THERE’S been a long running debate over whether our fascination with technology is crowding out our own humanity, never mind that is we ourselves who are fuelling technological change.
By replacing smiles with emoticons, reducing the complexity of language to vowel-free SMS-speak, and creating products and software applications that ease our lives in almost every conceivable way, are we somehow becoming increasingly diminished as thinking, feeling, sensing human beings?
There are those who argue that technology has driven a wedge between our rational / intellectual and emotional / spiritual selves, and that the gap is getting dangerously wider. Technology enthusiasts rubbish the idea, instead positing that technology is actually borne out of humanity and as such, resides at the very heart of who we are.
This humble blog entry cannot hope to explore the innumerable dimensions of this argument or to figure out exactly where humanity ends and technology begins (or vice versa). But it might be useful to see it from another point of view, with this question: Is technology making us better?
It’s easy to answer that when we look at all the technology that has helped to cure illnesses, widened access to education, provided financial opportunities to the poor, etc.
However, not every technological invention was rooted in need and many were derided the first time they were introduced to the world. Television, computers and even the Internet were initially dismissed as inconsequential, and no one could have predicted the impact they have since made.
They have certainly changed all our lives, but how would we quantify that change? Can we truly and honestly say that it has made us better?
We could argue about this some more and we may never find an answer that would satisfy us all.
Perhaps the point is, we should never stop trying.
I like this entry. It throws up many questions about the role of technology in our lives. Is it taking over? Is it replacing the humanity in our lives?
There was a fervent and worried debate about 10 years ago about mobile phones. Many were deeply concerned that we would no longer meet each other and experience the emotions that go with being around friends and family. Then SMS came to us in Malaysia (ironically just when we needed it, on September 11, 2001).
I don’t at all feel that I have been cut off from the world by these growing corpus of communication devices. In fact, I feel closer to family and friends. I have a much wider circle of contacts, acquaintances, and I have dug up old friends, too many to remember.
I think what’s interesting about this post is this: We are so used to idea (also pushed forth relentlessly by the media) that technology influences us, that human behaviour has changed because of this.
This post explores a fundamental question: If necessity is the mother of invention, could it be that we created this phenomenal new world because we needed it?
In which case, the real origin of behavioral change investigation begins with the simplest question of all: Why?