Homo Zappiens...

Do you remember the lessons of history in which the teacher explained to the students the evolution of humanity - Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, Pitecantropus... And then worked the different prehistoric eras, such as the Stone Age [chipped and polished], the metals, the advent of agriculture and livestock... Everything ended [I refer here to Prehistory] with the emergence of writing and the advent of history itself, with the Homo Sapiens...

The current times are also promoting an evolutionary change in nature – we’re going from Homo sapiens to Homo Zappiens... I am not the creator of this concept and it relates directly to another important idea about humanity in the twenty-first century, the Multitaskers... I'm reading a book which title is just that "Homo Zappiens - Teaching in the Digital Age" of Win Veen and Ben Vrakking, published in Brazil by Artmed.

The authors advocate the idea that from the advent of all these technologies, and especially the Internet, and also on experiencing the convergence of them, we will constantly be zapping through the web, from side to side, reading with the corner of the eyes, at the same time listening to music, watching videos on YouTube [or similar], chatting with friends through MSN, attending virtual communities...

The problem as we were told by another author, Nicholas Carr, is that with of all this, we are losing the ability to reflect in depth, we are thinking in a superficial way... Where are we going to get?

By João Luís de Almeida Machado