How much does advanced technology affect us? We do understand that it cannot be stopped. Every child nowadays has all sorts of gadgets in their pockets. Two year olds master the tablet just like their parents. It is clear that a new generation is growing up; it even has a name – google generation. These aren’t people who were taught into the digital life, but they were already born into the digital life. They don’t even know that there is another type of life.

This has pluses and it has minuses as well. Well, the upside is pretty clear to everyone – the fast speed of communication, the ability to access any information, to get into any museum in the world without getting up from the couch, to get into any library in the world, to watch any movies, watch online courses, study virtually remotely at the best universities. The pluses are undeniable.

But there are major downsides. Computer addiction is a disease. The brain of people who spend non stop time in a virtual environment, if it is scanned with advanced technology, then in severe cases we can see in the brain the same disorders as drug addicts and alcoholic people have. Just think about that. We observe in that brain a deterioration of the gray and white matter. A deterioration of the brain because of the addiction scenario problem.

Bill Gates allows 2 hours of wi-fi in his house. His children do not constantly sit in a virtual environment, because Bill Gates understands what this can lead to. It doesn’t matter if it’s Bill Gates or someone else, what matters is that gadgets are prohibited in serious schools, that is a child or a teenager can access it for a limited time only. The rest of the time he should think not with the help of “Hey Google…” but with the help of his neural network, which needs to be developed by reading complex books, watching complex films, listening to complex music.

It all depends on who you want to be or who you want your descendants be. If only a herd then good luck, and let everyone have gadgets and let them walk with them and live in them. If you want your children to be complex people with an interesting inner life, with an interesting life in general, then the bar needs to be raised and this should not be some comic books, but a book which is very difficult to read, because the harder the job the better your neural network; you tune into a different scale. What are your aspirations? If you aspire to be a man of high rank then this is one kind of lifestyle, if not – then it’s your business…! But don’t be amazed afterwards, don’t be amazed then.

This is what I wish for all of us, to come to our senses in time and not to forget that we are not devices that only use hamburgers and Pepsi-Cola but a device that is designed for a life of high flight.

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~Tatyana Vladimirovna Chernigovskaya is a Soviet and Russian scientist in the field of neuroscience, psycholinguistics and theory of mind, a Honored Worker of Science.

©Excellence Reporter 2021