Smart Technology

This weekend we got the movie WALL-E (by Pixar) to watch. It's one of those I am sorry that I did not see in the theater.

It is a grand movie - one, arguably on balance, is probably worthy of an Oscar as all of the elements - plot, characters, music, effects, impact - are as well balanced as one could hope to find in any movie.

However, it sparked a thought (one of many, really - another sign of a good movie) about the use of technology. Essentially, technology was developed to the point that people did nothing for themselves, including live their lives: affected by microgravity, they had become overweight blobs, never walking, sitting in anti-grav lounger that took them everywhere with a telescreen in front of their faces and speakers on either side of their heads which controlled all input. Robots did everything. It is only as they return to Earth and embrace a physical life (as the credits show) that they achieve some kind of balance with technology.

Smart Technology (SmarTech? Probably already been copyrighted) is something which hits home now perhaps more than ever with recent economic developments. We develop technology to improve our lives, but what are the other effects of that improvement? A simple one, suggested by one of my favorite authors Gene Logsdon, is that we increased technology to free people from the "physical drudgery" ( a term Logsdon has problems with) of farming. The result: Fewer farmers, more monocropping, less local dependence of foods (up to the current economic crisis, it was apparently cheaper to ship lamb from New Zealand than buy it locally in California), and a population which has become far more overweight and less active, prompting the development of "health clubs" where we have to set aside time (money and resources too) to exercise - something the work was doing by itself.

Or to paraphrase Michael Crichton in Jurassic Park, "We always ask if we can do it. We never ask should we do it."

I write this as a closet Luddite, who tends to disdain the use of new technology partially from seeing and experiencing the wrong horse (Betamax anyone? Or maybe the Apple IIe?). What has occurred to me is that in fact, I have let my commercial disdain for investing in a new technology until proven affect my willingness to at least accept and investigate new technologies, and instead of thinking "How can I adapt this to what I am currently doing? Does it make sense? Does it improve my life - the totality of my life, not just making things easier?" I think "Just another thing to go wrong" or "Something else which is not useful". Yes, not all technology is useful - but neither is it all to be rejected out of hand.

Robotic technology is a fine example of this. We adapt robots to do what we cannot or will not do - but do we replace that with something useful for the people to do? Just because robots can do a lot things, should they do a lot of things?

I don't know that my thoughts are fully developed on this - indeed, I am getting together my 2009 goal list, and this could be a worthy year's study. Still, the basic question remains: we may have an opportunity in this economic downturn to fundamentally change how we do life and economy (and no, I'm not talking any sort of politics. Both parties have demonstrated that government is the most blunt, least effective tool of change. Like everything else, it will have to be us). Can we take it? Do we take it?

I'm off - ironically, to take a class in Adobe Acrobat 8 - talk about your cool technology....