The Glass Cage by Nick Carr: No, Nick, we’re not there yet
(IMAGE: Charis Tsevis)
Patricia Fernández de Lis, the chief editor of Spanish daily El País’ Science and Technology section asked me to write something challenging Nicholas Carr’s latest book The Glass Cage: Automation and Us. My piece is called No, Nick, we’re not there yet (pdf in Spanish).
I’ve been following Nick’s work for more than a decade: in 2003, I disputed the arguments in his essay IT Doesn’t Matter, which later became the book Does IT Matter? (note the significant change in title) with an article in the European Business Forum called, accordingly, IT Does Matter. In 2009, I put Nick’s name forward to take part in the SIMO academic program (the main tech conference in Spain at that time), giving me the opportunity to meet him briefly.
Nick’s argument in The Glass Cage is that our growing use of IT is reducing certain intellectual abilities. I would argue that we are only seeing the early stages of our interaction with computers, and that others will follow with time. We have to put this type of interaction in a historical context, taking a longer view of things. It is very tempting to observe a phenomenon and see it as part of a universal trend, but that doesn’t always provide the right answers. The same technology that is supposedly atrophying our brains will undergo myriad changes in the coming generations: its interaction with people will be redefined many times, and possibly in ways that we cannot begin to imagine.
Below, the full text:
No, Nick, we’re not there yet
Nicholas Carr is among our most outstanding thinkers. In 2011, his book The Shallows was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In 2009, I invited him to a series of conferences I arranged, Nick was among my first choices as a guest speaker. Six years earlier, I had challenged the arguments that technology provides no real competitive edge in his controversial article IT Doesn’t Matter.
Nick takes tremendous care when preparing his arguments, which are based on his skepticism or pessimism about technology, and are always supported by examples that readers can readily identify with.
Just about every company director will have asked themselves at some point whether their investment in new technology is really creating value. Every parent will have thought that their children are turning into idiots, unable to detach their gaze from their smartphoes. Similarly, we have all wondered whether the technology we are increasingly dependent on is reducing our ability to think. These are arguments even the most technophile among us will recognize: “I used to be able to remember so many telephone numbers, but now I can hardly remember my own. I’m turning into an idiot.”
This is an easy message to understand and identify with: “How clever I am; that’s exactly what I was thinking and now this writer comes along and supports it with hard facts.” We become ambassadors for the book, using its arguments in discussions with others who don’t share our views. But I just don’t find Nick’s arguments convincing. Why? Because in many ways, he brings to mind (and I say this with the greatest respect) those children who sit in the back of the car on long journeys repeatedly asking: “Are we there yet?”
You see, I think that Nick’s techno-skepticism fails to take into account the long view, which is essential in analyzing the impact of technology on our lives. Arguments such as, “drivers who use GPS are overly relaxed, and fail to read road signs,” are perfectly valid, but are based solely on what is happening in the first phase of our contact with GPS technology. Drawing conclusions based on the experience of a first generation of users to argue that we should rethink our use of technology seems dangerous to me.
As somebody with a background in biology, to me this seems like Darwin formulating his theory of evolution on the basis of one generation of Galapagos finches: he would have seen nothing. The effects of technology, as with evolution, take place over the course of several generations, through adoption process based on innumerable variables and new versions that solve the problems that emerged earlier.
At the moment, it seems as though our children are becoming idiots because instead of studying, they simply cut and paste an article they have found on the internet. But what is really happening is that we are judging our children for the way that they use technology, when we have asked them to use it to solve a problem that has been presented mistakenly. The effects of technology cannot be measured yet: that will only be possible when our teaching methods we are using, which instead of developing memory, have been adapted to developing abilities such as critical thought, assessing information, or contrasting ideas.
A browser with 10 windows open on our screen could turn us into forgetful, scatterbrained beings, damaging our work. But for me, or at least according to those who live and work with me, such an approach means hyper-productivity. But that has only come about after a lengthy adaptation process, training, and evolution. In my daughter’s case, she is unable to work without a browser.
What Nick believes are conclusions, are in reality, simply what is happening as technology begins to act on us, before we have had to time adapt. The real impact, aside from being a dynamic process, will only be able to be evaluated some time later. To do so in anticipation is not only unfair, but potentially erroneous; and from my point of view, dangerous. It could lead to us rejecting things of future potential value, and preventing evolution from running its course.
So, Nick, no, we’re not there yet. In fact, we have a long, long way to go still ;-)
(En español, aquí)
