Tales of the Lazy

 

 

What if technology is too smart for someone's brain?  Today's smartphones put all kinds of information within easy reach, but does that matter if you don't reach for it.  That old question of whether a tree falling in the forest makes any sound if there is no one to hear it kind of applies.  Having all the information has no effect if you don't ask the question.

Several of my students confided in me recently that they wouldn't have come here (Canada) to study if they had known what the weather was going to be like.  (Of course, we were working on third conditional sentences, so perhaps they were just making a joke....perhaps....honestly, their facial expressions conveyed that there was some truth to their sentences--but I digress)  Several students did, in fact, make this assertion.  This is nothing new to me because I hear it every year.  However, I paused to reflect because every single student has a smartphone.  Every student can find obscure bits of trivia rather quickly.  My only question was, why didn't they know about the weather?

When I went abroad, now almost twenty years ago, I was armed only with a Lonely Planet guidebook, a look at an atlas and a few pamphlets from the Japanese Consulate (which contained some fabulously out of date photos even then--imagine how old they look now) I didn't have the opportunity to look up anything on the internet.  I read that book (and those brochures) cover to cover.  The truth is, nothing can compare to being there, but I did the best I could.  The funny thing is, I think I was better prepared than my students, who seem surprised at so many things.

I keep forgetting to ask them how they prepared for their trip.  Maybe I am afraid that they will answer honestly, that is to say, they really didn't prepare.  I am reaching that conclusion on my own anyway.  They can find every variation of the Harlem Shake known to man, but couldn't find out that it snows in Canada in the winter?  Seems too unbelievable to be true.  Sadly, it is. 

If I had to guess, they probably don't look up anything until it is staring them in the face.  I have this image of my students landing at the airport, and then having to enter the following words in the search box.  "Toronto, white stuff on ground, cold" and seeing what Google tells them.  You'd think that some of that might have come up when packing.

If I have said it once, I've said it a thousand times.  Smartphones, don't make smart people.