Technology

We've had some computer problems this past week.  What is it that is said about technology?  "Can't live with it; can't live without it."  Or, something like that.

I still dislike much of what technology leads people to do.  For instance, I think technology will diminish learning and teaching.  Online and virtual courses can't and won't measure up to face-to-face encounters with teachers.  And, if education is so much more important and vital than it used to be, why are we watering it down thus?  I can't stand seeing everyone, well almost everyone, on cell phones, yakking away at any and every place--grocery stores, restaurants, art fairs, even on lonely trails out in the woods.  And, if seems, if they aren't yakking, they are texting.  In my car, on my bike, out running, I am frequently endangered by people driving while they are talking on their cell phones or texting.  I received an e-mail last week with something I hadn't seen for a while. It was Einstein's lament, "I fear the day when technology overlaps with our humanity.  The world will only have a generation of idiots."  I'm not convinced he ever said or wrote that (but it's on the Internet!).  And I don't completely subscribe to it, but......

Still, technology has it's place and provides comfort and what have become necessities.  I know technology has saved lives, with medical advances, more and better information, phone calls, etc.  Certainly that's a good thing.  Being able to find one's way when lost is a plus.  It's said technology has made businesses more efficient, although I wonder how many man-hours are lost while people "play" on their computers instead of working.

It's the loss of "our humanity" that concerns me.  Was it Marshall McLuhan who said, "The medium is the message?"

This certainly isn't true in all cases, but consider what happened when doctors became specialists instead of the family doctors/general practitioners of the past.  Many of them, the new doctors, lost their abilities to communicate, to empathize with their patients.  They may be more skilled and maybe more knowledgeable, but they aren't better with people.

In education, I can't imagine any technology--films, videos, virtual whatevers--coming close to replicating most of the professors I had at Amherst.  Also consider the claims made by colleges and universities, made possible by technology, to "earn a four-year degree in a year and a half" or other such claims.  That can't be good, can it?  Who wants to be treated by a nurse who received four years of training in six months??????

That said, this past week I was lost for a few days without my computer and access to the Internet.  Fortunately, the kids had me going, there was the Ann Arbor Art Fair (Whew! It was hot, 95 degrees, with humididity to match!), some appointments, and a lot of yardwork that had gone untended (I finally got my mower running again).