Technology has made us slaves to our machines
Responding to Waldenby John Kaufman
Americans like to make much of our political freedoms, our right to pursue happiness unburdened by government, to speak our minds and worship without fear. But when it comes to the use of machines, especially the ever-growing assortment of high-tech contraptions, even conservationists and the more liberal-hearted have bought into a form of ecological and economic tyranny.
It was Henry David Thoreau who first pointed out that we Americans were becoming “the tools of our tools.” But Thoreau could not foresee what we have now become: the victims of convenience. Today we are so dependent on fossil fuel and electric power (President Bush failed to mention our addiction to power plants) that even the briefest loss or scarcity of either disrupts our economy and sends us all into a cultural and personal tizzy.
Thoreau understood that political freedom was inadequate without an economic or technological liberty, so he famously set out to discover just how few tools a person needed to live well.
If we compare the contents of Thoreau’s cabin with those of a contemporary apartment or office, the difference is striking. Thoreau tells us that his “furniture” consisted of “a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass, three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet and a frying pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses and a japanned lamp.”
Heat was supplied by a fireplace. To cool off, Thoreau jumped into Walden Pond. I assume his writing was accomplished with pen and paper, though perhaps he made use of a newfangled writing tool: the pencil.
So armed with a desk, a chair, pencil and paper, and the luxury of an oil lamp, Thoreau produced one of the great classics of American literature. Furthermore, he wrote “Walden” without in any way polluting Walden Pond; he burned no fossil fuel, he was not hooked to or on a power plant. And because he lived simply, he had a lot of time to loaf, to walk, to write. Thoreau was, in every sense, a free man.
Thoreau was also, of course, a 19th century man unburdened by wife or children. And his literary genius allowed for little sympathy for those farmers and other laborers of Concord who needed or preferred to work longer hours and accumulate more possessions. Thoreau, nevertheless, is useful to us today because we are a nation that cannot say no.
Apart from the great expense and complexity of digital gadgets, we in the computerized world now suffer from what we might call electronic harassment. Though most obvious in our use of cell phones (aptly named, as in a virtual prison of communication), computers in general do more harm than good by promising what they cannot provide: a smaller, more intimate world, a more comfortable reality. A “chat room,” for instance, is in no way a conversation, for too much of the human relationship is obscured; the chatting becomes mere chatter that is ripe for lying and delusions of intimacy.
Similarly, e-mail and the Internet serve to divide us more than unite us, distract us more than satisfy us. The telephone at least provides us with a voice, even when the voice is selling us something. What are computers selling? The idea that people and nature are less valuable than man-made miracles.
In the spirit of Thoreau, I no longer write on a glowing screen. My tool of choice is a 1938 Royal typewriter, a machine that is simple to use and dark and dull enough to leave the writer unmolested.
Free at last from Bill Gates, virtual viruses and polluting power plants, I am a liberated writer.
John Kaufman lives in Wauwatosa.
Published: November 22, 2006
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.php?ntid=108538&ntpid=0
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