Everyone has a Laptop

As Johnson once said, “yesterday’s brainiac is today’s simpleton.” The question is why? One striking difference between high school and college is that most students carry a laptop from class to class. Drexel is considered the most connected campus. Professors and students are only an e-mail away, where the latest changes and assignments are quickly exchanged. Laptops are often said to be harmful in the physical sense, hurting one’s neck and wrists, later leading to serious orthopedic pain. For students, their laptops become their notebooks, calendars, schedules, resources, and pretty much their lives. These college students are capable to use the laptop to their advantage as well as their convenience. In contrast, their grandparents may not even understand the concept behind browsing the internet, or plotting mathematical functions into programs such as Maple or Matlab. Therefore, today’s generation is developing and enhancing a type of intelligence that is only mastered through practice and experience.
Laptops today are filled with useful programs such as Drexel’s two main programs: Maple and Matlab. These laptops enable students to be exposed to computer programs that calculate complicated mathematical functions. Yet, it is not as easy as it sounds. Most of these students take a couple hours to first become acquainted with the program. It is not simple to learn how to apply one’s problems to these programs. There are so many thought-provoking tricks that take time and practice. But after that is accomplished, the program can successfully begin calculating. This enables students to not concentrate on time-consuming calculations, but focus on the concept. That is where the intelligence is unique; what can one do with such calculation? What can one figure out or elicit knowledge on?
Parents often complain that the internet is an “instant gratification”. They argue that today’s students can simply find information on a topic by pressing in some keys. They stress the difficulty of writing papers years ago, where library books and articles were their main and for the most part only resource. However, with the internet as an easily accessible resource, students are now required and expected to give the most exact, detailed, and up-to-date reports. They learn how to manipulate the search engine to provide the most definite argument and answer. This essential technique is not properly learned through “explicit learning”. Sure, one can a purchase an instruction book that directs a person on how to collect the most accurate and useful information from the internet, but it is best learned through direct practice and interaction with the graphic interface. Moreover, when writing a paper, students face many problems and have to make wise decisions. They first have to find legitimate sources, since the internet is global and open to for all to post their ideas. Before the internet, students were confident that their source was legitimate since it came from a respectable library building, where only a qualified and knowledgeable people could publish their books as resources. Rather, today there is a more complex decision-making process that correlates with writing a paper.
Decision-making is further seen in clicking or providing information on the internet. Anti-virus companies are constantly updating their systems to provide strong security for their customers. People who create viruses are targeting the “new-bees” to the internet, who click on links without considering the fraudulent processes such as phishing. The mobile world of the laptop allows a person to flip it open. These people have a better understanding of the global world and are well informed of such incidents to the point where they can take cautious action. In this way, people are learning the tools to “efficiently interact with a social network”— the network of the global world.
Laptops enable people to practice their learning and decision-making skills. They are then able to further their knowledge and capabilities by the programs that are viewed on these laptops. Not only does the individual benefit, but global world through interaction does as well.