My biggest fear of de-skilling comes from what I consider the wide scale if not complete functional illiteracy of children that have graduated [sic] from high school in the last 20 years. This trend is accelerating at an exponential rate such that almost every child born today will be functionally illiterate by the time they graduate from high school in 18 years. So - yes, but Will - how do you define "functional illiteracy?"
Simple. The ability for any child in the US to read any work from the "canon" [unabridged] understand it, and write a coherent, well formed paper from that reading. I don't think the iPhone will lead to a dilapidation of the human brain as part of evolution since it would require heavy, consistent use over a minimum of a few hundred thousand years for natural selection to actually change things. I believe illiteracy is already having significant effects on society in America today, and the functional illiteracy of most of the population will definitely have effects over the next millennium. On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 1:17 PM, Geoff Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Surely so. More frightening to me than the specific notion of de-skilling > is the dilapidation of the human mind that will be a part of human > evolution. > > On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:26:21, Jeff Howard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Geoff wrote: > > > Am I just old and paranoid? I don't think so. Left unstimulated, > > > neural pathways go dark. > > > > I think this is a real concern for design. There's a lot to find on > > the topic by searching google for the keyword "de-skilling" > > > > // jeff > > > > > > > -- > Geoff Barnes > > "Fortune favors the bold." -Virgil > > "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." -Sir > Walter Scott > > "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -G.B. Shaw > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- ~ will "No matter how beautiful, no matter how cool your interface, it would be better if there were less of it." Alan Cooper - "Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems" ------------------------------------------------------- will evans user experience architect [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
