Sculpting The Infant Brain For a Digital Future
Social experience literally shapes critical details of brain physiology, sculpting an infant’s brain to fit the culture into which the child is born. Six-month-olds can hear or make every sound in virtually every human language. But within a mere four months, nearly two-thirds of this capacity has been cut away. The slashing of ability is accompanied by ruthless alterations in cerebral tissue. Brain cells remain alive only if they can prove their worth in dealing with the baby’s physical and social surroundings. Half the brain cells we are born with rapidly die. The 50 percent of neurons which thrive are those which have shown they come in handy for coping with such cultural experiences as crawling on the polished mud floor of a straw hut or navigating on all fours across wall-to-wall carpeting, of comprehending a mother’s words, her body language, stories, songs, and the concepts she’s imbibed from her community. Those nerve cells stay alive which demonstrate that they can cope with the quirks of strangers, friends, and family. The 50 percent of neurons which remain unused are literally forced to commit preprogrammed cell death suicide. The brain which underlies the mind is jigsawed like a puzzle piece to fit the space it’s given by its loved ones and by the larger framework of its culture’s patterning.
– Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
What does it mean for the future that today children will learn to use iPhones before they learn to speak?
“What does it mean for the future that today children will learn to use iPhones before they learn to speak?”
Call me a dinosaur, but in my opinion … they . will . not . learn . to . ‘speak’.
I’m a techie. Electronics hardware. An IEEE member. A gray-head who’s also very computer-literate.
Just today, I was writing a note, by hand, to go into a Pendaflex file on a kitchen appliance which I own. It occured to me, I’ve not written out a note in ages. I might not be able to WRITE a blippin’ coherent LETTER anymore.
(Remember what “letters” are? If not, you’re up sh*t creek.)
This is my observation upon the question — you asked for it.
MacLuhan — “hot” or “cold” mediums. I submit that the verbal is “hotter” than mere texting, in that it demands a more emotion-packed, hence creative, response.
Use it or lose it. That’s what the article says, doesn’t it?
Technology is your tool … unless, perchance, you turn yourself (cough) into its ‘tool’.
I have no fear for the children who learn to use iPhones or iPads or any other shiny new electronic gadget before they learn to speak. Those are just playthings and tools, no different than the neon-colored mobiles we give infants to learn tactile and visual skills.
The real difference is access to a far larger world than was possible in times past, which is, in my view, a good thing. The human brain adapts to changing circumstances, even when those circumstances become difficult. If we could survive living in caves during the Ice Age with only sticks and stones as tools, we most certainly will be able to cope with the future, using whatever comes our way.
I say this as an elderly, barely computer literate, fossil who was seven years old before she ever learned what a television set was.