IS LUDDITEITY THE ANSWER?
We have given up our sovereignty as thinking, reasoning human beings and have subordinated ourselves to our technology. Nowhere is that more evident than in the case of smartphones and computers; that is in the case of digital technology. Most people I know are intimidated by both. Most people I know are hesitant to simply press a key for fear of doing something wrong. How could a device that intelligent ever be wrong? I don't know ... if they were alive, perhaps we could ask Truman or MacArthur. Is it just me, or is there something wrong in calling someone a Luddite just because s/he is not obsessed with technology? Who decided that it is our be-all and end-all? As I have endeavored to demonstrate: technology may not be all that it is cracked up to be and we may be endangering ourselves as a species to boot.
Recently I read an article lamenting that we were risking our children's futures because we were not teaching them to program. If they didn't learn that, they would be doomed to become unfit for the world of tomorrow, we would be cheating them of the most promising opportunities. Today, three-quarters of the population of Germany, for example, has a driver's license, but how many of these almost 60 million people can fix a car? Moreover, 100 years ago when we were just getting rolling in the automobile society, how many of anybody, let alone educators, were claiming we would be robbing our children of their futures if they didn't learn automotive mechanics? What makes digital technology so different?