After playing around with it, however, I began to think about how the machine works. And not just the iPhone: many “advanced” technologies that are being integrated with increasing regularity into our daily lives such as internet routers, streaming data, fibre-optics, liquid-crystal displays, and computers with amazing degrees of autonomy. All of these technologies seem to serve that same end of streamlining the experience of life. They make for easier, broader communication, lighter workloads, and exponentially greater information availability than existed without them. There is, however, a byproduct that I think is largely ignored.
Dependence.
Allow me to explain. If I’m using an axe and the handle breaks, I can easily diagnose the problem and repair it myself by purchasing or making another handle. If my pants rip, it is completely within the scope of my abilities to patch them. Even in the event of problems with more complex technologies such as my car or lawnmower or the HVAC in my house, I can usually at least make a close judgment on the source of my strife, and often times can even be the one to return it to working order. These faculties are not mentioned as an attempt to play myself as a particularly handy lad...anyone can do those things with a relatively small amount of training. Fixing any of those items relies on basic motor skills, some minor tools and some common sense.
Enter my cell phone(s). Since my first cell phone about six years ago, I’ve had a total of three service plans and something like nine different cell phone units. Three of the cell phones I got because of subscribing to a service, but the other six have been replacement phones. I’m terrible about losing, breaking, dropping and otherwise destroying phones, the same way that I am with shirts and hatchets. Where I can fix my shirts and my hatchet, repairing my cell phone is completely beyond my skill set. I think that that is reasonable to assume for the vast majority of cell phone users, as well. It is unlikely that the average cell phone service subscriber has the knowledge, tools, or training to fix a broken phone unit. The solution to breakage, then, is to ship one’s phone back to a supplier and either have that unit repaired, or have a replacement sent (and the replacements are typically a “reconditioned” item, i.e. someone else’s broken unit that the smart people at the factory were able to get working again). Due to the complexity of the technology that is within a cell phone, consumers are more or less forced into this course of action for repair. They are completely dependent upon the higher skills, knowledge, and implements of someone else in order to continue operating their normal life. This isn’t limited to the repair side, either. If all that I have is a cell phone unit, I don’t know how to sync it with a service provider; I need someone else to do that for me. On a daily basis my use of a cell phone requires hundreds of workers maintaining a complex network of towers, wires, and waves (haven’t you seen the Verizon commercials?). So the use of a cell phone constitutes a pretty high level of dependence on a large number of other people.
I believe in the tradition of the American spirit. I believe that the principles of self-reliance and independence and freedom that were the foundational elements of our nation are some of the strongest ideals that have ever constituted a government. I also think that the gradual shift toward greater dependence upon the government by the populace is one of the most frightening prospects that we face today. I don’t care to have my moral choices regulated by the lawmakers in Washington, and I think that I can much more effectively care for the poor and needy than the welfare system. I want to be free and independent. So given that moral frame, the idea that the computer at which I sit to type this is a source of dependence on so many others does not settle. I cannot say that, without qualification, I think that increasing technology is bad, but I have to wonder if it as great a thing as we all believe.
Wendell Berry talks about these ideas a lot. In Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community he says, on the subject of “global thinking” (which we can analog with technology by way of the fact that, in the way that he means it, it is both dependent upon and a result of the advancement of technology) “if we want to put local life in proper relation to the globe, we must do so by imagination, charity, and forbearance and by making local life as competent, independent, and self-sufficient as possible—not by the presumptuous abstractions of ‘global thought.’” It is debilitating to the individual to have to outsource in order to function. In fact, it is not simply debilitating, it is counterintuitive and diametrically opposed to the very nature of the individual. Outsourcing and dependence make for the loss of individuality. If you don’t give a shit about individuality, then I suppose that this shouldn’t be an issue. I, however, am driven to distaste since individuality and thoughtfulness are two things that I have made focal points of my life pursuit.
So where does that leave me in the practical sense? It is fine to say what I have said, but can I really just drop all the technology of which I do not have a working knowledge? I don’t know if I am ready to do that just yet. I am inclined, however, to make myself more knowledgeable about those pieces of technology that are most central to my life. I am also inclined to attempt to reduce the level of dependence I have on those pieces themselves, so that it less of an issue if something which I cannot repair myself comes up. I’ll start there.
Go in peace and simplicity.
spencer
“But abstraction, of course, is what is wrong. The evil of the industrial economy (capitalist or communist) is the abstractness inherent in its procedures—its inability to distinguish one place or person or creature from another. William Blake saw this two hundred years ago. Anyone can see it now in the application of almost any of our common industrial tools and weapons.”
-Wendell Berry-
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