Technological Poverty

2011-08-26

In the "developed" world, we either congratulate ourselves for or fear our immense and incessant advancements in technology. These technologies are quick to become part of our lives. We can simply buy a lot of the technology that we use. As workers, we are expected to seek education in the latest and greatest labor technologies, including theories, ideologies, techniques, computer software, and industrial tools. Surely, we are more a technologically capable and literate society than any that has existed at any other point in history.

As per usual, I'm going to point out that this is a bogus assumption. We have become almost wholly detached from technology. Most of the time, we actually have no idea how the devices we buy are made, or whether or how those devices can actually make our lives better. The marketing says the product improves life and does this and that. Numbers and feature lists are published to prove it. But, most of the time we don't actually understand half of it, and really take the product entirely on faith. These "technological" commodities are generally inadequate and inappropriate by carelessness or design.

What little technological understanding we do have is increasingly narrow, and consequently shallow. Professionally, we are expected to be so specialized that we can't see the big picture or ask deep questions. Outside of our formal employment, we have lost the technology to cook, the technology to repair or maintain most of the things we own, the technology of making or tailoring clothing so that it fits, the technology of hygiene and health, the technology of staying physically fit (we're supposed to buy fitness at gym instead, and mindlessly go through the motions that the gym machinery forces our bodies to do), and the technology of countless other everyday things and activities. It isn't that commodities have given us more time to be technologically active. Rather, technology has become something that comes from somewhere else, and from somebody else far out of sight. Technology has become something that is too specialized and professionalized for us to believe that we can possibly comprehend, question, experience, enjoy, or contribute to. In short, we suffer from an extreme poverty of technique. Ironically, those living in economic poverty in "undeveloped" areas might by more in touch with technology than we are because they must do rather than buy technology in order to survive.

Quite unfortunately, we like to prescribe and impose our ill-assumed technological mastery on others. We tell those less developed people that they must adapt the technology of our economic strategies, the technology of our agriculture, of food, of clothing, of lifestyle, of transportation, of communication and social interaction, and on and on. But out technologies might not be at all appropriate for other people and situation. Often, our technologies are often not even appropriate for us.

So what can we do as individuals? We can start reclaiming ownership of technology by doing technology and science in our everyday lives. Doing so might be clumsy and full of mistakes and missteps at first, but those things are key aspects of science anyway, so we shouldn't fear them. Such technology is everyday, so it need not be overly complex or beyond the everyday.