It's machines thinking for us... (Score 1)

There are more educated people in this world today then there were fifty years ago. Yet I'd be willing to bet that yesterday's luminaries were on average more intelligent than those of today. It's what one of my professors calls "The Calculator Effect." Any idiot can perform Integration on a TI-89, but that doesn't mean they understand Calculus or could do it without the aid of that wonderful machine. Thus, the presence o f advanced technology hobbles the process of learning the fundamentals of Calculus as it is mostly easier and faster to punch in the equation and hit the enter key. What was that axiom about sufficiently advanced science being indistinguishable from magic? Sadly I think that's the reason people are getting dumber in the civilized world. For many of us, everyday devices have become a sort of magic and we have no real understanding of how they work. Who needs science when you have "magical" devices that do it for you?