An ally against Web technology

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

By Matthew Irwin

How does one balance his appreciation of change with a healthy distrust of technology? I don’t want to be curmudgeonly about technological progress, nor do I want to be convinced that gadgets represent the pinnacle of human imagination, especially in the face of so many social lows. 

The question has to be, What does this technology bring to life? If a device genuinely makes living better, then it has value, but if it adds labor through disguises of convenience and accessibility (i.e., if one can work anywhere, anytime, one probably will work everywhere, all the time), then it decidedly inhibits one’s pursuit of happiness, which we’ll remember is a fundamental right of being American.

Of course, there are varying degrees and personal interpretations of happiness, but here’s the rub: Is it possible that we agree to be dumber and less capable so that technology can be useful?

Jaron Lanier says that we probably do. A computer scientist credited with popularizing the term “virtual reality,” Lanier just published You are Not a Gadget, which outlines his thesis that Web technologies are creating a hive mind that will rule individual thought obsolete, in part to prove that gadgets have value. An excerpt of his book is available in the February issue of Harper’s.

To illustrate his point he acknowledges friends of his at Microsoft who expressed their belief in the superiority of computers by writing word processing software that supposedly knows better than the user. For example, if you type a number and hit enter, the computer determines you want an indented outline.

“The real function of this feature,” Lanier writes, “isn’t to make life easier for you. Instead, it promotes a new philosophy: that the computer is evolving into a life-form that can understand people better than people can understand themselves.”

He continues, “People degrade themselves all the time in order to make machines seem smart. Before the 2008 stock-market crash, bankers believed in supposedly intelligent algorithms that could calculate credit risks before the bank makes bad loans; we ask teachers to teach to standardized tests so a student will look good to an algorithm.”

One result of the new iPad might not be the competition it offers Amazon’s Kindle, but the legitimacy the competition gives to digital readers – a less tactile, less enduring and commodified way to obtain books (except maybe for book reviewers) that also comes with a number of other functions, such as the Internet, from which there seems to be no reprieve, and programs that tell you what you want to read.

Users of such gadgets often attempt to convince me of the convenience and innovation they find in the palm of my hand, and I wonder what they give up to find that value, what they relinquish from their own cache of ideas and information, necessary for the function of the imagination.

OK, fine, print is dead, or dying, but though the technology changes, the spread of information remains its function, and it's up to each user to ask honestly of himself if he finds the devices useful, or if he just wants them to be useful because he spent money on them. JHW
PERMALINK:
An ally against Web technology | Planet JH News Article: Editorial

Leave a Comment