A couple of weeks ago, my car got broken into, and my GPS unit was stolen (along with a few other things). I picked up a replacement unit today, and the experience of going without satellite guidance has given me a fresh and personal perspective on the nature of technological dependency.
I’m not one of those people who has their GPS unit running all the time, so for me, GPS is still a supplement, not a necessity. I still like to do route planning ahead of time (albeit using Google Maps or Mapquest – nothing as archaic as a paper map). Even so, GPS is a lot more than a safety net, and substantially more than a crutch.
Technology serves us best when it supplements our abilities as humans, not supplants them. For example, after your GPS unit takes you to a neighborhood, you should be able to merge the machine knowledge with what you experience (like where the potholes or messy turn lanes are), and then build on that knowledge to riff out alternate routes, or to be able to apply your human veto when it, say, insists on routing you through the heart of Georgetown during rush hour. (If nothing else, it may help keep you from driving off a cliff.)
“But Joe,” you say, “social technologies are about people and conversations, not technology!” Aside from quibbling about the truth of that, I see a similar phenomena in social technologies and collective intelligence, where we can get so wrapped up in weighing other people’s judgments and opinions that we end up second-guessing our own, paralyzing ourselves when it comes to making decisions, or worse, ceding judgment entirely to the group. This is true for both little things (shopping with product reviews) and big ones (choosing colleges).
When I mentioned potential downsides to omnipresent access to the hive mind, I wasn’t thinking “Skynet takes over the world” — I was more along the lines of “People can’t make up their minds anymore.” We complain about politicians who can’t make decisions without checking the public opinion polls — what about a future where we as individuals can’t make decisions without validating them against our own social circles?
Probably an exaggeration (I hope), but also a necessary counterbalance to those digital utopians who insist that the connected future (or even connected present) will lead to an enlightened community of self-actualized users (though in the modern version of the myth, they’re doing mashups, not writing code).
Despite assertions to the contrary, I still think that knowing an answer is inherently better than knowing where to find the answer (though of course, there’s room for both skills).
I may be just trying to find the dark cloud in front of the silver lining. Then again, I think about the several occasions recently where I’ve misplaced my cell phone. I’m not even a heavy talker, texter, or mobile Internet user, but going phoneless for even short periods of time really gives me pause. And maybe this is just my inner generation gap speaking, but I really worry about those folks — the digital natives — for whom ubiquitous mobile social connections are as necessary as oxygen.
Anyway, like I said, maybe I’m just being a cranky crank. Tell me why I’m wrong in the comments.
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