous progress in other areas like 3D printing and nanotechnology which could lead us into a second industrial revolution.