The Technology Buffet

I don’t have a smart watch. I have a dumb, analog watch that I’m very fond of. It tells me the time with mechanical hands, like in the olden days. It’s attractive and simple and... soothing, in a way.

I know a smart watch would do more stuff for me. It would be more convenient or... something. I could probably watch NETFLIX or create a webpage on it. Yay.

And I know I probably don’t need a watch at all. My phone works perfectly well as a clock*, and I spend a lot of time with devices that already have clocks. I’m never really at a loss to know what time it is. But my watch is reassuring in its tangibility and immediacy.

We don’t have to eat the entire technological buffet. We can pick and choose and enjoy what works for us. And we’re not savages because we stalled… I mean deliberately skipped over Blu-ray discs and went right from DVD’s to streaming.

*On language: would it be weird if I had written, “My telephone works perfectly well as a clock”?

FutureAnimal

For as much as we might wish to, we cannot un-invent things. The popularity of a given product or technology may wane due to fashion or regulation; they may be “lost” or “forgotten” because something better takes their place, but inventions address a need, they solve a problem and so seem to persist. Vinyl records and vinyl jackets will probably always live on, for better or worse, even as they are eclipsed by bits streaming down from the Cloud and Gore-tex.

Which really isn’t the point. The point is we can’t go back to a time when we didn’t have recorded music or clothing made out of synthetic materials. We also can’t go back to a time when we didn’t have cars or microwaves or smartphones.

One of my main rants is that technology can unfortunately replace almost every form of effort that humans can engage in. Since there’s not really a biological force that notices this and says, “Whoa, pony! Let’s not use that labor-saving device!” we end up indiscriminately letting technology solve every problem we have; whether for survival, convenience or entertainment.

A Luddite might rail against technology and sabotage manufacturing (for all the reasons that we think Luddites did this but actually didn’t). A common-sense approach might be to emphasize the tenets of adequate physical exercise and moderation in consuming all things. A philosopher might illuminate and encourage greater discernment between things that truly enrich our lives and help us achieve a greater, fuller expression of our humanity and those things that merely amplify our fears and reassure our own ignorance, comfort and status.

But as I’ve hinted, the Luddites would fail. And moderation is for chumps (until we change the culture). And philosophy is stuffy and boring (even though it isn’t: people just don’t recognize when they’re doing it or watching it in action).

My perspective now is that since technological “progress” is inexorable, we might simply find ourselves these days in an uncanny valley: technology is good enough to give us nearly everything we want, but at the cost of our long-term animal needs like musculoskeletal health, good sleep habits and a liver and pancreas that are not waging open rebellion. It feels a little risky, but my bet is on better, more insightful design and more developed technology that allows us to be the human animals we are without needing to go backwards in time.

Everyday Leverage

Written language helps to make the size of our brains appear larger than they are: it increases our memory in size and duration, and it helps us think more complicated thoughts because we can visualize more information at once in the short term, too.

Cooking helps our digestive system extract more nutrition from food: all kinds of cooking could be considered external pre-digestion. Fermentation, roasting, steaming, boiling – all of these techniques break down some of the more complicated, difficult to digest molecules and make them smaller. (And tastier, too! Tiny, tasty molecules. Mmmm...)

Sports (or Sport, apparently, if you’re British...) and play help our brains as well as our bodies develop and grow to be highly adaptable, responsive and attentive to the environment.

It’s weird to think of these things as technologies, but for the amount of leverage that can be gained from applying them they must be, right?

What is Technology?

Whether a branch or a rock, a hammer or a tennis racket, technology is the thing that fits our hands and gives us more of what we want. It’s an expression of our desires and an extension of our capabilities, whether we’re talking about carpet, a lightbulb or a garbage truck. (Yes, technically carpet fits our feet, not our hands: I meant it metaphorically. Let’s agree not to discuss toilets, OK?)

Perhaps, then, technology is a continuation of labor by another means.

The things we create are the stories we tell ourselves made manifest; both good and bad. Archaeology is a thing because it takes the idea seriously that our stuff says something about what we think, what we need and how we behave. Technology isn’t a perfect or complete expression of who we are, any more than our languages are. There are limitations to our skill and our patience. But we are there; in it somehow. We are the foot, the shoe we make and wear, and the footprint we leave behind.

Technology isn’t separate from us, it is us.