Thanks for the generous response, Mark.

I agree that this current phenomenon “represents the triumph of economic thinking in education over humanism.” I also agree that technology has exacerbated the situation, slowly and subtly replacing us, objectifying us, obsolescing us. I keep returning to the personalism of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Laborem Exercens. Hard to believe this was written in 1981!

The development of industry and of the various sectors connected with it…shows how vast is the role of technology, that ally of work that human thought has produced, in the interaction between the subject and object of work (in the widest sense of the word). Understood in this case not as a capacity or aptitude for work, but rather as a whole set of instruments which man uses in his work, technology is undoubtedly man’s ally. It facilitates his work, perfects, accelerates and augments it. It leads to an increase in the quantity of things produced by work, and in many cases improves their quality. However, it is also a fact that, in some instances, technology can cease to be man’s ally and become almost his enemy, as when the mechanization of work “supplants” him, taking away all personal satisfaction and the incentive to creativity and responsibility…or when, through exalting the machine, it reduces man to the status of its slave.