It’s perfectly normal to feel that way.
We have always had a fear of technological change.
Can you imagine being afraid that writing your thoughts on paper would erode your ability to retain such knowledge through memory alone, that your thoughts were slipping out of your mind when you wrote them down?
Plato was scared to death of that.
And how about the idea that the printing press would create “a confusing and harmful abundance of books”? A Swiss biologist Conrad Gessner expressed that
My grandmother figured you had to leave something plugged into electrical outlets or the electricity would leak out.
We all have our fears of technology.
And yet, the relentless march of technology, and information available, continues to march on – relentlessly, some might say.
The Harris Poll of 2,210 U.S. adults surveyed online (ironically) between June 12 and 17, 2013 shows us that we are still divided on how technology impacts the way we live our lives. On the one hand, strong majorities believe that technology has improved the overall quality of their lives (71%) and encourages people to be more creative (65%). But, at the same time, strong majorities also believe technology is creating a lazy society (76%), has become too distracting (69%) and is corrupting interpersonal communications (68%).
Additionally, women are more likely than men (25% and 20%, respectively) to indicate that they could not live without television – and the men may want to hand the remote over promptly when asked, as women are twice as likely as them to indicate that they could live without sex (27% women, 13% men).
We’ll drill down into this survey in the next blog post and decide for ourselves if the technology we are seeing really is A Better Idea.
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Rod Kackley is a journalist and author who has written for Crain’s Detroit Business, MiBiz and The Detroit News, as well as working as the news director of WOOD-AM/FM-Grand Rapids. For more of his work, please go to www.rodkackley.com or download his free app available through iTunes and Google Play.