Members of the Crew maybe you will find this article interesting.
Khalid
July 16, 2000
Technocrats are deleting the `human' from our lives
If you watch television as much as the average North American, you are
- apart from numb - half-persuaded
that technology is your friend.
Believe it at your peril. Technology is not looking for friends, but
for markets, profits and your head. While
inhuman, it is not without interests and ambitions; technology now
governs more and more of our behaviour
and our public and secret agenda and our values. It determines, without
consultation, not only what we want
but what we need. The result is that we think less for ourselves and
are becoming less than our natural selves;
we are on our cellphones, on the Internet, living a virtual life, one
of growing narcissism and isolation.
It's impossible to reach
anyone by phone these days
We put our money in banks that really would rather we stayed away; they
urge us to bank via the Internet. Because technology has
provided ``voicemail,'' it is now becoming impossible to reach anyone
on the phone simply by calling.
I have a cellphone. Doesn't everyone? People give me their office phone
numbers, their home phones and then - if it's really important,
invite me to call them on their cellphones. I don't give anyone my
cellphone number because I disagree with what many people think is
important. This must be true because I find hotel lobbies, airports,
the city streets and parking lots jammed with people talking on their
cellphones. I had no idea there was so much that was so urgently important
going on around me.
It has been suggested, as a precaution, that we limit the use of cellphones
by our children; it may cause brain cancer. The people who
promote the sale of such phones say there is not any reliable ``evidence''
this is true, which is what the tobacco industry always used
to say. But it's okay for adults since having the latest technology
is worth risking one's life for: otherwise, what would people think?
Technology has produced a new industry - the call centre business. This
allows salespeople to invade your home, your privacy and
leisure time, to sell things you don't want or support causes you hadn't
considered supporting, or to be asked damnfool questions by
pollsters who sell your opinions to their clients at the expense of
your time and convenience.
Any benefits are accidental
We are continuously being persuaded that the advances in technology
are for our benefit. This may occasionally be true: When it is, it
is accidental. Technology does not really serve us; it is the other
way 'round. It does not imagine what's next in terms of what the
public interest may need but how the growing gullibility of the public
can be manipulated to want what technology can provide. Some
of my friends who own computers seem in a constant state of anxiety
about the continuous changes in software; fear of
obsolescence is a constant.
In the United States, where technology is high fashion and big money,
using people to serve the interests of technology has become a
new tyranny. The education system has now been delivered to the technocrats.
The central idea of technology is to eliminate the need
for human participation in any process for which a computer program
can be developed to replace people. I have been watching the
efforts of the technocrats to eliminate the teacher in the classroom.
Studying at home has been a creeping virus in the system since the correspondence
schools went online. According to the New York
Times, the results so far ``have been ragged.'' In one example of 600
high school students from 28 states in one company's online
program, two-thirds failed to complete enough work to take the final
exam. In other examples, students simply ``drop out'' of courses
because they are unable to organize their work or solve communications
problems without human help.
Forget about teachers, get a
virtual education
The universities have been selling higher education absent the university
environment, interaction with teachers and peers, but on the
Internet. Such a process is doubtless cheaper, satisfying to the acquisitive
impulses of technology and possibly even do-able, but it's
not higher education.
Ten years ago, in her CBC Massey lectures, Ursula Franklin warned major
decisions are no longer ours to make through our
governments: ``The major decisions are not made . . . as a result of
public deliberations by elected officials . . . in fact, we have lost
the institution of government in terms of accountability and responsibility
to people. We now have nothing but a bunch of managers,
who run the country to make it safe for technology.'' If it were otherwise,
so, too, would be our technology.
Dalton Camp is a political commentator. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday.