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3. After reading the following selection, write an argumentative passage drawing one of these conclusions:
(1) Computers are loosening the bonds that tie us to reality. (2) There is no reality, and computers offer just another illusion to accompany the others that constitute our experience. (3) Children who grow up immersed in computers have an impoverished childhood. (4) Computers accentuate the learning process of children. (5) The contact that children have with computers should be limited in such-and-such a way.
Age of the Techno-Toddlers: How Computers Can Dull Children's Creativity by Mark Slouka Across the fence from my home in Encinitas the other day, my daughter and I heard a bird call we hadn't heard before: deeper, more melodious than the western mockingbirds that frequent our yard. It took us a while to realize that we were listening to the neighbors' San Diego Zoo CD-ROM (as I recall, it was the howler monkeys that gave it away). A week or so later, my wife and I took the kids to the actual zoo. Making our way past the orangutan exhibit, we overheard a father cajoling his screaming 4-year-old into going home: "Don't you remember, munchkin? We saw them last week, on the computer. We'll see them when we go home." Munchkin, needless to say, wasn't buying it. And neither should we. Computer-generated illusions (from cyberspace "communities" to virtual "lovers" to CD-ROM monkeys) are rapidly encroaching on what used to be sacred territory: the territory of the real. Hoodwinked into buying computer versions of the things we already have, we seem to be forgetting that cyberspace monkeys and virtual birds are neither monkeys nor birds, but copies — poor imitations of the original. Worse still, we seem willing to stand by as a new generation of computerjugen (as the self-described techno-evangelists refer to them), grow up in cyberspace, without considering the impoverishment this implies. Why are parents all across the nation plugging in their kids without pausing to consider the implications of an on-line childhood? Why has there been no real debate over the growing body of evidence suggesting, as an article in The Wall Street Journal pointed out recently, that computers can "promote passivity, dull creativity and limit socialization in children"? At least part of the explanation may be the hype surrounding the so-called digital revolution, a hype based largely on the time-tested notion of inevitability. Inspired by the prospect of a potential $3.5 trillion payday, the gurus of the new, wired world have succeeded in convincing us (or some of us, anyway), that just as global-positioning wristwatch phones are the wave of the future, so interactive, cyberspace playgrounds are as inevitable as the coming day. "Kids are really accustomed to cyberspace," claims Denise Caruso, editorial director of the Technology and Media Group. "The whole notion of virtual community is something that adults marvel at, but it's like breathing to kids." The aura of inevitability, of course, makes for good marketing strategy. It alters the playing field, changing the questions that might still be asked from whether to when, from "Is it good?" to "How much will it cost me?" All of which may explain why no one seems to have considered the possibility that children take "naturally" to cyberspace for the same reason they believe that elephants with large ears can fly — because children under the age of 8 or so have a hard time separating illusion from reality — and why no one has pointed out that children's susceptibility to something is not necessarily a good indicator of its value, for adults or children. Kids take naturally to cyberspace? They take naturally to Barney, too. And they're cuckoo for Cocoa-Puffs. So what? Rarely in the history of this country has a new technology been sold as effectively; not since the advent of the television (and what is the computer, in many cases, but a politically correct television, and interactive babysitter?) have such outrageous claims been made for one. We seem, as a culture, to have bought into the New Age lock, stock and modem. We accept — it's almost an article of faith with us — that the information superhighway will make everything easier, faster, better; that it will make us (and our children) more knowledgeable, more imaginative, more creative, that if we want Jane of Johnny to learn how to read they'll need a $3,000 computer with all the fixings. So hypnotized have we become, in fact, that we have to pinch ourselves to remember that literacy existed even before the invention of the microchip, and that the imagination was doing quite well, thank you, long before the arrival of fiber-optic cable. Computers, like any technology, are useful in certain situations, damaging in others. As machines capable of providing virtual alternatives to the trials and pleasures of life in the real world, however, they are potentially crippling. Before wandering any further onto the information superhighway, we may want to ask ourselves whether Munchkin wasn't onto something. |