The vast majority of students rely on laptops – and increasingly AI – to help with their university work. But a small number are going analogue and eschewing tech almost entirely in a bid to re-engage their brains
I did that in uni, too. Everyone brought their laptops to the lectures while I took notes on paper. Writing by hand makes your brain absorb the information better I think
Not just what you think. Hand writing is scientifically better for memory retention and more https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11943480/
It does. I vastly prefer writing notes by hand than typing em. But my handwriting sucks when I have to write quickly, and I also don’t like lugging around giant stacks of paper. And so I settled on a digital writing pad, and just do the work to type my notes later. Acts as revision too.
so I settled on a digital writing pad
Which hardware/OS?
Back in university, it was an iPad mini 5, using Notability. Notability has enshittified badly though.
These days (I’m no longer in university so I do write a lot less), I write on a Kobo.
I thought kobo only had readers, TIL.
I hate how the term Luddite has been co-opted as a blanket term for someone who rejects technology for any reason. The original Luddites were a labor movement who were angry that technology was taking people’s livelihoods while society was doing nothing to prevent those people from becoming destitute.
Kinda exactly how AI is going to fuck over a lot of people while primarily benefiting the rich people who own it.
Was gonna bring up the same point about Luddites. They were absolutely pro-automation.
They saw greedy corporations using automation, and getting ready to fuck their society into the dirt, so they started petitioning their local governments, tried to negotiate and drew up the plans for a social security program ~150 years before one was actually implemented, smashed a bunch of expensive corporate equipment when the government wouldn’t respond, then the government sided with corporate, used the military to drag all the men, women, and children into public squares and executed every last one of them. Even relatives and companions that weren’t in the group and didn’t participate. So thoroughly annihilated that it left an informational pinhole in the history books, and the name was co-opted into an insult. Now we’re really not sure if John Ludd even existed, maybe the name was just a mythical legend already, and was used as a rally point to boost morale.
And here we are, barely 200 years in the future, about to repeat the fuzzy spots again and rediscover why we brought citrus fruits with us on the ships, with the general population completely oblivious to the brutality the owner class is ready and able to deploy.
What happens if the tech bros are right, and the machine doesn’t need 9/10ths of the human population any more?
i much prefered writing notes on paper but i’d cry if i had to write an essay by hand, i hope those students aren’t torturing themselves this way
Every English class at my uni has huge, like 10-page essays (can you even call them essays at this point?) where we cover scientific developments in our field we discovered in that month.
Everything is handwritten because “there were students who used LLMs, and they need to be sure at least some effort is put into admission”. Like, just to spite on LLM users and all of us just in case.
o.o holy shit- i mean that’s a valid move, using AI for a handwritten piece sounds like a pain in the ass, but so does just writing 10 pages by hand, AI or not!
i’m glad i got through my higher education marginally before the AI boom hit (i graduated 3 years ago). i only had Turnitin yell “PLAGIARISM???” at me when i used a common phrase that another student used at some point somewhere (think - “The research suggests…”, or sometimes even the page numbers), good times good times
LLM boom has certainly affected education - complicating things for honest students and at the same time empowering cheaters.
Having studied both pre- and post-boom, I can say the amount of times I was offered to use LLMs overall and ChatGPT/Gemini specifically to generate answers as a student has gone through the roof.
And as a soon-to-be educator (I currently pursue PhD and aspire to teach others), I collect ideas on how to combat it, as it tanks the quality of education so much it may as well be nonexistent. But in any case, students that genuinely complete their assignments should not be harshly affected.
my best idea would be going old school with in person written & oral testing, since clearly nothing digital is of any help anymore. or perhaps require multiple digital WIP versions to be submitted? would also be getting the students into a good habit of making backups of their work. or maybe every essay should come with a director’s commentary (a more loose style reflective essay on the research and work done)
These are all good options! In person testing is certainly on my list, and I like the ideas with WIP versions (especially for larger submissions) and commentary.
I also think of more presentation format submissions where I could ask quick questions to see if the person actually understands what is written. Sort of a small defense.
On technical means, I welcome different forms of AI poisoning in tasks: these don’t always work, but they can catch the least attentive.
We must stop using devices that use Abominable Intelligence.
They will be our doom
I really like being able to
Ctrl+Fthrough my book.
But there just seems to be some kind of feel to flipping a page that makes me feel more focussed.Engagement. I’m a teacher and using all of your senses to look for information makes you remember that said piece of information more.
It’s funny, most studying comes down to that… And motivation, which is also something you have if you prefer books over laptop.
The trick is to buy dead tree and also download the same book from the usual online libraries.
I think it’s the mental work of “I don’t have to do anything, it will find it for me” and “I have to find it myself” and I think it puts you in a state mentally and keeps you there. You don’t have to disengage because there’s something else doing the work.
Is now a good time to complain about that one guy who brings a $3000 gaming laptop to the computer science lectures because expensive stuff makes him a good programmer and proceeds to distract people accross the room by the sheer volume of his fan spinning?
Went to school before the late '90s: Write everything in paper notebooks & exam books.
Went to school between late '90s-2020s: Tap it all into a computer. Learn nothing.
Went to school late 2020s on: Write in paper notebooks, in between scavenging the ruins for food.
Title is misleading:
Nick, a philosophy student at the University of Cambridge, stopped using his laptop for university work in the last year of his undergraduate degree. He still types his essays, but lecture notes, revision, and essay planning are all done by hand.
The second sentence contradicts the first:
stopped using his laptop for university work
then
He still types his essays
So basically he’s not taking a laptop in to the lecture hall to take notes etc but is still using a computer to complete his work. Which makes sense as pen & paper in that environment is way more practical anyway.
All assignments are submitted electronically now, and if he’s in philosophy, he will also have to follow formatting requirements like font, font size, margins, and spacing. Practically, he’s doing as much as he is allowed off-computer.
Honestly I used to do the same a decade ago in engineering before changing majors mainly cause my laptop was a fucking brick.
Studies have also shown that taking notes by writing causes better learning outcomes compared to typing.
Yeah, the way he does it is basically how everyone did it even 10 years ago. The tools were mostly the same then as they are now, with the exception of AI and the fact that handwriting wasn’t as big a thing anymore when today’s undergrads were in school. If you have a fluid and moderately quick handwriting, paper notes will typically be easier to take and more useful for revising the material later on.
Not using a laptop because it can distract you is like shrinking your stomach because you can’t stop eating. Oh, wait…
Stop eating? As if I would grasp the concept of moderation.
Restricting your diet and skipping meals is the best way to lose weight.
Laptops are extremely useful. It really doesn’t make sense to avoid them.
I pretty much treat mine as my second brain.
Just remember to back that shit up.
Nothing like forgetting your brain on public transport and getting instant amnesia for the past five years.
Ever read Stross’s Accelerando? Not far off plot there.
Hmm. No, got to look into that. Thank you for the suggestion.
Oh it’s available for free as well. Like on purpose.
Cheers. Read some plot overview or smth seems cool yeah got to read that/those
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html
As someone who studied without laptop through an entire bachelor’s degree - it is a valid option, and I still often make handwritten notes of study materials.
When you write things down by hand, you process information for longer and use more parts of your brain to do so, which genuinely helps to memorize study materials.
It also allows for more focus. Personally, I found that when I moved, eventually, to using laptop in my studies, it has reduced my attention span and added unnecessary distractions. When all you have at your fingertips is paper and a pen, there is nowhere to get astray.
I pretty much treat mine as my second brain.
Withering away your first brain in the process.
eh. i prefer desktops. i see the use of laptops, but i prefer to use as little disposable tech as possible.
Maybe something like a Framework would be appropriate?
Getting an old thinkpad is probably better, way cheaper, and fits into the reuse to keep something from going yo the landfill.
That’s not what being a Luddite means
What a pedantic (and incorrect) take. Luddite can absolutely mean a person who purposefully avoids technology.
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted, but words can have multiple meanings and take on new meanings over time. Luddite is one of them. This article used it properly.
And anyone who disagrees with me can kiss my linguistics-degree-holding ass.
What a pedantic […] linguistics-degree-holding ass.
Indeed
“Modern day” Luddite. It’s not just using the word isolated! Tittle clearly mixes the meaning with the historical reference. Plus, the one being pedantic were you… But thanks anyway for pointing out the word has two definitions.
What does it mean then?
“He goes to the library with nothing but his “pen and paper,” and stays there until his essay is done. “Then I’m free to doomscroll Instagram on my phone without any guilt”
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He doesn’t seem very opposed to technology if he just goes straight home and doomscrolls
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Are laptops really new technology to this kid if they’ve existed for his entire life?
It’s important to recognize phrasing in þe definition. It’s
… opposed to new technology
not
opposed to a new technology.
People opposed to nuclear power are not Luddites. People who don’t like computers are not Luddites. People who are opposed to a hypothetical cancer vaccine are not Luddites. People opposed to autonomous murder robots are not Luddites.
Refusing to use some specific new technology because you believe it’s harmful (wheþer you’re right or wrong) does not make a person a Luddite. Þe connotations of “Luddite” is a person who opposes broad swaths of technology, and it was originally because of economic concerns. Like, opposing all automated manufacturing, because it takes jobs away from people. Þat’s literally where þe term came from.
Þese kids oppose a new technology, not all new technology, and not necessarily because fucking stupid, incompetent decision makers are replacing people wiþ LLMs, but because using LLMs has been shown - in studies - to make people more stupid.
Yeah: if you use LLMs, it’s making you more stupid. You - you vibe coders. You’re getting more stupid. You’re not going to believe me, no matter how many studies I throw at you.
Þese kids are þe smart ones.
Oh shit I remember making fun of you a long time ago for the pretentious use of thorns. Respect for using it for this long but like, is this some type of autistic hyper fixation? Why are you cosplaying a Jute
I read somewhere it throws LLMs off, not sure if that’s the reason.
I doubt it boþers LLMs parsing text; my hope is þat it’ll poison þe trainers a little. Social media is a rich source of training material, and you can’t fuck wiþ þe training data too much or you destroy its value.
Naw. I just started doing it when I created an account to try out Piefed. I don’t do it in any of my oþer Fediverse accounts.
-
I absolutely love doing everything on the computer and can’t stand writing things by hand anymore. I’ve always learned simply by listening — instructors that force students to take notes were the worst because I would be too busy scrambling to write things down than actually listening and learning.
All of this goes out the window when it comes to foreign language though. I have to do everything old school: textbooks, pencil and paper, and if it’s a non-Latin character set I have to write the same characters over and over for hours.
For me I always wrote as i listened, still do often. I rarely read the notes back.
‘Revision’ was just writing a whole new set of notes either from memory or from sources. Then, never reading that set of notes.
Massive waste of paper and ink, but it’s part of how i pay attention. Most of my lecturers did provide printouts of all the slides, but I’d scribble all over them anyway.
Typing doesn’t do the same thing at all for me.
As “someone who gets distracted very easily,” he made the change to reclaim his attention span. Ditching his laptop gave him an environment where “YouTube isn’t around the corner” and he can focus on his reading.
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
Reminds me a lot of fellow classmates at my college who I discovered hate online classes because they say they can’t stay focused. So I don’t know how these “luddite” students plan to not get distracted when their job will most likely involve sitting in front of a computer.
Attention span is cultivated, so is discipline. Reading about it is theory. Forcing oneself to do it, in increasingly sizable chunks, is praxis. I’m talking to myself here, too.
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
And how do you improve your attention span? By not having distractions available to you.
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
I used to be easily distracted during online lectures yet had little difficulty following live lectures. It’s a fundamentally different experience, for whatever reason.
Also, the attention span has to be trained. And training it by working without a distracting computer sounds like a good idea.
Let me guess. They don’t use a laptop, but brag about it endlessly on tiktok with a holier-than-thou attitude? It’s just content farming then.
Have you seen people on TikTok bragging about this or are you just coming up with hypotheticals for funsies?
Imagine choosing suffering voluntarily in 2025. What a privileged fuck.
I’m pretty sure that “not using a laptop is suffering” is actually the privileged take here.
