What concerns me is what technology may be doing to our brain. Read Gary Small’s book, iBrain, and you will have to agree that our brain is indeed evolving. Two brains that start off the same at birth can be drastically different at two years of age if one has been deprived of play, talk, touch, love, proper food and so on. That’s been known for a long time. What is more surprising is that the adult brain remains malleable – “neuroplasticity” is the term used – as we grow older, and it continues to rewire itself throughout life. That’s good news for old folks like me because it means you can become smarter the older you get. We used to think intelligence was 80% genetic and 20% environmental, but it’s actually the opposite.
The bad news is that chronic Internet users and high-tech users tend to have poorer social skills and less ability to focus, and take on traits normally found in people with ADHD.
Excessive TV, video games and other digital media has been shown to contribute to ADD and ADHD in both children and adults. About 5% of children in the U.S. have ADHD. But with the advent of technology, and our increasing addiction to it, this is changing. Psychiatric investigators in South Korea find that 20% of Internet-addicted children and teens end up with ADHD symptoms. Dr. Edward Hallowell, a psychiatrist in Sudbury, Mass., and author of several books on ADD/ADHD, sees a lot of patients wrapped up in this multitasking mania. Over the past decade he has seen a tenfold increase in the number of patients showing up with symptoms closely resembling ADD, but of the work-induced variety. They were irritable, their productivity was declining, they couldn’t get organized, they were making quick, off the cuff decisions – all because they felt pressured to get things done quickly. He gave the condition a name – Attention Deficit Trait (ADT). Several books on brain research indicate that high-tech gadgets, video games and even TV have been shown to contribute to ADD in both adults and children. Incidentally, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends zero TV for children under two, yet one in five American children under two has a TV in their bedroom.
An example of how our brains can be rewired is described in John Medina’s book, Brain Rules. A year 2000 study of London taxi drivers revealed that they had a much larger posterior hippocampus than men with a similar profile, but who did not drive for a living. That part of the hippocampus is responsible for a person’s navigational skills. As far as our brain is concerned, it seems to hold true that if we don’t use it, we lose it. Another example appeared in the Toronto Star (December 12, 2009) It was an article on handwriting, which seems to have been replaced by the keyboard, at least with the younger generation. It concludes, based on research, that handwriting works the brain differently and builds distinct cognitive skills. It reinforces reading and spelling, develops motor memory as it becomes automatic, teaches students to focus, and may help them remember what they learn. So as keyboards replace handwriting, new neural pathways are created and new cognitive skills replace the old.
The brain is evolving. That may not be all bad. But I do know that managers require social and interpersonal skills, intuition and creativity to be successful. And focus is one of the keys to accomplishment. We should think twice before allowing time with email and the Internet to crowd out time with family and friends.
Top achievers combine high-tech with high touch. They interact socially, participate in face-to-face meetings, and even use paper-based systems such as the day planners or simple note pads as tools to get things done.
I will never apologize for scheduling in a paper day planner or drawing mind maps on a scratch pad or scribbling an idea on an index card. And I’m becoming more convinced that it helps us remain well-rounded individuals. Much of your intelligence – and how well you do in life – seems to depend on what researchers call the “executive function” part of the brain. It is that part of the brain in the cerebral cortex that gives you the ability to control impulses, sustain attention, hold an idea in your head, plan, and prioritize and so on. And it’s those executive functions that appear to be weak in individuals with ADD/ADHD. Too much technology could weaken these executive skills even more.
US colleges and university offer ample opportunities to any knowledge seeker for the academic pursuits in any field of study. They are equipped with the state of the art infrastructure, and have conducive ambience to foster and nurture scholastic aptitude.
Many of the US universities offer both, online and campus based courses of various levels such as, Bachelor’s programme, Masters or Doctoral programme. The programmes offered pertain to different disciplines of study such as, pure science, medicine, engineering and technology, business management and liberal arts. There are two sessions, winter session and fall session in an academic year.
US Universities can be classified into three categories, private institutions, public institutions, and community colleges. Private institutions are basically managed and run by nongovernmental organizations or private owners. Public institutions are managed by officials who are appointed or elected by the public. These institutions are supported by the public funds. Community colleges are institutions supported by the local communities. Community colleges operate two kinds of curriculum, Transfer and Terminal. Under Transfer category, one can earn two years of work towards the Bachelor’s degree. Terminal category is aimed to provide vocational training to the candidates to groom them and make them suitable to seek employment in different technical and quasi-professional fields.
Admission in US colleges and university are held on the basis of merit. Different institutions may have different eligibility criteria for admission. Admission requirements also vary with the level of the course such as, Undergraduate study or Bachelor’s programme, Masters or Doctoral programme, and the discipline of study. Most of the institutions require a valid score card of the appropriate tests held for the admission in US colleges and universities such as, SAT, ACT, GMAT. Some of them also conduct their individual admission tests. References from the persons of repute and standing in the relevant discipline of study are given due weightage. Admission fee and tuition fee are different for different institutions, but many institutions offer scholarships and part-time work opportunities to meet the expenditure.
Most of the US colleges and university maintain reasonably high academic standard. However, some of the prominent US colleges and universities are the Princeton University, Harvard University, Yale University, Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University, Columbia University, University of Chicago and Dartmouth College.
US universities maintain a very tough academic regimen for the students. The ratio of the Faculty members to the students is high by any standard. Strict quality control has helped the US universities to earn a place of distinction on the globe.
Not long after the Technology Consultancy Centre (TCC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, had been founded in January 1972, the Director was explaining the process of Appropriate Technology to a visiting American professor and his wife. Firstly, he said, it was necessary to study the technologies that were already in use in grassroots enterprises and then to introduce a more advanced technology that was achievable within existing constraints on raw material supplies, infrastructure, market size and preferences, and entrepreneurial skills. Often, this would be realised by adopting or adapting an historic more labour-intensive technology, used in Western countries at a time when production units and their markets were much smaller. ‘Oh no!’ the professor’s wife expostulated, ‘I don’t think these people should be subjected to a Victorian era of sweated labour.’ At the time, it seemed impossible to propose a sweat-free path to a modern technological society, but as the years rolled by the good matron’s dream has come to seem more and more achievable.
It was certainly going to be very difficult to introduce a Victorian era of sweated labour in Ghana. It was clear, even in 1972, that Ghana would never advance as rapidly as Malaysia, formed from other British colonies granted independence in the same year of 1957. No doubt economists have identified many factors that contributed to the disparity in the rate of economic advance, but one difference is clearly apparent: the cost of labour. Multinational companies established production units in South East Asian countries to take advantage of the low labour costs and Malaysia was one of the first countries to be enriched by this phenomenon. Ghana was always unlikely to benefit in this way. Foreign companies operating in Ghana in the 1970s complained that low labour productivity rendered their operations unviable, and several of them closed down. Studies conducted by the TCC at that time indicated that labour productivity was roughly three times lower in Ghana than in India. It seems that the professor’s wife need not have worried; Ghanaians had an inborn resistance to sweated labour.
Few people in the 1970s could have predicted the electronic revolution that has swept across the globe in the three subsequent decades. Anyone visiting Ghana today, who knew the country in the 1970s, is immediately struck by the apparently universal plague of earache. Everyone is clutching a mobile telephone. Outside in the streets of the towns and villages, very little else has changed, but inside every office a personal computer has replaced the typewriters of old. One marvels not so much at the technology per se but at the fact that it seems to be universally available in a low income country. How it is afforded one can leave to the economists to explain, but the fact that it is affordable cannot be doubted. Has the exploitation of the electron opened a window of opportunity to an era of sweat-free wealth?
Computers and mobile telephones open up great vistas of rapid communication and access to information that are essential prerequisites to economic advance, but in manufacturing industries the means of production must be similarly advanced. In the 1970s the advanced industries of the Western countries used technology of very large scale which the father of appropriate technology, Dr E F Schumacher, rightly signalled in Small is Beautiful, was inappropriate for most developing countries, not only because of its high cost but also because it was designed to serve much larger markets. However, as electronically controlled production facilities have been introduced, many of these have evolved as small units that can be combined in large numbers in big plants but also used singly or in small numbers in small and medium enterprises. The trend is on-going and the cost of NC machining centres and robotic manipulators is still unaffordable to most grassroots industrialists. At the same time, progress is fast and further falls in cost are likely.
Computer controlled machines will be very popular in Suame Magazine, Kumasi, and all of Ghana’s grassroots engineering enterprises. Machines that produce 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, need no wages, attend no funerals and steal no tools or materials seem to present a panacea for all their ills. One must hope that if this lady’s dream is realised, suitable economic and social provision will be made to ensure sweat-free employment for all those technicians and artisans who are made redundant.