Manfred spitzer wikipedia

Person overengaged with digital technology

For malware-infected "zombie computers", see Zombie (computing).

A digital zombie, as defined by the University of Sydney, is a person so engaged with digital technology and/or social media they are unable to separate themselves from a persistent online presence. Further, University of Sydney researcher Andrew Campbell also expressed concerns over whether or not the individual can truly live a full and healthy life while they are preoccupied with the digital world. Other individuals have also begun referencing certain types of behaviour with being a digital zombie. Stefanie Valentic, managing editor of EHS Today, refers to it as people hunting digital creatures through their smartphones in public spaces, always fixed on their phones. In looking at the origins of the word "Zonbi" from Haitian slave plantations, it's been noted that the term also implies a control of the physical body by technology. The University of Warwick has used the term to argue that further research needs to be done with people who exist in digital form after death to help people grieve their loss.

Modern applications

Distracted walking

Main article: Smartphones and pedestrian safety

The term digital zombie can refer to a person performing distracted walking, which has been labelled dangerous by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. They created the "Digital Deadwalkers" campaign after physicians became aware of the risks associated with walking across intersections and sidewalks while paying attention only to smartphones and not one's surroundings. Also stating that the name is derived from the fact that "they're oblivious to everyone else, so it's like they're dead-walking, sleepwalking."

Living through media

The Department of Sociology, University of Warwick has also identified the term, digital zombie, to refer to an in

Manfred Spitzer (*1958)

deutscher Psychiater, Psychologe und Hochschullehrer

Zitate mit Quellenangabe

• "Bildschirmmedien machen dick, unaufmerksam, senken die Leistung in der Schule und führen zu mehr Gewalt in der realen Welt. Wer das anzweifelt, hat entweder die wissenschaftlichen Studien dazu nicht gelesen oder lügt. Das muss man zunächst einmal festhalten. Es ist einfach so, wie ich gerade eben gesagt habe." - Anhörung im Hessischen Landtag zum Jugendmedienschutz am 4. Mai 2011, pdf S. 39

• "Wenn Kinder und Jugendliche ihren Nachmittag mit PC-Spielen verbringen, finde ich das sehr bedenklich. Sie lernen da im günstigsten Fall Unnützes, im schlimmsten Fall für die Gesellschaft und für sich Gefährliches. Denn sie lernen, weil das Gehirn immer lernt, wenn es gebraucht wird." - Interview mit bettermarks, 30. Oktober 2009

Neuroscience advancement initiative

The Decade of the Mind Project is an international initiative to advance scientific understanding of how the mind and complex behaviors are related to the activity of human brains. The problem of explaining the mind is so complex as to require "big science" to make real progress. The effort stemmed from concerns in the scientific community that mind research (as opposed to simply brain research) had received inadequate support relative to its importance in human lives. The Project began with a conference of leading US scientists at George Mason University in May 2007 which led to The Decade of the Mind Manifesto, published as a letter to the editor in Science. The Manifesto called for a new $4B US investment in research across the many disciplines of mind research over the decade from 2012 to 2022. Since the May 2007 meeting, the Decade of the Mind Project has held several other conferences across the United States and has been internationalised with a conference in Berlin, Germany, in September 2009 and a conference in Singapore in October 2010. The conference in Berlin, Germany, organised by Professor Manfred Spitzer, focused on the impact of this project on education, where they reported that this project could see improved educational outcomes, particularly in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Around a year after this, they held a conference in Singapore in October 2010, organised by the Singapore Ministry of Defence, which was centred on the concept of applying the knowledge of human minds to both machines and the augmented cognition for human beings.

Background

During the 1990s US President George Herbert Walker Bush declared a decade of research to center on neuroscience. The r

‘Dementia’ is a term sadly all too familiar these days, with soaring instances of Alzheimer’s disease and other conditions characterized by confusion, disorientation, and impaired memory—literally a ‘loss of mind.’ However, the notion that an analogous state might be linked to the screen lifestyle is as controversial as it is potentially troubling.

“Digital Dementia” is a term coined by neuroscientist Manfred Spitzer to describe an overuse of digital technology resulting in the breakdown of cognitive abilities. Spitzer proposes that short-term memory pathways will start to deteriorate from underuse if we overuse technology. Although in this blog, we have recently explored outsourcing your memory to smartphones, these two concepts are different—the mental disarray within the brain implied by the term ‘dementia’ is far more basic and complete. An under-practiced memory process is far from being comparable to the wider cognitive devastation that is dementia.

Perhaps a potentially more informative line of enquiry would be to explore the wider ways in which the screen lifestyle could induce states analogous to dementia. Researchers recently set out to investigate how action video gamers and non-video gamers navigated a virtual maze, using one of two potential strategies. The spatial strategy involves remembering the location of various landmarks within the environment and mentally building a map of these locations and their position relative to each other. Establishing relationships between landmarks allows for flexibility when navigating the world, as you are able to orientate yourself within your mental map. This particular strategy relies on a familiar area of the brain long associated with spatial memory: the hippocampus.

The response strategy, by contrast, entails learning the series of movements that follow from a set position, such as a certain pattern of left and right turns after seeing a particular landmark. Whereas the spatial strategy enables you