Today I went to the post office to request an estimate of the cost of shipping a parcel. I did not bring the parcel with me but I did have the dimensions and the destination city (but not ZIP code). (Before you tell me I was stupid to not take the box in with me, I'm not telling you the whole story.)
The gentleman behind the counter said he can't give me a figure. He has to put the box on his scale, which of course gives the weight, and enter the ZIP code. He said he had no way to get a ZIP code from just the name of the city (post offices used to have ZIP code directories out on the counter for all to use; but now you're expected to use the USPS web site).
I said that the system requires no brain. (He took it personally, so I apologized.)
What I meant was not that this gentleman did not have a brain, but rather that, the way his equipment works, a brain is not required. Not his nor someone else's.
It all started with cash registers (or, to be more up-to-date I guess I have to say "point-of-sale terminals") that calculate the customer's change. I can calculate my change in my head—and faster than the machine--but if the person working the register had to do it using mental arithmetic, they'd probably have a problem. And it seems as though machines more and more are making it unnecessary to do any calculating, thinking, or any mental work whatsoever.
The brain can be compared to a muscle: if it is not used, it grows weaker. So if our jobs don't require us to do a little mental exercise-—calculating change in our heads or finding out something else for the customer—if we leave that to the machines, we grow dumber.
This is just one more of countless examples of the Dumbing of America.
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