Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

The Highs and Lows Of the Modern Age

Let me be blunt: I am getting a little sick of technology.

No, I am not a neo-Luddite: I do not want to smash all the iPods on campus with my massive microeconomics textbook. I admit that I am quite dependent on modern technology; I am writing this article on a computer, while listening to music on my Bose headphones and texting on my cell phone. It is this ultimate reliance on technology that makes me so concerned. Our generation has been blessed and cursed to have been born and raised in perhaps the greatest 20 years of technological innovation in human history.

But first, what do we even mean when we speak of technology? Normally, we think of technology as some sort of innovation, especially in the industrial, mechanical, electrical or computer-engineering fields, that greatly enhances or changes how we live. Even so, the word technology at its roots simply means the “study of an art, skill or craft,” a quirky little definition that seems quite foreign based on our modern conception. Yet, this classical and antiquated definition harkens back to an important aspect of technology that our generation seems to have forgotten: that technology must be a means to an end and not an end itself.

Facebook, Twitter, blogging, PowerPoint, the Internet, email, cell phones: All are staple technologies that our generation would not know how to live without. These technologies have made our lives easier and more efficient, so we can do more things with the same amount of time. But is this ability always positive? Our modern routines have certainly benefited from great technological breakthroughs in the most practical sense – we no longer have to spend all our days working in the fields or in factories. Technology has given us the chance to attend school for more years, take more time to travel and have more time for leisure. But is there a point at which technology has gone too far? Are we as a society, a Georgetown community and individuals really better off because of these recent “advances”?

To name one example: email is certainly much faster and much more efficient than its predecessor, letter writing. Yet for that efficiency, that little extra bit of time, think of all we have lost: the blissful anticipation of an incoming letter; the excitement when it finally arrives; the understanding that because this handwritten letter required great time and energy to compose, it is special, meaningful and one of a kind.

We can have 500 “friends” on Facebook and yet not really know what real friendship is anymore. The Internet has put a world of knowledge at our fingertips, but unfiltered information is a dangerous thing: It is easily manipulated; misunderstood or misused.

PowerPoint can facilitate learning and prove to be a useful classroom aid, but it can just as easily become a replacement for our attendance at class and our engagement with the professor. Do Georgetown students really want to say they spent around $53,000 in tuition this year to read PowerPoint presentations?

In the end, what is often forgotten about modern technology is that in opening up our time to countless options, it has also greatly diminished their meaning. Our actions have significance when they require an exertion of energy, when they have to be done in place of something else. When technology has made it possible to do all that you want, you no longer have to decide which possible action is more important to you. To do everything, in fact, is to do nothing. To believe everything is to believe anything. If everyone is your friend, then you really do not have any friends at all.

Technology is always a double-edged sword. The invention of the wheel led as much to war-chariots as it did to trade caravans. The process of introducing new technologies is a continual compromise between gains and losses, between moving forward and looking back. This debate over the benefits and costs of every new piece of technology is crucial and cannot be dismissed lightly by our generation. Without it, instead of neo-Luddites we become something far worse: slaves to the very technological tools we have created.

Michael Fischer is a sophomore in the School of Foreign Service. He can be contacted at fischerthehoya.com. POSTSCRIPTS appears every other Friday.

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