Is technology making us stupider? Are computers turning us into moronic dolts, incapable of reason? Or is technology a pathway to new freedom? In the 90's, when I was in college, our professors routinely pounded into us the idea that "technology is the future". The brave new world promised to us, in which every shiny happy worker with a knowledge of computers would have a stress-free life telecommuting to his high-tech job has been rapidly replaced by a dog-eat-dog world of techno-feudalism, in which workers compete in a furious race to the bottom. Is technology to blame? What new dangers does the post-modern world of technology offer up for us?
To be sure, technology has always resulted in a loss of jobs for those whose skills are outdated. Nowadays, arithmetic can be done by computers, spell-checking eliminates the need for learning spelling or grammar, and we rely on computers to help us with banking and tax forms, something that, years ago, we would have had to do for ourselves, using good-old-fashioned common sense and a slide rule. However, the danger inherent in technology is not merely that we use it as a crutch so that we can think less.
No, the gravest danger lies in what technology has enabled us to do without. We can now do without learning musical instruments, or paying musicians to play for us- thanks to the CD player and the radio. Those recorded musicians, incidentally, can do without bothering to play or sing in tune (auto-tune will take care of it), playing with proper rhythm (yes, there is a plug-in for that) and can even type the music in to a program and have the computer play it, thus eliminating the need for musicians entirely. Nowadays, pieces of music are composed, produced and recorded without even one single musician picking up an instrument, strumming a guitar, or pounding away on a real-life drum.
The same goes for the visual arts. Many of the visual images that we are flooded by, day and night, have been doctored by computers. The ability to draw and paint using traditional media is quickly fading away into obscurity.
Some would say good riddance. Composing by hand, as Beethoven once did, painting and sculpting, as Michelangelo did, are seen by scoffers as modern-day anachronisms. We live in modern times, and "cutting edge" is all the rage. Music needn't be beautiful, tonal, or even recognizably musical, and art has long ago lost all pretensions of being about artistic craft, higher ideals or even artistry. In our cynical times, it is often considered the epitome of higher art to consider art itself redundant and of no greater value than a plastic chair found on the sidewalk. Cynicism is all the rage.
However, in the very act of compartmentalizing tasks to the point of giving over almost all of the drudge work to computers, we run into not only the danger of losing essential skills that could be forever lost, we run the risk of destroying the foundations of society itself. A nation which produces no painters, handcrafters or traditional musicians is culturally impoverished. A small tribe of grass-skirted "primitives", in which every member has skills in arts and crafts, can sing or play a musical instrument, is in less danger of cultural annihilation than one in which the work of producing art or music has been relegated to machines. Without a tactile relationship to making music and art, a person soon loses all ability to discern the difference between that which requires skill and the commodified and cheaply made. Our senses, once dulled, may never regain what has been lost. Is it no wonder that so many young people are becoming alienated and suicidal? Archaeologists have often pondered the causes of highly complex civilizations, seemingly overnight, vanishing without a trace. Ours, with its assembly-line culture, could very well be next.
The transient nature of the technology, the internet and modern media, in general, poses yet another problem. In previous centuries, knowledge was passed down gradually, with each generation carefully pondering the works of the previous one. There was a canon of accepted works which was honored, and all cultural change occurred incrementally. However, our history and previous culture is being erased with increasing rapidity. Soon all traces of lost attitudes, perspectives and ways of life may be lost forever. With cultural changes occurring not merely by the day but by the minute (such as Wikipedia), we are in danger of losing our cultural and historical footing altogether. With older ways of transmitting knowledge are cast aside or "reinterpreted" according to the whims of fashion, the question is will future generations even share the same language with previous ones? Will there even be a chance of understanding between generations?
Technology is meant to be our slave, not our master. If we allow technology to rob us of our humanity, we have only succeeded in defeating ourselves. We mustn't let the traditional arts and humanities languish under the banner of modernity.
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