Practice Passage Test - 7 | Practice Passages for MCAT PDF Download

The ways in which we think are influenced by the tools we use. The invention of written language brought about a significant change in how we process, organize, store, and transmit information. While writing continues to be our primary information technology, nowadays, when we consider the impact of technology on our thinking habits, computers are the primary focus. When I first encountered how computers alter our thinking, it was during my time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, transitioning from slide rules to personal computers. Senior professors in engineering expressed concerns about the transition affecting students' ability to handle issues of scale. Students who used slide rules had to manually insert decimal points, requiring them to maintain a mental sense of scale. However, those who relied on calculators made frequent errors in orders of magnitude and lost their ability to make quick estimates. In another instance, while teaching a course on the history of psychology, I witnessed how computational objects influenced students' ideas about their emotional lives. A computer science major rejected Freud's interpretation of slips of the tongue, suggesting that the mind is a computer and errors can be attributed to information-processing rather than psychological conflicts. Nowadays, students from elementary school onward are exposed to various information technologies, shaping their thinking processes and concepts of knowledge and understanding. The impact of technology on thinking is multifaceted, and evaluating whether it is positive or negative is subjective and complex. As educators and citizens, we need to consider whether current technology aligns with our human purposes and make choices accordingly. Understanding the subjective aspects of computation is a crucial challenge for higher education and information technology in the coming decade.