That title does not mean reinventing the wheel. I merely am stating that it is time to realize that there does need to be a line drawn in the sand with technology. Why should we just sit back completely exposed as technology changes every last part of American culture through our generation, to the next, and the following generation? We need to realize that there needs to be a median where we accept technology but not let it run our lives. As Postman puts it in his book Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology, he states "A resistance fighter understands that technology must never be accepted as part of the natural order of things, that every technology-------from IQ test to an automobile to a television set to a computer----- is a product of a particular economic and political context and carries with it a program, an agenda, and a philosophy that may or may not be life-enhancing and that therefore require scrutiny, criticism, and control."
This seemingly may be mundane to some but it has resonance to my ears. Why should we sit idly by and let new forms of technology that have not been used ever in the scope of humanity dictate the way we perceive life? How come to many Americans believe newer is always better? I for one see a 1968 Dodge Charger as a way sweeter mode of transportation then a brand new 2010 Honda civic. But to get back on a more serious mode of discussion, how come Native Americans and Ancient Greeks found that perseverance through the human condition more appealing then figuring out a new shortcut through inventing a tool for ease of use? Why was it that discovering more through philosophy went wayside then figuring out how to download illegal songs?
How could a man like Francis Galton take statistics past just numbering students papers like William Farish did at Cambridge in the eighteenth century and use numbers to describe which cities in Britain had prettier ladies? How was he able to get people to jump his bandwagon on judging the skulls of men throughout history and decipher their IQ (Copernicus had a lower IQ supposedly by this way of measurement then Galton himself by almost a hundred points! Please!) by the size and shape of their skulls. How can people be more dependent on the findings a machine will give through statistical readouts then the experience a doctor may garner from years of practice? Doesn't one realize that machines designed to figure out medical problems do not come some far away magical place? That instead they are contrived and designed by ideas from other doctors from years worth of the very experience needed from tending to sick patients.
The Human condition is being replaced by the mechanical condition unless we stop it and take the reigns back from our mechanical "brethren". I say brethren because we literally say when a computer has a problem it has a "virus," or is "infected," and needs to "quarantined." Is this seriously what is happening? Have we gotten so lax in our differentiation between what is organic and what is inorganic that we need to label computers "sick?"
For America we need to realign ourselves and get a few things straight. Number 1, "Scientism" isn't completely an end all be all to figuring out the human condition as well as it 3 ideas (1, natural science can be applied to study human behavior, 2, social sciences can be used to organize society on a rational and humane basis, 3, faith in science can serve as a comprehensive belief system that gives meaning to life). Number 2, As Postman states as he did with numero uno, we should not be so dependent on computers to believe that everything after computers could not have happened without them. Number 3, we need to realize that technology will not always save our butts and that we as a society need to accept this (what were to happen if a solar flare brought with it a massive EMP pulse and fried everything electrical? Would we just throw ourselves into a mass hysteria and kill ourselves?).
We Americans need to realize The Neil Postman is on to something. We cannot just allow ourselves to be subjective servants to Technology because when ever in American culture did we depend on another power to bail our asses out of anything? I am not trying to use the symbol drain with Uncle Sam telling you you have what it takes to be independent. But, as a whole we really need to realize that we should not be so dependent on technology. We need to take a step back and re-orient ourselves into forming all the technology we are so dependent on into being just tools for us to get by. Not things we are dependent on for survival.
For our own sake we should not accept the metaphorical message about computers as stated by Postman "The fundamental metaphorical message of the computer, in short, is that we are machines----thinking machines to be sure, but machines nonetheless. It is for this reason that the computer is the quintessential, incomplete, near perfect machine for technopoly. It subordinates the claims of our nature, our biology, our emotions, our spirituality. The computer claims sovereignty over the whole range of human experience, and supports its claim by showing that it "thinks" better then we can."
The hell it can, as for right now, just like everyone else, I can still pull the damn plug from its ass.
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