Technology and the Hard Stuff of Living

I read what I think is great op-ed in the New York Times - How Plato Foresaw Facebook’s Folly
by Bret Stephens.

His premise?

Technology promises to make easy things that, by their intrinsic nature, have to be hard.


I found this valuable in reading because the world is now - for better or worst - almost completely tilted to technology.  We can disagree about the value in that but whether we do end up with self-driving cars or robots taking care of us in our old age - we are still human beings. 

Technology may be - right now - rewiring the brains of children.  Maybe creating a need-to-have-it-now feeling.  Maybe creating a fear or anxiety about direct human connections.  I found these two paragraphs to be great and I urge you to consider talking to your children about the issues they raise.

I also urge you to tell your kids that the writer found his thesis in from a story from Plato and Socrates, written 2400 years ago. 

Tweeting and trolling are easy. Mastering the arts of conversation and measured debate is hard.

Texting is easy. Writing a proper letter is hard.

Looking stuff up on Google is easy. Knowing what to search for in the first place is hard. (And hence the need for librarians to help our kids learn how to find and use information.)

Having a thousand friends on Facebook is easy. Maintaining six or seven close adult friendships over the space of many years is hard.

Swiping right on Tinder is easy.  Finding love — and staying in it — is hard.

That’s what Socrates (or Thamus) means when he deprecates the written word:

It gives us an out.

It creates the illusion that we can remain informed, and connected, even as we are spared the burdens of attentiveness, presence of mind and memory. That may seem quaint today.

But how many of our personal, professional or national problems might be solved if we desisted from depending on shortcuts?