Surviving technology
Larry Updike
When the goal is to make through one day, gadgets lose appeal
As I travelled the Yellow Head highway back to Winnipeg from Riding Mountain recently, I listened with interest to a radio debate about the pluses and minuses of technological change.
In the age of the iPad and the Blackberry it is a subject I reflect on a lot.
It is no surprise that throughout history, the advent of any new technology has come with its critics. Way back in 1986, the late Neil Postman was bemoaning the negative effects of television in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Undermining
He argued that television combines serious issues with entertainment, demeaning and undermining authentic discourse by making it less about ideas and more about image.
In a 1990 speech, Postman said that technological change is always a trade-off. A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes it destroys more than it creates.
The invention of the printing press is a good example.
According to Postman, printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration.
Printing made modern science possible but transformed religious sensibility into an exercise in superstition. Printing helped grow the nation-state, but in so doing made unrestrained patriotism a potentially murderous enterprise.
With each new technological innovation we face the uncertainties of change. We are also able to live on a level of abstraction altogether beyond the person of the past. For instance, I’m typing on a laptop device. The fact that I haven’t got a clue how it works doesn’t matter as long as I can just operate it to achieve my ends.
I can use my computer’s calculator to solve an arithmetic problem in a snap. The same problem would have taken hours for a medieval expert in mathematics. It does not matter that I don’t actually know what I’m doing so long as I can manipulate abstractions easily and efficiently.
Negative side
I operate many devices without worrying about their inner workings at all. I don’t have to think about it.
This is great. But there are those who say that technological advancement, like everything human, has its negative side. It allows people to live more and more at second hand, without a direct connection or a deep engagement with anything. It can create a sense of abstract rootlessness, alienation and spiritual homelessness.
While this argument is worthy of more discussion, these days I don’t have much time to deal with a concept like spiritual homelessness. At Siloam Mission, I talk to people who are experiencing homelessness and alienation on a concrete level.
I hear stories about patrons who have been fostered, institutionalized or separated from their families due to past government policies. About people who have been acculturated, trivialized and marginalized. About people who feel dehumanized, inferior and full of self-doubt as mainstream culture tells them they’re losers.
Some of them rise from the experience of alienation to beat the odds. They transition into a different life.
Until then, surviving one more day doesn’t really allow for much reflection about the downsides of technology.
Funny thing; I checked Siloam’s lineup for lunch today.
I didn’t spot any iPads.
- Larry Updike is the Senior Advocacy and Communications Spokesperson at Siloam Mission.
06/23/10
