Has Technology Kept Its Promise?

As I observe humanity, moving in ever-faster and faster paces, racing to achieve ever more at dizzying speeds even as MorePowerTool threatens to outpace our very mental capacity, something is amiss. Some deeply held idea that we seem bent on fulfilling, a frantic technologically powered promise, has been broken.

Whether we realize it or not, underneath all this amazing technology we are creating, is a subtle but powerful promise: that we can accomplish more, in less time, and thereby achieve a greater quality of life.

Oh, at first the idea is seductive. Let’s build a machine that can do the work in half the time! We can work in the morning and play in the afternoon. This works great in theory, except it is rarely practiced. No, once that amazing whiz-bang machine is built, it’s run 24/7, working employees to the bone, so we can produce a gazillion times more in a fraction of the time! By all rights there should be a lot more people loafing. Or at least, having a high quality of life. But are they?

How is it that our very lives are powered by machines that admittedly double in speed every 2-years, yet as a nation we are poorer than ever, more tired than ever, and less able to enjoy life as we know it? Who doesn’t walk around with more lines on their foreheads even as the world races by? Whose stress levels are lower thanks to the amazing advances in technology? I don’t know many.

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a conspiracy afoot. Yes, really. As a society, our job is to care about each other and improve our quality of life personally and collectively, yet the very technology that has promised to provide this is doing just the opposite. In fact it’s aggregating wealth into fewer and fewer hands, and in a very real sense oppressing the rest, creating a new kind of upper class, a “technorati” if you will, that is able to harness technology to their advantage. And despite all the nifty perks of technology, are our lives really better?

Ironically, technology tends to isolate people rather than bring them together. It promotes anonymity, and separation by encouraging us to interface over longer and longer distances, using bits of metal and plastic for the interactions. What happened to the warmth of a handshake? Looking someone in the eye? Something is getting lost in the digital revolution, and it’s in the intangible, and arguably more important, realm of our lives.

Can anyone point to studies showing the increased production and sheer extra volume of goods, services, and foods, are actually being circulated to those in need? Is the human family as a whole benefitting from the excess, or is the wealth being concentrated by those in position to take advantage of the windfall?

Again, this answer is obvious; the human family as a whole is not reaping the benefits of the technological advances, as evidenced by similar or worse levels of poverty, literacy, living conditions, and general conditions of peoples throughout the earth. Sure, there are certain segments of the population that are benefitting, yet we see the makings of a “digital divide” in which the middle classes are disappearing, while the ranks of upper and lower classes continue to swell, in large part due to technology which aggregates more and more power into the hands of those at the top. This has always been a classic harbinger of trouble, for those that care to pay attention.

And don’t get me started on our amazing scientific advances in healthcare; what passes for healthcare, rightly should be labelled “sick-care” as it uses 2 main modes of operation: cutting and drugging. The human body does not generally suffer from lack of cuts, or chemicals. Many of the greatest bits of wisdom from thousands of years of human survival are being summarily censored, and even outlawed by those in charge. Don’t believe me? Tsk tsk. Google it. As the saying goes, “just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”