Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [2]
What had begun as car sickness in boyhood had developed, by adolescence, into a deeper case of cultural indigestion. It was only when I got to college that I began the attempt to put a name to this, but already the symptoms of the malady—burdensome material inconvenience and social isolation—had become too acute to ignore.
Luckily, my musical diligence paid off, and I got into a good university. There it was exciting to meet other people of similar interests who lived within walking distance. I threw out the sheet music and threw myself into the life of the campus. I joined debating groups. I took up rowing. I made new friends. I dabbled in religion. And in my academic pursuits, I tried to gain some understanding of what was going wrong in Oz.
On a hunch, I signed up for a course in the history of technology. It was an eye-opener. The young professor, Eda Kranakis, capably surveyed the development of wind- and water mills, steam engines, and railroads, and tossed in a graphic description of the inhuman working conditions in nineteenth century factories. She related the tragic tale of the British land enclosure movement, inspired by “scientific farming,” which uprooted countless laborers from their hereditary commons in the country and flung them into the cities, where they formed an easily exploited labor pool.
As illuminating as the class was, though, it raised more questions than it answered. Hadn’t American society moved beyond the barbarities of Dickensian England (or at least hadn’t it subcontracted the dirty work to countries like Mexico)? What was technology’s role in the present age? Problems hadn’t disappeared; they were just different. But the exponents of public policy remained about as starry-eyed as I had been in grade school. Even the leaders of my elite university accorded every latest gizmo a virtual hero’s welcome. Appalled by this mindlessness, I engaged in many heated discussions with classmates. And I wrote an extended research paper for Kranakis, describing the unhealthy side effects associated with sedentary stress and the use of ordinary automated devices. Kranakis liked the paper and encouraged me to develop my ideas.
The conviction was growing in me that the besetting problem was our culture’s blindness to the distinction between the tool and the automatic machine. Everyone tended to treat them alike, as neutral agents of human intention. But machines clearly were not neutral or inert objects. They were complex fuel-consuming entities with certain definite proclivities and needs. Besides often depriving their users of skills and physical exercise, they created new and artificial demands—for fuel, space, money, and time. These in turn crowded out other important human pursuits, like involvement in family and community, or even the process of thinking itself. The very act of accepting the machine was becoming automatic.
By the time I graduated from college, my original orientation had become completely reversed: once an overawed vassal, I now burned with the desire to rise up and battle the technological dragon that, in my view, held society hostage. I found out about a new course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that was intended to provide a critical overview of the social effects of machines on human life. It was called “Science, Technology, and Society.” I applied and was accepted.
And I found myself in the very den of the beast. Life was never so ticklish. On the one hand, the fledgling S.T.S. graduate program lured me with the promise of free-ranging discussion of all things technological, pro and con. On the other hand, S.T.S. depended on M.I.T. for its existence. There were certain unspoken limits to the discussion, certain subjects not to be broached. The dragon I hoped to slay held me in its palm. I tried to respect my position, but I was not always as cautious as I might have been. The tongue would