digitally numb?
Admit it. You love technology.
You love the way every new medium for creating, consuming & communicating media that has emerged in the recent past (from email and instant messaging to social media and smart phones) has all seamlessly managed to transform the way you live to the point where you’ve seriously started to doubt if you could survive without any of it. I ask myself that all the time. Here’s the dilemma — Are we sure if all this technology that we love so dearly is in fact making us more free, productive, connected, informed or just cloaking your perception of reality with an endless stream of information & digital distractions?
I’m not sure either. It’s probably a bit if both, but how often do any of us sit and reflect upon what traits and values the brand new iPhone or Facebook and Twitter are actually adding or taking away from our lives? I’m not suggesting you do that because the answer will rarely, if at all, be in absolutes. Nevertheless, these are important questions that don’t get asked often enough. Most of us blindly accept and embrace technology as it is thrust upon us assuming more information has to be better than less, faster connectivity ought to be better than slow and all that is new is obviously better than what’s old.
At one end, the technophobes mourn about the speed of progress & risk being left behind, while at the other end, the technophiles eagerly march towards techno utopia. However, the very notion that we’re all either technophiles or a technophobes is firstly as ridiculous as the idea that we can only have either right or left wing political ideologies. Who can disagree that what we really need in politics (theoretically at least) is a midpoint between extremes? But I digress…in terms of technology, this balance cannot be achieved by passing judgments on media and communications technologies. However, we need to start asking the right questions — by observing technology’s current and potential impact on human needs and values with a view to nurturing traits that are beneficial to individuals and society in general.
So where do we begin? I’ve spent the past few precious minutes of my life typing this post on my iPhone, rather than killing zombies in my favorite iPhone game. I’d say I’m off to a good start.…back to the game now.
