Technophobia

For many years, going back at least as far as Shelley's early 19th century classic "Frankenstein" and perhaps further, there has been a technophobic fear of technology — that it could eventually engulf and destroy mankind. Shelley's view was that Man, through early 19th century technology and science, was on the verge of playing God and that it might be beyond Mankind's ability to control the access to Nature's secrets science gave us. Shelley's "Frankenstein" story was meant as a cautionary tale to warn us that technology could eventually destroy us.

Ever since Shelley's "Frankenstein" story was published other stories have been published that also warn of us the "dehumanizing" aspects of technology. In more recent years we have seen movies that also express a fear of technology's dehumanizing force. Movies such as Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" that showed a fascist technocracy, or the cold inhuman world of "THX 1138", or the apocalyptic worlds shown in a string of derivative low budget flicks that show a world of techno-barbarians all exhibit this same fear of technology by expressing various ideas of what awful things technology would inevitably bring.

More recent and fashionable versions of technophobia have ranged from the currently fashionable herbal remedies that supposedly can't hurt you because they are "natural" to the idea that food cooked in microwaves would cause cancer, and to the belief that all technology is inherently dehumanizing and should therefore be shunned.

I won't get into discussions about the absurdity of believing that foxglove tea is "safe" because it is "natural"* or whether or not microwaving your popcorn will cause cancer, but the bit about technology being inherently dehumanizing is itself in need of examination.

[*Foxglove contains digitalis: all parts of the foxglove plant are poisonous. It will stop your heart!]

Empowerment of Courage

On September 11, 2001 an event of consummate horror and evil occurred that consumed the lives of thousands of innocent people. Those people died for no good reason, but we now have a clearer vision of what kind of people they were and how they faced what they knew to be their imminent deaths. We know of this because of what so many fear: Technology. Technology in the form of fax machines, cell phones, email on computers, telephone answering machines, etc., revealed some of humanity's highest traits.

These devices, which we have all around us that many of us have either taken for granted or wished they would just go away, mirrored our nature on 9-11. On that fateful day, these devices, supposedly tokens of a degenerate force in our lives that supposedly have been sucking our humanity away, made it possible for these unfortunate and doomed souls to have something that was denied to people in the past that did not have access to these "dehumanizing" technological devices: the ability to say a final "I love you" to their loved ones. We were able to see a picture of people who faced their own impending deaths with courage and dignity.

Cell phones, those annoying gadgets that always seem to be ringing, chirping or playing bits of classical music (badly!) at inappropriate times were the means that allowed the passengers on Flight 93 to learn what was happening to them and it is also via those same cell phones that we learned of their courageous response. The combination of information technology and courage may well have averted an even greater tragedy than the loss of their own lives. It was the access to information via technology that allowed them to make the courageous choice to stop the hijackers by any means necessary. Because of information technology, the courageous passengers of Flight 93 knew what they had to do.

Horrific as the events of 9-11 were, some of the few shining moments we have were revealed by technology: humanity at its best facing death and destruction with courage and love. Far from "dehumanizing" these people, technology gave them one final access to the most human moments of their lives. Perhaps what was revealed that day was the fact that humanity has not been degenerated by technology after all.

Origins of Technology

Although many feel that somehow technology is inherently "dehumanizing", I will have to disagree. Often technology is described in the form of computers, high tech gizmos and the like, but technology is virtually anything you use, from a garden rake to the socks you wear. In short, technology is anything and everything you use that didn't come attached to you when you came from the womb.

A hammer is technology, underwear is technology, your house is technology, etc. You could go on for a very long time listing up what is technology. Just about everything about you is technology except for your B.O., and we have technology to deal with that as well.

How did all of this technology stuff start anyway, and when? Well... we will have to go back a rather long time, to sometime between our australopithicene ancestors of about four and one half million years ago and Homo Erectus who already had a pretty good head start on what we call technology. Some time after our australophiticene ancestors came down from the trees one of their descendants was a creature called "Homo Habilis", or "Handy Man". He/she got that name because this is the earliest ancestor who made tools: Real tools.

For those of you who watch the nature channels on cable a lot, you know that man is not the only tool using animal. Chimpanzees make and use tools, some birds use tools, even some ants use tools. It is highly likely that the australopithicenes also made and used tools. So, what is the difference between them and us as regards tools?

Technology.

The difference between a tool using animal and us is simple but critical one: The animals make and use a tool for the moment and then discard them after the immediate task has been accomplished. There is no thought as to any possible future use for a tool. Homo Habilis and his/her descendants (meaning: us) also made tools, but Homo Habilis created a tool kit to carry along for future use. That anticipatory creation of a tool for future use is technology. The creation of tool kits was one of the two critical developments made the tool maker human. The other technological development was the first time a human ancestor was able to control an energy source: fire.

That early tool kit was composed at first of only a simple broken stone with a sharp edge and a place to hold it without cutting the user's hand, but it enabled a small and weak creature to start out on the long road to planetary dominance. All technological development since has been nothing more than a refinement of that first broken stone and the fire that Homo Erectus had.

Some technologies made it possible for this tropical animal to inhabit nearly every corner of the planet from the Arctic to "uninhabitable" deserts. A classic Inuit of the 19th century had a stone age technology, but it was sophisticated enough to allow the Inuit to thrive in an environment that could freeze naked flesh solid in 30 seconds. Polynesian islanders also had a stone age technology, but they were able to make hydrodynamically advanced seagoing canoes that could cross thousands of miles of the the Pacific Ocean and had a navigation technology sophisticated enough to allow them to do it.

Being human and having technology cannot be separated. We use fire in various guises to make inedible substances into gastronomic delights, based on the fire technology that Homo Erectus developed and used two million years ago. Try to see what you can really eat safely without cooking some time. That will be a very short list! Clothing technology was developed before the last Ice Age started and it allowed us to not only survive it but thrive. Sometime around 40,000 years ago Man started making cave art. Simple pigment technologies allowed this art to be created. Man the Artist was made possible by technology.

Yes, we have somewhat more developed technologies than our ancient forebears but these modern technologies serve essentially the same ancient human needs: Clothing, shelter, safe food, communication, art, spiritual needs, etc. We may have very fancy high tech stuff, but it only serves the same basic functions ancient technologies served. Each and every stage of development of technology from a better stone tool to a fast computer was viewed in its time as "high tech". Not only that, I am sure that when each of these technologies either appeared or were improved that the technophobes of that time also decried them. I can hear it now:

Thag: What's this fire thing?

Unkh: It keeps us warm and makes food taste better.

Thag: I don't like it. That newfangled fire stuff is dangerous! I am going to stay with the way my father ate his meat: raw! Besides, cooking meat will probably cause cancer!

Technology contributes to and reveals our humanity, and yes, it can be abused. The same knife a surgeon can use to save a life, or an artist uses to create an object of beauty can be used by the deranged to kill. Unfortunately, making bad choices is also human (it's called "free will"). That does not mean we should turn our backs on technology or fear it. We humans have the choice to use technology any way we wish, whether for good or evil. Fortunately, even though Mankind has had the means to exterminate himself since the invention of gunpowder and after several centuries of trying, we still have six billion of us on this planet. Perhaps that is because in spite of our flaws, we are still "human" and most of us unconsciously know that technology must be used for good rather than evil.

Fortunately, it seems that most of the time our "human" side has prevailed and as we saw on 9-11 that although technology was used by the inhuman ones for evil purposes, those of us on that fateful day who are truly "human" managed to use technology for good... and to tell their loved ones one last time,

"I love you".

Joe Carson

What do you think? Talk about it in our Forums...

MacBook Pro (5-17-06) Dr. Neale Monks. A subjective review of the MacBook Pro
Freeway 4 Pro (2-28-06) Dr. Neale Monks. Freeway Pro, the Quark-like web design program from Softpress, has been substantially revised and sports a bright new look. But do the changes go more than skin deep? Neale Monks finds out.
Astrostack (1-18-06) Dr. Neale Monks. Long respected as one best astronomical image processing applications about, in its newest incarnation AstroStack now runs on the Macintosh. Has the wait been worthwhile?
Virtual PC 7 (11-23-05) Dr. Neale Monks. Virtual PC 7 is the update to the venerable Windows emulator to be entirely all Microsoft’s own work. Can Mac users expect to see any dramatic changes?
Eudora Pro 6.2 (8-5-05) Dr. Neale Monks. Eudora has been one of the most popular e-mail clients for the Macintosh for more than a decade. Neale Monks finds out how it compares with the Mail application that comes with OS X
MacAstronomica (4-22-05) Dr. Neale Monks. How does this amateur naked eye astronomy software stack up?
iKey 2.0 (3-11-05) Jeremy Young. How well does this automation utility work? How much time will you save?
Wolfram Research Publicon (3-11-05) Jeff Terry Does this new scientific word processor live up to the potential?
Microsoft Office 2004, Part 3, Word (1-28-05) Dr. Neale Monks. Are there enough new features to necessitate a jump from v.X?
REALbasic 5.5 (12-03-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Neale takes a look at the latest version of this programming package.
Office 2004, Part 2, Excel and Entourage (11-05-04) Dr. Neale Monks. In the second part of his review of Office 2004, Neale Monks looks at Excel and Entourage.
Phone Valet 2.0 (11-05-04) Pat St-Arnaud. The best question to ask might be "Is there anything that you can't do with this telephone/Mac integration tool?"
TiPaint Touch-up Kit and iKlear iPod Cleaning Kit (10-29-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Is it possible to restore the shiny good looks of iPods and PowerBooks even after years of use? Neale Monks looks at two cleaning products designed especially for Apple hardware.
Microsoft Office 2004, Part 1, PowerPoint (10-15-04) Dr. Neale Monks. In the first part of his review of Office 2004, Neale Monks looks at PowerPoint, for many people still the benchmark for presentation software.
ScrapX (9-17-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Aqueous Software's ScrapX brings the Scrapbook to OS X
CDFinder (8-20-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Finding what you want from among a stack of similar looking CDs can be a hassle, but help is at hand. Neale Monks looks at CDFinder, a budget-priced but powerful cataloguing tool.
Endnote 7 (8-13-04) Dr. Markus Geisen. EndNote 7 is a literature database that seamlessly interacts with your word processor. Is the latest version worth the upgrade?