I’m stuck.
Stuck between two schools of thought about the inexorable shift toward higher levels of technology, toward the further distillation of automatic, mobile, social, virtual — everywhere, at all times.
One school says (in cold, robot voice): “Get with the program, human. Grab a hand-held and stare into the flickering light. It’s useless to resist. And it’s good for the economy.”
Or is it?
Enter the other school of thought. It questions what, exactly, we’re gaining from the dizzying advance of technology. It sees high-tech gains as an efficiency freak’s dream but, increasingly, as a worker’s pink slip.
Don’t get me wrong. I use and benefit from technology. For some time, however, I’ve harbored doubts about where we’re going with all of this.