Prakash Per­sad

The de­vel­op­ment of low-cost pow­er­ful mi­cro­proces­sors cou­pled with ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tech­nolo­gies have re­sult­ed in the so-called smart or in­tel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies be­ing im­ple­ment­ed in de­vices that have every­day use. Smart phones rep­re­sent but one cat­e­go­ry.

These de­vices con­nect us to not on­ly peo­ple but to im­mense sources of in­for­ma­tion and knowl­edge; in ad­di­tion to serv­ing as a dig­i­tal per­son­al as­sis­tant (PDA). So hav­ing all these re­sources, lit­er­al­ly at our com­mand, do they make us more in­tel­li­gent, cre­ative and pro­duc­tive?

In con­sid­er­ing this is­sue, the case of "open book" ex­ams might pro­vide a clue. Most aca­d­e­mics will tell you that stu­dents gen­er­al­ly do not do bet­ter in open book ex­ams un­less it is a mul­ti­ple choice test or one of re­gur­gi­ta­tion. Why? Be­cause knowl­edge does not equate to in­tel­li­gence. The un­der­stand­ing and skil­ful ap­pli­ca­tion of knowl­edge to solve a prob­lem would qual­i­fy.

So whilst the smart phone does put at our dis­pos­al a tremen­dous amount of in­for­ma­tion, we still need to use it ef­fec­tive­ly. In fact, there is emerg­ing ev­i­dence that smart tech­nolo­gies might be hav­ing the op­po­site ef­fect: mak­ing us think less and copy or pla­gia­rise more.

Be­fore the ad­vent of the elec­tron­ic cal­cu­la­tor, arith­metic and men­tal arith­metic to be more spe­cif­ic, was taught to all. Singing of the two-times and three-times ta­bles etc has been crit­i­cised as a mind­less ac­tiv­i­ty. But pro­vid­ed that one sang it enough times, it be­came em­bed­ded in our men­tal frame­work and this pro­vid­ed a frame of ref­er­ence and a re­al­i­ty check.

One would know re­flex­ive­ly, for ex­am­ple, that sev­en times sev­en is 49. As an ex­am­ple, when do­ing or check­ing cal­cu­la­tions on the bill in the mall or mar­ket, ei­ther men­tal­ly or with a cal­cu­la­tor, you can "sense" when the num­bers do not tal­ly. It is amaz­ing, at least to the di­nosaurs schooled in men­tal arith­metic, that stu­dents now have no con­cep­tion what­so­ev­er when they ar­rive at ridicu­lous­ly wrong num­bers at the end of the cal­cu­la­tions. So be­ing en­dowed with a high-speed com­put­ing de­vice does not nec­es­sar­i­ly make us more nu­mer­ate. It cer­tain­ly makes us more de­pen­dent and less an­a­lyt­i­cal. Analy­sis and crit­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of da­ta are fun­da­men­tal to in­tel­li­gence.

Smart tech­nol­o­gy can be ef­fec­tive­ly used by in­tel­li­gent peo­ple to make them more ef­fec­tive but it does not en­dow in­tel­li­gence. Maybe this would par­tial­ly ex­plain why, de­spite the enor­mous ex­pense ex­pend­ed in all forms of ed­u­ca­tion and the ubiq­ui­tous na­ture of com­put­ers in T&T, our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is still so low.

Maybe the think­ing is that by "throw­ing" com­put­ers and de­grees to one and all, we would pro­duce a hard-work­ing, in­tel­li­gent work­force. This ap­proach is typ­i­cal­ly Tri­ni: spend the prob­lem away. When would we learn that it does not work?

Com­put­er-based tech­nolo­gies can be ex­treme­ly dis­tract­ing and hence may serve to re­duce pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in­stead of en­hanc­ing it. Many stud­ies have shown that work­ers spend an in­or­di­nate amount of time ei­ther surf­ing the Net or check­ing and re­ply­ing to e-mails. With en­hanced con­nec­tiv­i­ty, speed, rise of so­cial and en­ter­tain­ment me­dia, stu­dents and work­ers now spend less time on re­flec­tion, which is re­flect­ed in the abil­i­ty to crit­i­cal­ly think and analyse.

It is not­ed in sev­er­al stud­ies that stu­dents now have dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced at­ten­tion spans. This nat­u­ral­ly pro­gress­es to the work place. So in­di­vid­u­als con­stant­ly flit from the task at hand to check their e-mail in­box or to text mes­sages or get an up­date on crick­et/foot­ball scores or their Face­book page or read and send group mes­sages. It is es­ti­mat­ed that, in some work­places, this con­sumes two to near four hours dai­ly.

Smart tech­nolo­gies can be a boon or a bane; it is up to the in­di­vid­ual. In the na­tion­al or so­ci­etal con­text, guide­lines and poli­cies should be de­vel­oped and in­sti­tut­ed. It is both es­sen­tial and crit­i­cal that pol­i­cy­mak­ers in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor un­der­stand clear­ly that tech­nol­o­gy serves as a tool or a part­ner at best and is more ef­fec­tive in hands of an­a­lyt­ic and cre­ative in­di­vid­u­als. Above all, em­pha­sis must be placed on learn­ing, analy­sis and re­flec­tion if we are to use these tech­nolo­gies to cre­ate and in­no­vate.