There is a post on this board about graphing calculators. As an engineer, I will not dispute the need for tools but should we depend on them to the point that we lose track of the concepts that spawned them? Will we advance to the point that students will not be able to look at an equation and recognize the graph of its function? Since cash registers have begun doing the calculations, most high school students never learn to make change. The other night I went to Pizza Hut. They could not make me a pizza because the computer was down. When I was in college, I made pizzas. We took orders with pencil and paper. Used a rolling pin to shape the dough. When I made deliveries, I had to calculate change in my head. I’m not ready to turn my back on technology BUT I CAN.
Well, that’s not really dependence on technology, just stupidity. I can caluculate change and do most mid-grade math without paper. It doesn’t mean I can survive without the technology to make supermarkets happen.
Calculators are just helpers. If you don’t know the concept behind math then having a calculator is about as helpful as having a tool kit and have no knowledge of how to fix a car.
Exactly. I mean what’s the big deal about a power outage for a night?
Apologies in advance for the abrasive tone…
What level of dependance do you define as acceptable?
Could you mix that pizza dough from scratch? Mill the grain to make the flour that goes into it? Butcher the hog and convert him to pepperoni? Carve the rolling pin? Make the pencil and the paper?
We are ALL dependent on technology, and have been for thousands of years. Every time a major improvement occurs, old skills are lost (or at least become obscure), and I have no doubt that the people who worked hard to acquire those skills have gotten upset.
Pointing to the technology that existed when you, personally, were young and declaring it to be the appropriate level upon which to be dependant is no more justifiable than declaring that any music written after you turned 25 is “just noise”.
Can’t make a pizza without a computer? That’s twisted.
But Vlad has a point; I write great spread-sheet equations, without the function builder, but can NOT do algebra without a pencil and paper. In which case am I less reliant on technology?
And all popular music written since I turned 25 is just noise, and too damn loud at that.
Hmm. I wouldn’t say we’re too dependent on technology - we’re dependent on it, certainly, but as has been said it’s rather hard to define what level of things count as technology - I sure as hell couldn’t hunt for my dinner with my bare hands, and find it rather hard to consider that a failing (especially as I’m vegetarian). No
I would make two observations though. Firstly, we’re very inclined as a society to go for technology purely for the sake of technology. The more advanced solution is often seen as inherently better (or at least ‘more elegant’, which is often percieved as the same things). I can’t think of a specific example at the moment, but I have generally seen an element of this. There’s nothing wrong with new technology of course - it’s often a really great thing - but because it’s new doesn’t neccesarily mean it’s any better.
Secondly, we’re too dependent on external support. Sure, we need technology, but do we have to be utterly dependent on the power companies delivering electricity as normal? In most cases, probably. I don’t really have an alternate solution, it’s just that it seems a bit much for everything to grind to a halt because of the absence on one thing. Perhaps unavoidable, but never mind.
I think a student could only become dependent on a graphing calculator if they were only told how to use it and not what they where doing with it. You’d just have a trained monkey pushing buttons, not a student using a tool to speed up their math.
Dependence could also occur if you are taught what to do, figure out how to do it on a calculator, and then gradually forget the specifics about what’s really going on because you always do it mechanically.
No different from losing the ability to do complex math in your head because you always write it down and break it into simpler operations. I think that’s why I always hated show-your-work fanatics.
Vlad–Just for you information:
I can make dough. I grow soybeans because they are more profitable than wheat, though.
My father taught me to use a drawing bar, I can make a rolling pin.
I have butchered hogs and made sausage. Not pepperoni but I could.
I raise chickens in my yard. I can run one down, kill it with my hands, and cook it myself. I might just do that tonight.
I dug a pond in my front yard with my bare hands and raise tilapia.
I can find a derivative and solve for an integral on a slate with chalk.
I am not ready to turn my back on technolgy BUT I COULD
Slight hijack. 1010011010 - 29A - 666? Are my suspicions correct? Just wondering if you did that on purpose.
Incidentally, due to changes in the normalizing process used to produce CDs these days, music IS louder and more of it IS noise than 25 years ago.
CDDA has a limited range, when normalizing, you find the highest peaks of the audio signal, disignate them as the maximum of the CDDA range, and readjust the rest of the signal to take full advantage of the range. That’s called non-destructive normalizing.
Somewhere along the way, someone noticed you could set the normalization value at somepoint LESS than the height of the peaks. This makes the average volume of the song louder. However the anything above the normalization value gets clipped off and you get a flat-at-max signal (I.E. noise). Since the peaks are usually generated by percussion, and most percussion doesn’t differ wildly from noise anyway, you can clip out quite a bit of the drum peaks. Thus more of the CDDA range is available for the rest of the music rather than being gobbled up to give your beats more kick.
The trend though has been for the normalization values to get lower and lower. The music gets louder, but more and more of the peaks gets clipped… meaning more of the song is, quite literally, just noise.
Music today is louder and is just noise. QED.
I can make dough, with my bread machine 
But seriously, what do you consider technology? Soy beans are possible because we brought them from another land and grow them here, they are not indigenous to NA (AFAIK). Those chickens, I figure are fenced in? With chicken wire? Make that. Or you wanna make an all-wood fense? Possible but without a saw you’re out of luck.
And how do you grow them (soy beans)? You’ll eventually hit a limit on how much you can care for before needing some sort of method of plowing the field.
I’d say humans in North America cannot survive without a moderate level of technology. Just to survive the winter, we need to use animal skins and fire, build shelters and gather food.
Maybe hawaii is different though
I think this is where Vlad is making his/her point:
Can you also make the tools necessary to mill the wheat/soybeans. What do you use to boil the water with and carry it in?
Can you also make a drawing bar?
Do you use any tools to butcher the hogs? Can you make those tools? Can you build your own smokehouse?
How do you cook the chickens? Using man-made utensils/tools?
Did you use a shovel when digging your pond? What did you use to haul the dirt with?
Can you also build the slate and make chalk?
I suppose a Neanderthal man would think the ancient Egyptians had it easy.
The problem you’re talking about stems from our current level of technology depending on previous inventions functioning as expected. Take you “computer needed to make a pizza” scenario: Computer controls the oven, oven requires electricity, electricity needs wires to travel across and a power company to generate it, power company needs generators to make the electricity, generators need fuel, etc. Take any of these inventions out and you are back to the level of technology before the chain is broken.
Man has been dependent on technology since the club (or whatever the first invention was). Technology is mostly designed to speed processes up, not to make us humans lazier. Then more technology is devised to capitalize on the previous generation’s breakthroughs. As the world’s population increases, much of this technology is needed just to survive. I doubt if there’s a single human that knows how to do everything (except Unca Cecil maybe 
).
And now a final question: If you were plopped in to the middle of the Amazon jungle, could you make a pizza? How long would it be before you enjoyed your first one? Could you also make a car, or a computer?
Lizard once said:
Saying man is too dependent on technology is like saying a shark is too dependent on teeth.
There you go.
I knew Hlanelee was going to be miffed at that, but I didn’t have time to smooth off the rough edges. No offense intended.
Thanks for the backup, Badmana, Horseflesh, and Quack.
I particularly like that quote from Lizard! That reminds me of something my father and I were talking about recently: a human is virtually helpless in a “fair” fight with the vast majority of creatures anywhere near our size, and can’t run away very well, either. We also have a minimal tolerance for exposure to the weather. Technology is the only reason we survived this long at all.
Kind of makes me wonder… would the same hold true for alien species? If they can get here to pester us, they must have advanced technology, and have probably become highly dependant on it. Could we assume that most civilized aliens would be among the physically weakest species on their own worlds, as we are here?
What if we have another Great Depression?
We had more rural people back then, and they did not starve since they could at least eat the food they grew. Now that most people live in cities, if it happens again, how they gonna eat?
My family in the Great Depression did not haveas much cash, but we had loads of food, plenty of water, lots of wood for heat, etc.
We didnt buy as many “trinkets” but our overall life style did not change much.
What are city people going to do when they lose their jobs, heat, water, electricity, telephone, car, cable-tv, etc?
we are dependent on technology to keep or ‘improve’ our current lifestyle.
Invade the farms.
There are two basic arguments in this post:
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Hell, yes, and we like it. (Frankly, I’m thrilled that caller ID has made my call-screener answering machine obsolete.)
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The first sharpen stick was technology; do you suppose the old guys sat around the cave grousing, ‘In my day we beat the mammoth to death with tree-branches, and were glad to do it.’?
But let’s not lose sight of the main point: you don’t need the computer to make a pizza.
I think the OP has a fine point. I’ve thought of this myself the past few years. I don’t think that people really depend on technology, but I fear that they are being taught to.
Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but I still believe that kids in 4th grade have no business being on a computer in school. I believe all kids should learn how to type, but not on something that has a spell/grammar checker. My school had a ban on calculators, and this was in the 80’s. I’m not a math whiz, so I was forced to learn how to do complex math.
When I got out of the service, I was offered a job designing guns and ammunition. I was given a Mac computer. I had an IBM clone before then but that was for basic word processing and flight simulator games. I panicked, but within a week figured out how to use it. Within a year I was teaching the older guys how to use a computer. I still don’t know what makes them work, but I know how to use them. We had a program that simulated ballistics on whatever you designed. I remarked to a serious old-timer who still used a slide rule that someday soon, engineers would be an extinct species because of technology. He initially disagreed, saying that “unless you know the basic concept, the tools can’t help”. Until he thought about it and realized that the concept is part of technology.
Many people disagree with me when I say this, but I’m convinced that if you placed a fair amount of the population that is under 30-ish in a room with no cell phone and no access to google, you wouldn’t get many answers to questions. I see people as a whole getting dumber, while thinking they are more intelligent because they have someone to quote. People as a whole seem to be technically more intelligent because of the wealth of information at their fingertips, but without a keyboard, do they know how to process information or think for themselves? I don’t believe they do. An engineer in the field who can’t solve a problem when his laptop battery dies isn’t much use.
Again, maybe I’m old fashioned a bit, but I believe that tools are wonderful things and should be used, and even exploited. But a stupid person who was never taught to think, is simply a stupid person, however good he is at a computer terminal. I’ve known engineers who were utterly useless during a power outage. Technology that is available to all has reached, and maybe exceeded, basic knowledge. I’ve seen too many examples of “expertise via an internet quote” by people who don’t even know the definition of terms they are using.
Technology is good. Fundamentals are much better. The fundamentals are getting lost in the shadow of technology. I don’t know if that is good or bad, as long as there is electricity.
BUT a slide-rule IS technology.
I have a pretty good liberal arts education, but I think my life is truly enriched by Bartlett’s On-Line. (I do not have a hard copy, but I have a Brittanica. And THAT’S technology.)
I don’t think mediocrity is caused by technology; I think mediocre people perform much better with the aid of advanced tehnology. And that is a good thing.
Increasing dependence on technology is natural and desirable. I’m probably the first generation to use graphing calculators in school (I remember I had a crude one in 9th grade, about 15 yrs ago.) Recently I was discussing my research with my advisor and I showed him a MathCad worksheed that contained a couple of pages of formulas taken from a published paper. He said “in my days we’d do all these calculations by hand.” But could he change the initial conditions and plot a new graph in a few seconds? How long would it have taken him to make a complete contour plot of F(x,y)? I’d spent hours plugging in various parameters into this worksheet and looking at plots of intermediate and final results. I’m sure I have a much better understanding of how these functions behave than if I’d spent the same amount of time producing one or two plots by hand.