Between analogue and digital tech

Technology, whether in terms of information, digitization, communication or lithography, virtually facilitates learning at whichever level it is deployed. However, a recent development in the United Kingdom (UK) is about refuting this hypothesis. Media reports in the UK reveal that British schools are replacing analog clocks in examination halls because students can’t read them. According to the London Telegraph, students are being raised on digital clocks and cannot tell what time is from the analogue clocks on the walls of examination halls.

It is a challenge that the current generation of students in Britain isn’t as good at reading the traditional clock face as the older generations. Today’s school children are used to seeing a digital representation of time on their desktops, tablets and mobile phones. Nearly every electronic device and appliance used by students nowadays is digital. A former headmaster in a British school, Malcolm Trobe, has said thatstudents seldom make mistake in reading time from digital clocks. This fact may not, indeed, be peculiar to students in Britain alone but could be characteristic of students in virtually all countries where digital technology has replaced analogue tools in different aspects of human life.

The same digital technology that produced mini-calculators has made students so intellectually lazy that they cannot carry out simple arithmetic computations without the use of calculators. Up to the end of the 1980s, students were not allowed to enter in to examination halls with calculators; a worthwhile practice that hitherto encouraged them to hard work. Today, many students would find it difficult to work out ordinary or common sums involving multiplication and division (such as 60×5÷10) without the use of a digital computing device.

Learning, research, office work, shopping, television, photography and transport have all been transformed by modern digital technology. It has become increasingly difficult to find an electronic device or large machine in to which digital technology has not been incorporated. Even basic living skills such as finding one’s way around the streets of a city have been replaced by taking directions from a GPS system on the mobile phone. But as technology avails you with one benefit, it also takes away or deprives you of another gain which you either already had or would have acquired. While the advent of digital clocks has made the reading of clocks easy for school-age children, it has deprived themof the knowledge of how analogue clocks are read.Calculators have also made today’s studentsmentally lazy, and to some extent, less productive.

In the same vein, the advent of emails, Short Message Service (SMS) and other communication facilities on internetplatforms have had their negative effects on the writing and communication skills particularly of present-day young boys and girls. For instance, the youth population is so used to abbreviating words and phrases that they now extend, consciously or unconsciously, such ‘shorthand’ scripts into formal writings that include examination scripts and official letters.I have read examination scripts in which candidates wrote ‘Zkt, bcoz, u,Naija,ur,btwn, and diffr’ to stand for ‘Zakat, because, you, Nigeria, your, between and difference’.

The pervasive indolence among contemporary youth further provided thefriendliest environment that launched the internet and its amazing information and communication platforms into their psyche.The internet which conveniently provides students withample volumes ofreadymade materials on academic and other miscellaneous issues have inadvertently succeeded in worsening the already poor reading and writing culture among young school children.Because the internet offers them with handy alternative sources of knowledge on almost every subject matter, students care less about copying several pages of notes given by teachers in to their notebooks. This may explain why many students today have poor handwriting. Beautiful scribble is, therefore, another dexterous asset which digitized materials on the internet have taken away from some students. 

Over-reliance on digital devices or gadgets is one critical downside of this technology. Because of convenience and easy access, many people have their contact information, photographs, notes,abstracts and other personal details that relate to their businesses, bank accounts, cars and medical data on their mobile phones. Whenever they lose their phones or thedevice malfunctions or runs out of power, they suffer a kind of distress that is sometimes more traumatic thanimagined.

Some facilities on digital devices including all the social media platforms, computer games and messaging can be addictive. Games would want you to continue to play as a way of cajoling you to buy the next version. Websites want you to interact so that they can expose you to money-consuming advertisements. Digital device users end up wasting vast amounts of time; sometimes spending money for little or no value. Besides, the digital world is stopping many people from experiencing real life as many human activities now begin and end on digital devices. Between analogue and digital technology lies the propensity to experience one comfort at the expense of another. May Allah (SWT) guide us to be selective, sensitive and modest in our use of digital devices, amin.

Tribute to late Khalifa Isyaku Rabiu:

As we mourn the death of late Khalifa Isyaku Rabiu, we sincerely express heartfelt sympathy and thus condole with his family, the people and government of Kano State over the demise of this famous memorizer of the Glorious Qur’an who lived and died in the service of Islam and its holy Book. The religious scholar, who died after a protracted illness on Tuesday May 8, 2018 at the age of 90 in a London hospital, will be remembered for his contributions to the spread of Islamic knowledge, the expansion of Tijaniyyah in Nigeria, as well as the growth of the country’s economy. May Allah (SWT) grant him forgiveness and mercy; and also transform his illness into kafarah, amin.