Herine Kniazian

As people rely more and more on technology to solve problems, the ability of humans to think for themselves will surely deteriorate. The technologies that humans have today create a myriad of opportunities in extremely different fields of life. At the same time, nowadays they seem to substitute a human in almost all the mental tasks – translating, calculating, day planning, etc. – liberating the owner from performing these tasks on their own. Based on this assumption, it can be claimed that the overuse of technologies can make a human unable to perform the analogous mental activity themselves. According to Darwin and other supporters of the evolution theory species develop physically and intellectually for their survival, while they degrade and become extinct if there is no danger to their life. For those who do not trusts evolutionists a historical example can be brought: the Medieval Iceland, isolated from Scandinavia and Europe due to natural obstacles, had an extremely peaceful and flourishing life. Icelandic Normans knew no hunger, nor war, nor crime, nor any other kind of serious issues. However, their state of happiness, as Plato or other philosophers might call it, collapsed in a couple of centuries, since the population degraded as much as to destroy itself. While the examples discussed above seem to have little in common with technologies, they still stay in the same row. Technologies can be understood as a sophisticated mean to provide a human with a life without any serious trouble. From this perspective a human decreases their likelihood to be obliged to survive and, thus, does not fulfill the “requirements” for the evolution, while makes their life similar to that of the Medieval Iceland. Hence, a human is likely to stop developing its mental abilities in a state of total comfort provided by the technologies; and without a mental growth is likely to degrade. The theory developed above can be proved empirically. Probably the best justification of the argument can be witnessed by an observation of the kids’ performance at school, which was recorded during a psychological experiment taken in the school 205 (Saint Petersburg, Russia) two years ago. The experiment was taken on two classes of the 5th grade that were previously taught by the same teacher had same average in Math scores. Their new teacher did not let one of the classes (5”A) use calculators, while the second one (5”B) was allowed to use any kind of electronic devices. According to the results of the tests that pupils of both classes passed by the end of the year those kids that never relied on calculators during their Math lessons were more independent in decision-making and were more likely to solve problems out of their knowledge than their competitors from the class 5”A. While there might have been conflicting variables in this experiment, even the students with the lowest tests’ results acknowledged they were not used to count on themselves since there had always been an easier path – the help of the technologies. Nevertheless it must be taken into account that technologies could not have been created if humans had not been able to come up with new ideas and think creatively. Moreover, the technologies provide a wide range of various methods to explore numerous scientific fields and be used not to simplify the life but to discover those areas which were unable to be studied beforehand. Considering all the arguments discussed above it can be stated that while technologies do not necessarily lead a human to incapability of decision-making and problem-solving, there is a high probability of the mental degradation of the individuals overusing the products of the technological progress. At the same time, the individuals relying on themselves are more likely to overcome even extraordinary problems than those who usually solve issues by the help of technologies.