Dossier, Volume 14 #4

Of Hairdryers and Lightening Rods

The question struck me when I was in the bathroom with the stencilled Celtic fish. I turned on the hairdryer and my one- year-old daughter Bernadette was terrified--until she could hear my voice above the din. And I wondered: are we still able to hear the human voice above the noise of our technology?

In the marrow of my bones, I doubt it. I am a Luddite. Not a consistent one, of course, or why would I even be using a hairdryer? If I approached consistency, I would be unbearable to live with. As it is, I'm constantly scouring the sidewalks on garbage day for new soapboxes to stand on. Besides their convenience, the hairdyer and other gadgets in our house serve the salutary purpose of keeping me on the ground.

However, I know too many people who I feel have been stunned, indeed mesmerized, by the new computer technology. People who say that computers are tools and ask with bemusement if I would be writing articles against axes or wooden spoons to stir soup. A tool.

Presumably, one has a choice whether to use a particular tool or not. Are we truly free to reject the computer-tool? I knew there was something fishy when the back-to-school specials this year (remember 10 HB pencils for a dollar with a free plaid pencil case?) were computers for only $999.99. A tool. I'm also puzzled by people's solicitude that I learn to use this particular tool and their condescension at my refusal.

The next slogan: universal access to information. I'm unconvinced that the world will end for lack thereof. Lack of wisdom, perhaps. Lack of human spirit. Lack of faith. Inability to suffer with, to share. There are only so many hours in a day and I fear that these pearls of the human heart are at best not cultivated by technology and will at worst be eclipsed by it.

"Access to Information," which equals money in the corporate world, has become an obsessive end in itself in our private lives. The process of becoming consumers is thereby almost complete. Our physical bodies go to the supermarket and buy deodorant; our minds and spirits narrow into this voracious thirst for "information." Is there not a profound rewriting of what it means to be a human being when this way of being comes to replace common sense, search for wisdom, desire to learn what love is, fidelity to someone through thick and thin? It seems the best we can do for our youth is to give them free condoms and information about places for street kids to crash. The right information is what they need!

With computers, our illusion that we have choices is reinforced. We can now do things previously undreamed of. Link up with rare- stamp collectors in Tanzania! Have "conversations" with a koala- bear expert who lives in a remote village in China! And at the supermarket, we have twenty kinds of deodorant to choose from. The options within the system mesmerize us (with or without Muzak), but less and less are we free to choose or reject the system itself. I sense we are entering a tyrannical vortex. An architect must have computer skills. A doctor must have computer skills. A priest (!) must have computer skills. We huddle to console ourselves that this is the "way of the future" and therefore good (do I detect a gap in logic?), but I suspect that most people are panicking. The awareness that this is, in fact, a loss of freedom is still mostly at a subconscious, unarticulated level, but it wreaks its havoc nonetheless.

The poor I know inhabit a distinct universe from computers. There is no point in entering a virtual world when you are being kicked out of your basement apartment and have some cab-driving experience. Or buying "state of the art" every few months when you are mooching bus tickets.

Then there's the idea of place. The idea that people actually live, make love, brush their teeth (not necessarily in that order) somewhere. That's why they have addresses. Their houses have a certain smell, their children wear mismatched socks and they do or don't allow their daughters to wear lipstick. People drop in unexpectedly. There are people at their deathbed. They know their neighbours even if they hate them. Their neighbour lets his pitbull run loose and they have to hone their diplomatic skills rather quickly. This is good. I wish I could escape the sense that fewer and fewer people have lives in this local sense. They are busy meeting names and printouts in a nonexistent world. Whiling away the hours with the likeminded. Is this a new twist on human community or a precise avoidance of the hairy human beings who, in their lack of sophistication, tend to surround us? I suspect the latter. Why waste time with people who are not "online"?

The Amish, at one point in their community life, faced the question of whether to allow lightning rods on their barns. Their concern was that when a farmer's barn was hit by lightning, the community rallied around that farmer to rebuild the barn and provide for his family. The destroyed barn strengthened community and lightning rods would take that away.

God grant us that acuity of vision.