Intefacing With Technology

There seems to be a sort of love/hate relationship going on between humans and their technology.  I use the possessive because technology is clearly a human invention, something created by us and not anything that magically appears out of nowhere that we just pick up and use.  We always fear the affect of making us less human, and that is reflected in literature and film.  We wax nostalgic for "the good old days" when we lived more "naturally" and "in tune with nature".  While it is understandable and reasonable to be suspicious of changes, especially ones we put in motion ourselves, we forget that our nostalgia is removed from the realities of the past.  Much like anti-vaxxers insisting on the benefits of "natural immunization" and refusing to accept the facts of spectacular infant death rates in the past, people cling to the idea that modern technology separates us from others and insulates us from society, rather than helping us navigate it more efficiently.  But let us first specify what is meant by "technology".  We often seem to limit the definition to Information Technology, and occasionally include medical machines, but really technology is any tool that helps us do things better, whether faster, more efficiently, or at all, as in the case of airplanes.  True, the ultimate purpose of the airplane is to travel from one place to another, which we have always done by other means, but not by leaving the ground and traveling at astounding speeds.  Even our clothing can be considered technology.  How do we maintain comfortable body temperature?  How do we protect ourselves from the elements?  How can we show our allegiance to various groups at a glance?  Articles of clothing can serve these purposes, and we create ways of producing them as well as new materials for them to those ends, among others.  Perhaps the best way to interact with technology is to forget that it is such an alien and frightening thing as "technology" to begin with.

The Actress recalled hearing predictions about great changes in communication before the turn of the millennium, saying that at the time they seemed crazy.  Today, almost everything predicted has come to pass.  She took a critical stance on modern technology and our relationship to it, focusing on the frustrations it provokes.  For example, she once saw a man toss his computer out the window while she was walking down a London street.  Although she was not aware of the exact circumstances that lead to this action, we can suppose that simple difficulties with the technology are to blame, as we ourselves have certainly suffered similar situations.  The Actress also criticized the  laziness modern technology can appear to promote, as watching television relaxes the brain, while reading makes it work (according to some studies) and emails are sloppily pounded out, whereas writing a letter required more attention.  She was also suspicious of emails as being easy to fake, while a letter had a clear writer and sender, in her view.  The connectivity of email providers also puts our privacy at risk, not only under "legitimate"government surveillance for security, but under anyone who decides they want to poke into somebody else's life.

The Leader put a lot of energy into the topic, having been a victim of technological troubles himself.  He emphasized that we are completely dependent on technology for our survival.  It is an extension of ourselves even as it can be physically separate.  Not only physical tools are technology, but abstractions like language can be considered as such, in that it is a way of making our lives better.  It is also a method of discrimination, like other sets of knowledge; being unknowledgeable about certain technologies condemns us to a lower standard of living, just as not speaking certain languages leads to exclusion.  Technology both drives and is driven by evolution, as we have to keep adapting to what we have and improvements and new ideas are presented, under the guise of making our lives better, but often with the real purpose of improving profit margins.  We still maintain some separation from our tools, but also romantically think of them as being "perfect" and much more reliable than people.  When things go wrong, we attribute it to "human error" as often as possible.  The Leader reminded us that appliances and electronics used to come with manuals and instruction booklets.  Today we have to search for guidance on the internet, since everyone is expected to have access to it, and the Leader was also of the opinion that the technology itself was supposed to be intuitive and not need so much self-training.  We might think children have a natural ability to use new technology, but for the most part it is merely the fact that they have access to it at an early age when we are most focused on learning life skills.  The Leader lamented that basic interfacing is not taught specifically in schools, at least as a matter of course.  He also pointed out a misunderstanding about our access to knowledge: we can find out information quickly, faster than ever before, but it is merely abstract information, not knowledge or know-how.  It is the latter that truly allows us to live well.  We learn to evaluate the information, or at least we should, and decide which Google result is the most appropriate to use.  As for the surveillance, while we might be uneasy about our lack of privacy, we can also rest assured that the very government that collects information is easily hacked and actively leaked through those same means.  Interfacing with technology is getting into the spirit of our age, and using its language.  We are encouraged to improve and grow.  Technology that works as it should is never a problem, rather when it does not work.

An On-and-Off Participant gave an example of attempting to idiot proof technology, even a very old one that we should be familiar with by now.  This example was the instruction to wear new canvas boots on feet.  While it is true that we are overguided in our using technology, this is less a function of our incompetence with it and more that of the social willingness to make others responsible for our mistakes.  He was not convinced by the title, thinking "coming to terms" spoke more to how we feel about modern technology.  In his opinion we are not coming to terms with modern technology, we are falling more and more into a trap of giving away information and losing our individuality.  This Participant also was troubled by the amount of surveillance the authorities are capable to doing on individuals, in fact he quipped that we are anonymous to ourselves, while our governments know everything.

Another Sometime Visitor remarked that the annoyances of past technologies, such as spam mail, have not stopped or been reduced by new technologies.  If our problems are human problems, mere technology will not solve them, this harkening back to the Leader's description of technology as an extension of ourselves.  The Visitor noted, somewhat darkly, that our social interactions have changed dramatically and forever.  Yet, we have achieved something people have been searching for ever since we realized our own mortality - even if the body dies, Facebook is forever, and our profiles with it.