It is a view widely acknowledged to be true that any technology providing a hitherto unrealized capability must be a source of human freedom. That is to say, the undeniably astounding advances made by scientists and engineers through the centuries have had a profoundly liberating effect on us as members of the human race. We have been granted freedom from the scourge of many infectious diseases, freedom from the toil of planting and harvesting crops by hand, freedom from the constraints of geographic space, and freedom from the scarcity and expense of thousands of commercial goods.
Most recently, and more than any civilization in the history of the world, we have been treated to a vast array of attempts to free us from our boredom. At the risk of sounding like a cantankerous old geezer (a risk I take with ever-increasing frequency), I would term our American non-culture a “Wilderness of Gadgets.” In this wilderness, we are promised utterly limitless entertainment options no longer constrained by a lack of portability. The freedom from boredom afforded by movies, television, video games, digital communication and the Internet can now leave the living room and be enjoyed anytime, anywhere. The year is 2009, and everyone is finally interested.
Unfortunately, these developments in consumer technology do not so much create freedom as take it away. We see this most immediately in the form of that paradigm of our young century, the Blackberry. By means of this device, thousands of businesspeople have been made accountable for their work emails every hour of every day, from Pawtucket to Pyongyang. In this case, “wireless technology” simply means that the shackles are invisible to the naked eye. Thousands of eager young professionals have learned too late the wisdom of Laocoon: “I fear CEO’s, even bearing gifts.”
I met a young man of thirteen this winter who, as of January 5, had logged over 100 hours on Xbox LIVE since Christmas. Perhaps some of you readers can boast higher levels of dedication; honestly, I do not want to know. The point is, my young friend Andrew was so freed by his console that he did virtually nothing else for an entire two-week period. In the absence of specified scholastic obligations, he answered the Call of Duty in a decidedly different sense. The conjoined boxes of pulsating light had not so much liberated him as swallowed his existing freedom whole.
The worst part of it is, even as our gadgets satiate our ennui, they increase our propensity to boredom even more. As one becomes immersed in the ever-more-clearly visible landscapes and clearly-defined objectives of video games of all kinds (as another middle school student told me when I chastised her class for playing too much Xbox: “It’s OK, I have a PlayStation 3.” Not quite), one’s imagination begins to atrophy. There is no need to invent fantastic adventures and mysterious kingdoms when such things can be purchased for only $49.95 a pop. Thus, as one fights boredom at the cost of one’s imagination, the boredom simply grows back, multiplying in strength like the heads of a Hydra.
People espousing views like mine on this subject are often accused of being either Luddites or hypocrites, of harboring an irrational hatred of technology or, indeed, of not harboring a hatred of technology, as evidenced by the fact that critics of technology criticize via computer. This opposed but related criticisms miss the point: the great danger of gadgets is precisely that they are so appealing, that even those striving for virtue are solely tempted to squander the little time on given us on earth by using it. I am just as susceptible to the siren song of the television as the next guy, and almost certainly more so. The problem of technology is not that it is detestable; the problem is that it is easily and universally appealing.
Another contention, often made even by those who concur in my dark assessment of technology’s effects, is that technology in itself is neutral; it can be used for good or for ill, and the latter is too often the case. To my mind, this view is also mistaken. In the most literal of senses, yes; technological artifacts are inanimate, and thus neutral. But technology conditions us to think and act in certain ways, and the vast and ever-growing havoc wreaked upon our society by the present digital explosion is not simply the result of unencumbered human choice. Even as technology encourages a quest for dominion over nature and claims victory over our humanity, it feeds on the lowest impulses in our nature by appealing to our laziness and indulging our lusts, for violence in particular. Our hearts and minds are becoming enslaved, and here is the greatest irony of all: what with the death of our imaginations and the technological alienation of the human person from itself, we’re more bored than ever.
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