by guest writer, Pat Foltz

Pat Foltz has spent her entire career in the education and training business.  She is currently the Trainer Liaison for Fred Pryor Seminars/CareerTrack and is the “Lovable Luddite” in her personal life.

Do you remember trying to figure out how to sell your parents on an idea when you knew they wouldn’t approve? 

In the mid 1960’s, I recall trying to find benefit language for why it would be advantageous for me to borrow their car and travel to Florida with three other friends for Spring Break. I made a list of why it would be a good idea:

1. It is good for young people to see the country and meet other kinds of people
2. It is safer for teenagers to travel together and share the driving (did I really think that one was going to work?)
3. We could learn a lot about geography planning the trip

As a parent in the mid 1980’s, I remember searching desperately for great persuasive reasons for my teenager to get a job and buy his own car.

1. You’ll love the feeling of accomplishment
2. You’ll be able to get whatever car you want
3. Your friends will all be envious

We’re all in the sales business, aren’t we?  Aristotle was right. 

Some of us are just much better salespeople than others. It’s my belief that the best salespeople of all time are those people who try to sell us progress.  Most of these folks argue “it’s progress and progress is good!”

But I’m convinced that when progress becomes intrinsically linked to technology we all suffer. We gorge ourselves on technology without questioning the nutritional value. 

Let me give you a few examples of the spin: 

Example #1: I just overheard an executive telling a gathering of his managers that all their employees would need to start using a particular piece of software this year.  The executive told the managers that once the employees took all the time and energy on their own time to learn the software and then all the time and energy to transfer all the old stuff into the new software, etc…, (here it comes!) that their jobs would be SO much easier and they would have SO much more time.

Example #2: A person who uses another wonderful piece of software was trying to tell me the advantages to my life when I learn to use pivot tables….yes, pivot tables!  And do you know what advantages I’ll get when I know how to use pivot tables?  You guessed it!  My life will be SO much easier and I will have SO much more time.

Example #3: I was told that I was simply living in the dark ages because I don’t have a GPS guidance system.  Guess what will happen if I have a GPS guidance system?  Sing it with me, folks!  My life will be SO much easier and I will have SO much more time.

Yes, Some Tech is Good

I could go on and on…Social networking sites, TiVo, hundreds of pieces of software, cell phones, Blackberries, email accounts….everything I need to make my life easier and free up my time.

And guess what?  It is true that lots of technology has made my life easier and freed up my time.  I can communicate with people I don’t see very often in email, doing just what I used to do, writing long letters that arrive at their home in seconds via email instead of days later via the postal service.  I can see pictures of them posted on web sites so I don’t have to have boxes of curled up photos. 

I can browse through web sites like I used to browse through stores and now I can  get whatever I need delivered to my home.  It’s kind of like waiting for the Wells Fargo wagon to bring whatever I ordered from the catalogue. 

Is This Really Saving Us Time?

But, in every work place I have seen, technology has not made the employee’s workplace easier, nor has it freed up their time.  The spin was that we would work fewer hours, that the work week would go from 40 hours to much less, freeing us up to enjoy life more. 

The reality is that technology has made us far more productive. But the truth is, we’re more productive because all that free time has just been swallowed whole by asking people to do far more work than was ever possible without technology.  Technology has made us 24/7 workers, accessible anywhere and anyplace.

But, here’s the rub…is the world a better place because of all this progress?

• Are there fewer people starving?
• Are there fewer people killing one another?
• Are there fewer wars?
• Are people from different countries, cultures, races, religions and genders more connected?
• Is all that information accessible at your fingertips being turned into knowledge? 
• Are students graduating better prepared because they have grown up with all this technology?
• Are people using all this free time to volunteer to help those less fortunate, to sit and talk with a child or an elderly neighbor? 
• Are corporations taking all the free time they have created through technology to encourage employees to take one workday every week to help make the communities they live in better places?

Progress  means:

1. Movement, as toward a goal; advance.
2. Development or growth: students who show progress.
3. Steady improvement, as of a society or civilization: a believer in human progress.

Mmmm, I’m not convinced.