Pirkka’s posterous

By now the arguments are familiar: Facebook is ruining our social relationships; Google is making us dumber; texting is destroying the English language as we know it. We're facing a crisis, one that could very well corrode the way humans have communicated since we first evolved from apes. What we need, so say these proud Luddites, is to turn our backs on technology and embrace not the keyboard, but the pencil.

Such sentiments, in the opinion of Dennis Baron, are nostalgic, uninformed hogwash. A professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Baron seeks to provide the historical context that is often missing from debates about the way technology is transforming our lives in his new book, "A Better Pencil." His thesis is clear: Every communication advancement throughout human history, from the pencil to the typewriter to writing itself, has been met with fear, skepticism and a longing for the medium that's been displaced.

So Plato opposed writing, because it makes us dumber, "no need to remember things." Thoreau didn't like telegraph, because the speed doesn't actually help as people don't really have anything to say to each other. Morse disliked telephone as the discussions just vanish into air.

What I find fascinating is that this same story of new forms of communication melting our brain continues all the time, in bigger and smaller circles. Just think about internet: the same thinking applies here.

Blogs melt our brains, because all they offer is uninformated opinions that we can't separate from so called facts. This is the story that proud Luddites also known as journalists love to tell us.

Facebook really makes us all dumb. Even the most avid bloggers opposed (and some still do) this social networking site, as it only allows very shallow communication. What is point of telling other what you are doing right at this moment? It's unnecessary information that just adds up to information clutter.

Microblogging must be the worst brain melter of all. Short messages and constant sharing of links is pseudo communication, not adding up to anything nor even really building network! Total waste of time!

I can easily find both the Luddite and front-row admirer of new technology in me.

When opposing something new and thinking myself that it melts our brains, maybe I'm just scared because I don't get the fascination of it. I just fear that everyone else is getting smarter!

Thanks to @raesmaa for reading tip!