Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
In 1990 few people other than college professors used email. Today more than a
billion people around the world have email accounts. Email messages are routed in-
stantaneously for very low cost, which can be both a blessing and a curse. Business
communications have never been so efficient, but it's not unusual to hear businesspeople
complain that they can never get caught up with their email.
The World Wide Web was still being designed in 1990; today it contains more than a
trillion pages and makes possible extraordinarily valuable information retrieval systems.
Even grade school children are expected to gather information from the Web when
writing their reports. However, many parents worry that their Web-surfing children may
be exposed to pornographic images or other inappropriate material.
May Swenson has vividly described our ambivalent feelings toward technology.
In her poem “Southbound on the Freeway,” an alien hovers above an expressway and
watches the cars move along [1]. The alien notes “soft shapes” inside the automobiles
and wonders, “are they their guts or their brains?” It's fair to ask: Do we drive technology,
or does technology drive us?
Our relationship with technology is complicated. We create technology and choose
to adopt it. However, once we have adopted a technological device, it can transform us
and how we relate to other people and our environment.
Some of the transformations are physical. The neural pathways and synapses in our
brains literally change with our experiences. One well-known brain study focused on
London taxi drivers. In order to get a license, aspiring London taxi drivers must spend
two to four years memorizing the complicated road network of 25,000 streets within
10 kilometers of the Charing Cross train station, as well as the locations of thousands
of tourist destinations. The hippocampus is the region of the brain responsible for
long-term memory and spatial navigation. Neuroscientists at University College London
found that the brains of London taxi drivers have larger-than-average hippocampi and
that the hippocampi of aspiring taxi drivers grow as they learn the road network [2].
Stronger longer-term memory and spatial navigation skills are great outcomes of
mental exercise, but sometimes the physical effects of our mental exertions are more
insidious. For example, studies with macaque monkeys suggest that when we satisfy
our hunger for quick access to information through our use of Web browsers, Twitter,
and texting, neurons inside our brains release dopamine, producing a desire to seek out
additional information, causing further releases of dopamine, and so on, which may
explain why we find it difficult to break away from these activities [3, 4].
Adopting a technology can change our perceptions, too. More than 90 percent of
cell phone users report that having a cell phone makes them feel safer, but once people
get used to carrying a cell phone, losing the phone may make them feel more vulnerable
than they ever did before they began carrying one. A Rutgers University professor asked
his students to go without their cell phones for 48 hours. Some students couldn't do it.
A female student reported to the student newspaper, “I felt like I was going to get raped
if I didn't have my cell phone in my hand.” Some parents purchase cell phones for their
children so that a child may call a family member in an emergency. However, parents
who provide a cell phone “lifeline” may be implicitly communicating to their children
the idea that people in trouble cannot expect help from strangers [5].
