Will Technology make us Stupid ?

Context: DR MICHAEL MOSLEY: I’m worried Artificial Intelligence could make us stupid

An interpretation of technology (as considered on a very broad spectrum) as being the effective and disembodied extension of cognition suggests that the recombinatory conceptual vocabularies of cognitive method (and recursively – of technology itself) provides as much promise as problems. We no longer need to remember a large number of things so much as memorise the heuristics of locating the information via our cognitively-extended technological tools. As much as this provides discontinuity and disruption to the gainful exercise of mental faculties, it also provides new opportunities for developing novelty of (and innovation through) cognitive methods.

While I respect the good Doctor (Mosley), futures forecasting is invariably and over the longer term about as reliable as Tarot Cards, Meyers-Briggs or weather prediction. The gravitational and informational compression in one problem-space (of accelerated technological uptake and medical, social or cultural consequences) is simultaneously the decompression and unfurling in synchronous, overlaid, alternate slices of the same possibility-space. Discontinuity and disruption is also opportunity: technology will only make us stupid if we allow it to do so – and there’s the rub.

Caveat: I found this article on LinkedIn.  I will not be making a habit of posting references to articles sourced from the Daily Mail as I doubt very much whether all of our best intellectual interests are well-served by their usual fare.