Almost
everyone believes that technology has made life easier and more comfortable and
that it has enabled us to perform tasks that we could not do otherwise. A
list of the benefits of technology would be very long indeed. However, as
with almost everything we human beings have created, technology has a
downside. There is, we might say, a dark side to technology.
For openers, technology does not necessarily make life simpler; rather, it
tends to make life more complicated. Nowadays, for example, nearly every
discussion of the "wonderful power of technology to enrich our lives"
mentions the cell phone. Certainly, the instant communication brought
about by the telephone has been a boon. It was originally a rather simple
device that anyone could learn to use in a matter of minutes, and we soon began
using phones to make and receive phone calls, usually about matters of some
consequence. Recently, however, we have enabled these devices to perform
a ridiculous number of irrelevant functions. One needs a thirty-page
booklet to learn how to use them. Anyone who enters a phone store today
seeking a phone that simply sends and receives phone calls is likely to be
looked upon as a refugee from the Dark Ages – or from another planet.
Furthermore, we have millions of people walking about or driving their cars
while talking on cell phones, usually discussing matters of no importance
whatsover. If an alien civilization were to tap into our phone lines, its
inhabitants would think that everyone on our planet was insane, and they
wouldn't be far from wrong. In a sane world, would almost all of its
inhabitants carry complex, multifunction gadgets that are used primarily to
engage in trivial chatter – and use them in ways that are socially annoying and
unsafe?
Complexity is not the only downside of computers. They have created an
even greater gap between the rich and the poor, the educated and
uneducated. To use these devices, one needs both experience and
education. Lacking computers at home (even if they can access them at
school), poorer people do not have the opportunity to gain much experience with
them. Even as the computer becomes a commodity (something to which
virtually everyone has access), the pace of technology is so rapid that these
individuals are light years behind the more fortunate people.
Furthermore, since computer skills must be learned (this knowledge is not as
intuitive as some people would have us believe), less educated individuals have
an insurmountable disadvantage. Educated individuals can use computers to
expand their knowledge; uneducated or less educated people are stuck where they
are. The gap widens.
Finally, with respect to computers, many of the advantages have spawned a
nightmarish array of problems. While technology has now given us the
ability to shop from home, it has opened a whole new frontier in which con
artists can conduct scams – a frontier that authorities admit is impossible to
police. While it has enabled us to bank by mail, it has brought on a wave
of identity theft such as we have never before seen. While it enables
banks and other organizations to process data with lightning speed, electronic
processing creates greater opportunity for error. One incorrect keystroke
can set in motion an automated series of mistakes that are not easily detected
or corrected. Every day there is a report of some mass mailing, system
glitch, or loss of data brought on by a single and very simple human error that
spun out of control when a mindless computer took over and ran with it.
Speaking of mindless computers (and the telephone), consider automated
answering systems. The only individuals who see any benefit in these
systems are executives who, with their eyes on the bottom-line, look upon them
as a cheap way to reduce or eliminate customer service personnel. These
systems create the illusion of offering customer service when, in fact, they
have practically eliminated customer service altogether. Automated
answering systems constitute an area of technology that symbolizes what happens
when tasks that only a human being can perform effectively are relegated to
machines. Customers universally hate these systems because they provide
little or no service, waste time, and often put the customer into an electronic
loop that leads nowhere. The worst of these systems are those that
provide voice messages in which a machine pretends to be a real human being
(cf. Verizon). While we may find definite advantages to almost any
technological advancement, it is very difficult to find anything good to say
about automated phone systems.
In contrast, few of us question the value of technological advances in
transportation – notably motor vehicles and airplanes. Because of these
developments, we can travel further and faster than anyone a century ago would
have imagined possible. However, even here technology has its
downside. We live in a more dangerous world, not only because cars,
trucks, and airplanes can kill but also because the ease and speed with which
we can get from one place to another has made national borders more
porous. The same technology that can deliver us to Grandma's house
halfway across the world can also deliver an explosive device that can obliterate
Grandma and a few thousand of her neighbors. In addition, we have been
seriously depleting the Earth's natural resources to run these machines and
have appreciably hastened global warming because of the gasses that they
emit. On a simpler level, too, we may perhaps question whether it is
necessarily desirable to go further and faster. Is it always
better? Do we enjoy the trip more, or has the process of getting there
(albeit very quickly) become a hassle? For what are we saving all this
precious time – to have more time to watch commercials on TV, many of them
promoting technology that we don't need?
Entertainment is probably the one area in which technology has had positive
effects with very little negative impact. If the content of television is
mediocre, we can't really blame that on technology. If the music that
people listen to on their various gadgets is trash, we can't blame the
gadgets. If we are spending more time being entertained because we have,
thanks to technology, a wide variety entertainments to choose from, that is not
necessarily a bad thing. We can complain about the intrusion of too much
marketing in the entertainment media, but that is not the fault of
technology. Indeed, with television, there's a quiet little war going on
between the technology that subtly (or not so subtly) tries to sell us products
and the technology that enables us to bleep out the advertisements.
To be objective about it, the so-called downside of technology – real as it is
– represents more what's wrong with us than what's wrong with our
creations. We are making them complicated, often more than they need to
be, because we arrogantly believe that man will always be the master of the
machine. We turn the cell phone into a public nuisance and a safety hazard
instead of a useful tool because we are too foolish to use it wisely. We
cause sporadic outbreaks of massive "computer errors" because we are
stupid and careless; what we call computer errors are, in fact, idiotic
blunders made by human beings. We are the self-destructive species who
turn machines for transportation into weapons of mass destruction. The
real issue regarding technology is not whether it is good or bad but whether we
are grown-up and mature enough to use wisely what we have created. The
evidence suggests that, on the whole, we are not. Indeed, we have never
been – ever since we created a tool by fastening a pointed rock to a stick and
then decided that it could also be used to smash the skull of someone we didn't
like.