Is it efficient to carve a beautiful design by hand on a wooden door? Is it efficient to rock babies to sleep? Is it efficient to sit in silence or 30 or 40 minutes and meditate on whether or not you are conducting your life in a worthwhile way? Maybe not, but all those things are still eminently desirable.
I suspect that many of the things we do on the computer that are supposed to be more efficient are actually more time-consuming and frustrating than doing them by hand. What made me think about this was, I ran across a log of the book from four years ago while cleaning out a shelf and there, neatly written in a bound hard cover book were names and information for tests that were done that year. Simple, straightforward, and unless, God forbid, there was a fire. . . the information was readily accessible without any special equipment necessary to read it. Now if it had been composed in AmiPro software, no one in this office could read it. It would be to totally inaccessible. Have you ever tried to retrieve something from a really old floppy disk? It may or may not work, as you know.
Even this rant, hastily scribbled on my break will have to be typed or dictated with Dragon NaturallySpeaking before I can share with you. I'm not saying that there aren't great things about computers. I mean look at what we're doing right now ! But the idea that we are supposed to be swallowing is that it's ALL good. That all technology is good technology. This is the idea that I balk at. I'm not buying that concept. Nope. Nada. Zip. No way. I'm not going to go blindly down that road. Oh dear, I'm on the technophobe train again. Oh dear, oh dear.
The tricky part is, being able to have a conversation about the shortcomings of technology without looking and sounding like a Luddite. It seems to be so hard for us to actually have a conflicted position these days, especially in America where public opinion is so often polarized. What ever happened to real debate for the sake of clarifying a position rather than hardening an already entrenched one?
Can you approve of something and mistrust it at the same time? If you ever wonder about these things too, I recommend the book “Technopoly” by Neil Postman. It’s a thought provoking book.
While I can’t “Release it into the Wild” like they do in BookCrossing, since I got it at the library, I CAN at least tell you it is a good read. Anybody want to read it? Then we can discuss it !