Amazing Human Brain

New York : Puffin Books, 2007

New windmill series. London: Heinemann

1991

“For instance, “Mrs Honey said, “If I asked you to multiply fourteen by nineteen… No, that’s not too difficult…”
“It’s two hundred and sixty-six,” Matilda said softly.
Miss Honey put down her pencil and removed her spectacles and began to polish the lenses with a piece of tissue. The class remained quiet, watching her and waiting for what was coming next. Matilda was still standing up beside her desk.
“Now tell me, Matilda,” Miss Honey said, still polishing, “try to tell me exactly what goes inside your head when you get multiplication like that to do. You obviously have to work it out in some way, but you seem to arrive at the answer almost instantly. Take the one you’ve just done, fourteen multiplied by nineteen.”
“I…I…I simply put the fourteen down and multiply it by nineteen.” Matilda said. “I’m afraid I don’t know how else to explain it. I’ve always said to myself that if a little pocket calculator can do it, why shouldn’t I?”
“Why not indeed?” Miss Honey said, “The human brain is an amazing thing.”
“I think it’s a lot better than a lump of metal,” Matilda said. “That’s all a calculator is.”
“How right you are,” Miss Honey said. “Pocket calculators are not allowed in this school anyway.” Miss Honey was feeling quite quivery. There is no doubt in her mind that she met a truly extraordinary mathematical brain.

Extract from the book Matilda
By Roald Dahl
All Rights Reserved.
New windmill series. London: Heinemann, 1991
Call Number: J English DAH

Extract contributed by Jennifer, Elaine, Ann Li and Hmun Seon of Crescent Girls’ School

Does our dependency on technology diminish the power of the human mind and what we believe we are capable of?

17 Responses to “Amazing Human Brain”

shafeeka Says:
November 11th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
yes I think it does. A very basic example will be the use of calculators. Now days we even depend on the calculator for very simple and basic mathematics or equation. Therefore, we are not really using our brain to think through the equation. furthermore, we now simply use google to search answers to our various questions instead of visiting the library or referring to the encyclopedia. Howeve, by doing this we also get to know other information too(through the web). I think we also get to know more information in a quick amount of time if we are using technology. Hence I think there is an equal number of advantages and disadvantages.
Dora Says:
November 11th, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Not at all. In fact, technology eases the translation of what goes on in the human mind to a tangible form, allowing us to develop ideas and to innovate at a much faster rate than before. It also allows the sharing of ideas, across geographical barriers, across time which will enpower the human mind, to learn beyond one’s current knowledge sphere. For instance, I am typing this now on my iPhone as I am sitting in a cafe, sipping a cup of coffee. Before that, I was reading an ebook, empowering myself with new insights. Such ease of acquiring information and sharing of views, ideas etc has made me a more confident person to achieve more. So I would say, taken in the right mindset, technology has made us more capable, not the other way round.
YunTing Says:
November 11th, 2011 at 8:50 pm
I fancy that technology frees up different parts of our mind but locks down others, simply by its nature of information overload.
For example, we are much more adept at expressing ourselves nowadays in terms of social networking status updates. We are encouraged to be much more expressive than we were and the whole wired thing also allows us to reach out to a whole lot more people with our story. I think that’s an up in terms of power.
But technology also kinda decreases our originality. With so much information out there, it’s easy to be tempted to think everything is already available (and you couldn’t possibly add anything worthwhile). But as a fanfiction lover, I don’t think that’s quite true. Fanfiction (writers who write stories based on an existing book/TVshow/game) writers spin off concepts from the canon (original existing) and you’d be surprised at the creativity of the works that different approaches to thinking produce (from the same source material). And honestly, (I’m being cynical here, pls don’t flame) what is creativity nowadays but something from an area transplanted and jazzed up into another area? And technology allows me to enjoy so many products of these hoc-poches of work.

Now that I’ve typed this, I don’t think it’s quite about the effect of technology on mathematics and laziness/convenience. But I like this rambling, so heck. I’d love to see if/how anyone will disagree with me, cmon.
Letha Says:
November 11th, 2011 at 9:59 pm
Humans used to think landing on the moon was an impossible feat.

Humans used to think if you go far enough, you’ll fall off the square surface of the earth.

Look where has technology gotten us today. Google: vast amounts of information at the tip of our fingers. Google Earth: Looking at places we have never been, just by clicking some buttons.

Technology has not DIMINISHED the power of the human mind; in fact, it BROADCASTS the feats the human mind is capable of, and in turn, encourages and motivates, opening up one’s mind to possibilities.

Before the invention of Google, or perhaps even just the television, I would never have thought it possible that people like Scott Flansburg existed, for example.

With ease, I type in keywords like “amazing”, “mind” and I discover delightful feats the mind may achieve.

This only serves to motivate and broaden our horizons, and not diminish the power of the human mind or what we believe we are capable of. Quite the opposite, actually!
Kevin Says:
November 27th, 2011 at 7:47 pm
On the contrary, technology has served to expand our knowledge of the world and consequently the efforts of our actions.

It is through crowdsourcing that we manage to harness the wealth of facts into wikis, and the true taste of foodstuff through restaurant reviews.

There is though one thing to be mindful of: technology has allowed us to multi-task and be easily distracted. The human mind is built to focus on at most two serious tasks at once, and we are all prone to wasting precious time if we found ourselves sidetracked by frivolous stuff served up by the wonders of the Internet.

In order to use technology as an ally in our day-to-day lives, we must instill discipline and train our minds to concentrate on what is genuinely important in our lives.
Mich Says:
November 27th, 2011 at 8:37 pm
I suppose it really depends on how technology is used. Technology is a powerful tool that can either enhance our abilities and work to our benefit, or diminish our self-esteem and the power our minds. For better or for worse, the widespread usage of technology has definitely changed our lives.

In a way, technology has diminished the power of the human mind, but this is largely because of our over-reliance on it, which has arguably resulted in a decrease in the usage of our brains. Taking the example of the calculator from the book excerpt – had the calculator not been invented, perhaps by now we would have perfected the skill of mental calculations and would be able to rattle off answers like Matilda. Unfortunately, most of us (myself included) would rather whip out the nearest calculator instead of working our brains.

Furthermore, technology has also shown us what others are capable of, in every field imaginable. Sometimes, if one does not have enough self-confidence, this might be enough to put him down and make him feel inferior.

Yet I personally believe that technology does not diminish the power of the human mind or what we believe we are capable of. We are the masters of our own fate, and what we are capable of depends on ourselves. On the contrary, I believe that technology has brought us several benefits that enable us to reach our fullest potential.

Perhaps one of the most important of these is convenience. A Google search will bring up answers to most of our questions involving trivial facts, while a quick check on Facebook or our mobile phones will reveal our friends’ mobile numbers, birthdays, and so on. Since there are platforms available to help us remember things like these, perhaps there is no need for us to use our brain power on these things. Instead, we can go on to more complex things, such as solving problems and inventing new gadgets. If we first believe in ourselves, technology is a tool that can empower us to accomplish great acts rather than diminish the power of our minds.
Didi Says:
November 30th, 2011 at 1:09 am
The first and last thing to understand to free oneself from a mental flatland is that everything humanity has been is universal, as are all the knowledge, truths and values, even those we have not yet found with our cognition.

All the minds, all the great figures in history, all the civilizations build, are dependent on neurological configurations, produced by brains not too different from ours. The only thing separating ourselves from others are the experiences we gain separately in different points of time, the combination of neurons that actively produce what we call as the natural reality, what we have been conditioned to know, and in neurological level, it is all human.

The myth of humans using only some percentages of their capacity diminishes in relativity with the potential capacity we in fact have. The reason for why the whole capacity in our brains is not always active is due to the fact that when you’re sitting down, you don’t need the capacity to be active for walking.

For if our brains did so, if you wanted to sit down, the conflict between two separate combinations would make that impossible, and therefore we are talking about an impossible scenario.

The other thing that this myth tells is that there would be collections of neurons we never use, they would never activate, but because of the interrelations in our neurological design, such a waste is simply not part of our program. In potential level, we are still talking numbers which smallness is impossible to calculate in our current state of development.

Now, if we had for example technology that could impose every frequency our senses send to our brains, we would be able to produce every human experience, every human memory, including your whole lifetime.

Our brains are able, in combination, produce all the knowledge that has been produced and will be produced, and thus all we need is one pair of brains to produce all the civilizations, and their memories, but only, if we had the combinatory capacity to keep them.

Then, recent studies show that it takes only five days to form a new habit and from forty to sixty days to accustom it. Think of it this way, the more you stimulate what is required for the new habit, the more accustomed you make of it.

The old pathways never seize to exist, but the less they are used, the less they are dominating. Hence this is our inner child, the connections we made when were still children, and they are never erased from us, although as we activate them, the combinations might be different and thus we produce false memories.

Our neurological design is bound to produce information driven continuums, and creating new continuums is the process of starting a new continuum that increases in complexity and in content, or simply causes information driven behavior.

The brains are dynamic, there is no invariant awareness or invariant content in consciousness and memories, as everything changes. How many new meanings can you give to your past experiences? And if they differ from time to time, which one of them is the authentic one? How do you recognize it amongst hundreds of new interpretations?

What you’re now, seizes to exist in a nanosecond, as everything in the cosmos, and gains a new combinatory form. The kingdoms of the past are gone, and the people who shared the Earth together, the reality in Earth are long since gone, and we share this same fate.

This is the world as we have made of it, this is the form that the information driven continuums of the past have mold it in all its power structures and legacies of wealth, and only thing to end oppression is to change the representational world.
Krystal Says:
February 21st, 2012 at 9:07 pm
I think that it depends on how one uses technology. Whether it diminishes the power of the human brain or not is dependent on how we use technology and what we use it for.

It is possible to say that technologies diminish our brain power. By using technologies, we are not using our brains to do the work, and not making full use of the perfectly good resource. The excerpt from the book would be a good example. If we were all to do our sums mentally since young, we would probably be able to do as Matilda has done. However, now with the help of calculators, we no longer do this, instead relying on calculators to tell us the answers. In schools, we are now taught to do Mathematical problems with the help of a calculator. In the past this was not so, and I believe that we should learn not to rely on calculators, especially for simple calculations. I think that calculators should not be used until a student reaches at least secondary school level, where the Mathematics problems become a lot harder to solve without them. In this way, we are able to show that our brains can actually do many things. Another example would be the use of computers and the internet. By using the computer and the internet, many people are able to just search up the information they need for a project, and just copy and paste it into where they need it, many of these people do not totally read through this information or process it at all. However, this is more dependent on how one has been using technology.

If one uses the computer and the internet to search for new information, things they want to know more about, it is more likely not to diminish one’s brain power. This is because they are able to get information more quickly now with the present technology available and with the keen sense to know and learn about something, people will read through this information, process it in their brains and actually retain this new knowledge.

Technology, it can diminish one’s brain power, or it can increase one’s brain power. It is all in how you use it, your goal when you use these technology, and the mindset you have about the use of technology. Is it their to take over the duties of your brain? Or is it their to ease it’s burden and help you out more?
Wei Yang Says:
July 15th, 2012 at 3:57 pm
I think whether technology diminishes our capability or enhances it today depends largely on the age group of its users. Indeed, it can be said that technology would not eventually diminish the skills of adults. Adults today have established their skills in arithmetic in a world less technologically advanced, thus they may use technology to enhance these skills they have acquired previously. On the other hand, children growing up in this generation cannot take this same development for granted. True enough, using calculators for simple calculations may bring immense convenience, but we would regret the day when young generations need to struggle to understand simple mental sums.

Nonetheless, even though technology is present everywhere, it is not omnipotent. Indeed, the convenience of search engines may have reduced the need for us to physically search through piles of books for information. Yet, it cannot always produce the specific content we want without some effort. Technology enhances us, but creativity and thinking out of the box are higher order skills that cannot be replaced. Hence, I think technology breeds the conditions whereby capability and skills can be lost.
Kah Whye Says:
July 28th, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Relying too much on technology does diminish the power of the human mind. When information enters our minds passively, there is no thought process and no analysis. Hence, our minds would not be stimulated and we would not seek to pursue the matter further, taking all the information for granted. With such passive input, there would be no higher order thinking and our creativity would be limited by our lack of exploration.
The internet is not the only form of technology that we rely on . Take our mobile phones for example. Many of us have started using abbreviations and acronyms to replace common words and phrases. For example, current teenagers are fond of using the acronym “LOL” to represent “laugh out loud”. However, if we use such abbreviations and short-hand notations too much, we may be unable to structure our sentences properly when the need arises. This is because we are too used to such speech and when we are tasked with constructing proper sentences, we struggle with finding the right words to express ourselves.
Technology is diminishing our brain power as it does too much of the thinking for us. Decades ago, to come up with a solution to a problem, we would have to sieve through information and analyse them, before applying them to that unique situation. However, due to the power of technology, we can now just input all the variables into a computer or a system, and the solution would be generated. This does not allow us to think critically and hence, our minds would not be able to be developed to its fullest potential. Therefore, I believe that our dependence on technology will reduce the abilities of our human mind.
Diane Says:
July 30th, 2012 at 4:08 am
Responding to the question above, i agree that our dependency on technology diminish the power of the human mind and what we believe we are capable of. We can easily find information on the Internet with a single click and this would allow us to forgo the whole thinking process and just depend solely on technology to do the job for us.
Technology can be harmful to us if it is abused. It may also strain relationships and make us forget about basic courtesy in life. For example, in an era without mobile phones, people would force themselves to be on time for a meeting with friends because there is no portable mode of communication to change the meeting timing. However, now with a simple text, people make use of this technology to be late when they are clearly capable of being on time.
Technology can diminish the human mind by stealing away the opportunity for the brain to think. For example, the calculator helps the brain to not think, punch in some numbers and simply get the answers. Even to the extent of simple arithmetic of single digit numbers, students would rely on the calculator to provide them with the answers instead of just thinking just a little bit.
Other technology such as the Internet can be good and also harmful depending on the usage. It can be good in providing us with extensive information, however it can be harmful if for example students know the answers to the questions but just too lazy to think or flip their own notes and just type the question into the search bar to obtain a model answer. This diminishes the human mind because of the lack of thought process and may just make us think that we are not good enough to provide the answer.
Therefore, I conclude that technology can diminish the power of the human mind if too dependent on it, but it also depends on the usage of the technology as well as the willingness of the person itself to abstain itself from relying on technology and turn to an alternative of thinking of it himself/herself. Technology once abused can be a harm to people and thus although this technology is good, we have to be careful about how we utilize its strengths and keep away from its weaknesses. Thus, technology if used properly would not be much if a problem.
Hnin Says:
August 10th, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Dependency on technology has diminished the power of the human mind but not what we believe we are capable of. In the modern world, humans have become dependent on technology because everyone needs them in their daily lives. Because of the advancement of technology, humans do not need to use their brains to solve problems. For example, almost everyone uses calculators to solve mathematical problems nowadays, unlike people in the past who solely used their brains. In addition, computers have made information so accessible that we can easily find answers to problems and questions without having to think critically. As the human brain is not fully utilised, the human mind has diminished because of the dependency on technology. However, it does not diminish what we believe we are capable of. With technology, humans have discovered many more things that we were not able to discover in the past due to the lack of advanced tools and equipment. For example, inventions of computers, phones and other essential electronic devices would not have been possible without the discovery of electricity and magnetism. With the invention of these useful items, humans have become much more capable. We are able to develop more complicated machines with computers, communicate with people from across the globe and discover even more things with the complex and sophisticated equipment that we have today. With potential for advancements, humans believe that we can be even more capable of doing things that we could not in the past. Therefore, dependency on technology has diminished the power of the human mind because humans do not need to use their brains as much as they needed in the past, but has not diminished what we believe we are capable of because technology allows us to do things that we were not capable of doing in the past.
TanChuan Says:
August 12th, 2012 at 9:31 pm
The rate of advancement in technology has indeed outpaced how we are able to react to them. With every new decade there is bound to be some form of invention that makes our lives easier, for example cars, planes, washing machines and elevators even, all of which simplifies and makes our lives easier. However, the onset of such technological advancement has brought about laziness, which in turn has caused us to over-rely on technology, so much so that without technology, we literally cannot survive. Hence, our over-reliance on technology causes us to deny our own capabilities, and casts a false optimism that technology is an all-round panacea to our everyday problems. As a result, we leave everything to technology, and thus deny our own capabilities.
How many times have we walked the stairs instead of taking the lift? How many times have people manually tune the television instead of just relying on the remote control to switch channels? With the advancement of technology, we have degraded into lazier beings. In the past, students had to write out their essays one word at a time, but now, they choose to type out their essays. In lectures, they would prefer teachers to send them the slides instead of copying notes themselves. Indeed, with the advancement of technology, we over-rely on technology, and degraded into lazier beings.
This laziness has thus caused us to over-rely on technology. Students no longer think of new ideas, but instead search them on Google to copy ideas off the Internet. Furthermore, we over-rely on technology, so much so that we cannot live without them. In the fields of medical technology, we need technology to extend our lifespan, we require advancements in medical research to come up with cures and vaccines to protect us. The fact that we need technology to survive already shows the over-dependence we have on technology, which prevents us from actually exercising our capabilities. Whenever we meet a problem, we do not think of creative solutions to solve them ourselves, instead, we “google” them and find the solutions for us. As a result, we undermine our own capabilities. Artists now, instead of drawing using their hands, rely on imaging software, as they feel they “simplify” their work a lot. This restricts their artistic creativity and undermines their capabilities.
When we over-rely on technology, we choose to believe that technology is the all-round panacea for every problem. Whenever we meet a problem, we believe that technology will solve it. For example, Americans have the highest obesity rates, yet many do not want to change their lifestyle. This is because they choose to believe that technology will save them, using slimming pills, diet-control pills and so on. They do not really take charge of their lives and exercise, and instead rely on technology to save them. Hence, this undermines what we are capable of. We are capable of taking charge of our own lives and saving ourselves, but instead of doing so, we wait around and ask technology for help. This greatly reduces our capabilities, as we slowly degrade into lazier beings.
All in all, our over-reliance on technology has diminished the power of the human mind, in terms of losing creativity and becoming lazier. It has also diminished what we can be capable of. Although we can be capable of many things, like changing our own lifestyle, our over-reliance on technology has made us lazy, and we thus undermine our own capabilities because the problems that we can solve, we choose not to do so, but instead look to technology as our “saviour” and an all-round panacea to our everyday problems.
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