Too Much Technology?
After last week’s Chief column, I decided to go a little lighter on this one. Here is today’s column about our dependence on technology- does it enrich our lives? Or are we all destined for social self-withdrawal?
My grandpa got a new clock last Christmas. It was one of those giant digital ones with an excessive amount of features and an unbearably long owner’s manual. For three months, the clock sat on a shelf largely unnoticed, and when daylight savings snuck up on us, it automatically “sprung forward.” My grandpa was completely amazed – he was convinced that one of us had changed it. We explained that it was linked to a satellite and changed automatically, that there was no conspiracy to make him question his sanity.
My grandpa’s technological naivete made me think about how rapidly technology has become ingrained in our society, and how absurd it is that we expect a man who is almost a century old to grasp these new concepts. A mere fifteen years ago, only the most savvy and stylish owned cell phones (e.g. Zack Morris), and they were the size of small bricks. Laptops were virtually unheard of. Instant messaging and blogging were yet to explode onto the social scene – Microsoft Word 2004’s spell check doesn’t even recognize the word “blog.”
Today, technology is everywhere. We carry the Internet in our pockets, classes depend on Web sites, and entire books can be purchased and read online. The Internet follows us to school, to work, and even on vacation.
Last Spring Break, while many of you were wearing bathing suits on some island in the Bahamas, I was on a sixteen-hour family road trip to Georgia. My sister was sitting next to me with a laptop DVD player, watching episodes of “Gilmore Girls.” My brother was asleep in the back listening to some garbage on his iPod. I was typing away on my MacBook, mentally damning the state of Kentucky for not providing me with wireless Internet (and for allowing people into gas stations with bare feet, but that’s a whole different story). Our generation can’t imagine life – or road trips – without our little gadgets.
But when I glanced up to the front of the car, my dad was happily sleeping, ears absent of any buds. My mom was driving, sipping coffee and content with her FM radio. The generational gap is really amazing – our parents grew up with none of these technological luxuries and don’t seem to need them.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder how luxurious they really are. It seems like the more advanced our technology becomes, the more likely we are to withdraw from the real world. The intimacy of conversation and the integrity of relationships are compromised by quick and cold forms of communication. We become slaves to Google and Wikipedia at the expense of our work ethic and attention span. Online classes replace face-to-face learning in the name of cost efficiency.
Where do we draw the line? How do we reconcile our improved quality of life with the potential hazards of a technologically advanced world?
These are impossible questions to answer, but important ones to ask. It will be up to our generation to keep technology in check, to assure that our children are exposed to pastimes beyond video games and entertainment beyond television. We are charged with developing cures to diseases, studying the implications of genomic research, and defending our country abroad while dealing with the ethical consequences of medical, scientific, and technological discoveries. It is imperative that we remain conscious of technology’s ever-growing role in our lives and maintain the ability to control it.
I like my computer. I like my iPod. I like online banking and blogging and wireless Internet. I like being able to have a text conversation with my best friend while we sit in classrooms at different universities. And, yes, I even like stalking on Facebook every once in awhile. I like things that make my life easier.
But, at the risk of sounding like a hippie or my mom (who are probably one in the same), maybe we should turn our machines off every once in awhile, if for no other reason than to prove to ourselves, and our grandparents, that we can.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 18 November 2008 at 5:34 pm:
Hey I really like this one, Katie. I was just discussing this phenomenon with a friend about 5 minutes before I came across your article. You didn’t mention him, but did Professor Carmen inspire you to write this and to think about this subject?
Comment by Katie on 18 November 2008 at 6:04 pm:
Not really. I started writing it as a journal entry last year and never finished it. I came across it again this weekend and decided to finish it as a column. Carmen does have some strong opinions about computers… mostly that they will cause the demise of civilization.
Comment by Todd on 18 November 2008 at 6:46 pm:
This has always been an interesting topic to me. Even though I strongly support extreme technological change, I frequently ponder the negative impact of these changes.
Regarding your parents and grandparents: My advice to most of this blog’s readers is to be vigilant about not becoming them. People subtly change with age, and one change is to become less accepting of disruptive technological change. We just sort of naturally start to frame our technological questions in a different way (”do I need this?” instead of the more useful “will this make my life better or worse?”), exaggerate downsides and risks, and underestimate the benefits. To some extent, this occurs subconsciously, so some effort is needed to overcome these biases. This bias is extremely strong when it comes to acceptance of technology that already existed before one was born (or was developed in one’s childhood) and rejection of technology developed later.
Withdrawal from the real world: I suspect this will continue, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I don’t think there is anything special about the “real world” – no special reason to hold it sacred or elevate it above the artificial worlds and fantasies we have created and will created. As we become better and better at creating these artificial worlds, they’ll become more and more appealing, and more and more people will like them more than the “real world”. It is possible that these worlds won’t fulfill our social needs (but I suspect they will), but if they fulfill our other needs and desires so much more than the real world does, then it would be rational to choose to spend time in an artificial world rather than the “real” one.
Reduced work ethic/attention span: Again, probably true. An important question is whether work ethic will decrease at a faster rate than the amount of work needed to be done by humans. If not, then it’s quite OK (and even desirable, IMO) if our work ethic eventually goes all the way to zero.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of effort goes in to researching methods (mostly drugs) of altering work ethic and attention span, and we can already do it to some extent (and with some bad side effects). If we refine and improve our methods of tinkering with brain chemistry, then, again, we may solve this problem before it becomes a really big one. That probably scares a lot of you, but, hey, I did say you all were already old enough to be inclined toward a negative emotional reaction to new technology and rejection of it before a rational weighing of its benefits and costs :)
Can someone elaborate on Carmen’s position? I find it very plausible that computers will play a large role in the “demise of (human) civilization”, but – unlike Carmen, I suspect – I think it’s more likely to be a voluntary demise and replacement with something better.
Comment by Katie on 18 November 2008 at 8:58 pm:
Todd- You make some good points, but there has to be some inherent value in actual personal interactions that make the real world superior to “artificial worlds.” This value might vary from person to person, but I don’t think I could be happy if a significant portion of the world withdrew from social interaction. Think of all the conversations that would never be had, the relationships that would never be formed, if even a quarter of the population committed itself to living in artificial worlds. Maybe it’s overly romantic, but I like the idea of looking someone in the eye when I talk to them, reading their facial expressions and body language.
I think impaired work ethic is one of the more scary effects of the technological revolution. Things are so easy for us. The educational value of an assignment like a 15-page research paper has been completely diluted. It could be churned out in one night. We become limited in our research to the top hits on Google or the “most relevant” articles on library searches. We are less likely stumble upon related ideas during the course of research- ideas that might improve our understanding of the subject, or even change out opinion about it.
In regards to Carmen’s position- it’s tough to elaborate on. He often complains about things like computers, printers, emails, and passwords because they make his life more complicated. He doesn’t seem resistant to change in general (he is on the forefront of genetic research as it relates to politics), he just disapproves of how technology has manifested itself in our lives.
Comment by Todd on 19 November 2008 at 12:24 am:
I agree about the value of personal interaction. I think your line “How do we reconcile our improved quality of life with the potential hazards of a technologically advanced world?” kind of sums up what we both mean. Virtually any new technology will both solve and create problems. Enhance some lives and make others worse. But I can’t think of any technology off the top of my head where I’ve felt the costs of that technology’s existence exceeded the benefits.
I was trying to say that, even though we may make one part of life worse (social fulfillment), if the other parts of life improve by a greater margin than social fulfillment declines, then people will just sort of accept the lack of social fulfillment because their lives are overall better. Hopefully the social fulfillment problem would be solved later, but there would at least be a temporary period where those who place a very high value on social fulfillment would be worse off. Which I guess is a lot like what you’re saying :)
By the way, have you ever tried chatting with a webcam? If not, you might like it. It’s not quite the same as chatting in person, but in many ways, it’s close, and it’s handy when your friends aren’t local. Improvements on that kind of technology might help make people feel closer. There are some extremely primitive attempts to remotely emulate smell and touch, but as these things improve, remoteness may seem less and less remote.
Comment by JayBandit on 2 December 2008 at 2:08 pm:
I think that it may be worse with the millennial generation. I have always been an inquisitive person, and I can show you the beat up covers of my encyclopedia that I used on a regular basis to answer those random “I wonder” questions as a kid. I still find answers to those questions, but instead of opening a book, I use Wikipedia. Is it a bad thing? Perhaps not. But, for those that will never have the encyclopedia, perhaps it will. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people that simply can’t “find” something on the internet. You can type so many different catch phrases or keywords and find nearly anything, yet I see people baffled by things as simple as sports scores…so perhaps technology does dumb down us all.
Comment by Kieran Adams on 30 June 2010 at 2:02 am:
every girl on Gilmore Girls is pretty. i kind of admire them and have a great crush.;’”
Comment by Taylor Reid on 20 July 2010 at 8:21 pm:
the cast of Gilmore Girls are very pretty, i wish i could marry one of them.:”-
Comment by Rhys Phillips on 6 September 2010 at 12:59 am:
well, what can i say, the girls on Gilmore Girls are just damn pretty~`”
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the Gilmore Girls are really gorgeous, and that is the main reason why i watch that tv show :,~
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