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:
- It is good for young people to see the country and meet other kinds of people
- It is safer for teenagers to travel together and share the driving (did I really think that one was going to work?)
- 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.
- You’ll love the feeling of accomplishment
- You’ll be able to get whatever car you want
- 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:
- Movement, as toward a goal; advance.
- Development or growth: students who show progress.
- Steady improvement, as of a society or civilization: a believer in human progress.
Mmmm, I’m not convinced.
8 comments ↓
Pat is fantastic. In today modern society I too wonder about the benefits of technology. Things do make my life easier but that is because I choose what technology will benefit me. On the other hand, I like face to face conversations that inspire and point out ideas that will benefit me. One on one is best.
Ok Pat,
I agree with much of what you say. I don’t text, own a blackberry, or even know how to use a GPS.
But…. I love pivot tables and I have spent a lot of time teaching clients how to use them. One client was able to replace a 20K a year employee with just one pivot table…..
Thanks for you insight….
Here’s another perspective…
In 1800, global life expectancy at birth was less than 30 years, in 1900 it had risen into the mid-40 year range. Today, global life expectancy at birth is 67 years.
So yes, fewer people are starving and dying of disease.
In 1900 the average work week exceeded 50 hours in the industrial west. Now, the average work week averages under 40 hours. plus we no longer, at least in the West, have the horrible child labor conditions prevalent in the 19th century. We forget that for most people childhood is a recent invention.
Are students more prepared? Than in my day? Absolutely. I had Encyclopedia Britannica and a crappy school library, these kids have the world. Are you kidding me? It’s not technology that’s failed the kids its us adults who’ve created the modern educational curriculum that’ve failed the kids.
My son not only takes Chinese but he can get on Skype and dialogue for free with someone in China. Wow! Absolutely information is being turned into knowledge. Every day. And it’s being used to promote ignorance but, then again, when the plague swept Europe in the 1300’s and wiped out 1/2 the population people were burning people at the stake because they thought they were witches or demons who’d brought this calamity upon them. How many people got burned at the stake during the asian bird flu scare?
Are people, et al, more connected. Yes. How we choose to use the connection is the issue. For the most part it’s used for good. It’s used to promote understanding. It’s the fringe and fanatics, always, that use technology for spreading lies and misinformation. Shame on us for failing in our due diligence and buying the lies.
Are people more compassionate and giving of themselves and do corporations encourage this? No and yes, I believe that people don’t engage as much as they could. On the other hand, technology enables sites like http://www.kiva.org to make it easy for you and I to have an impact globally and 24 year old friends of my daughter can set up their own online sites benefiting orphanages in Africa (babyafrica.gemsolv.com).
Corporations may not give employees a day a week but look at the sponsorship roster for any charity event. Whose names are on it. Mr. & Mrs. Joe Smith? No. IBM, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, etc. Who’re manning the phones for Jerry Lewis MD fund raising? Teams from corporate America using technology donated by corporate America.
The world’s problems are caused as much by the fact that advances in medicine (technology) and food production (technology) have allowed this planet’s human population to explode from 1 billion in 1900 to 6 billion plus today. More people are dying because there are more people. More wars are being fought because their are more independent countries feeling their oats than in the old colonial days. Yep, technology caused this problem but we’d all be better off living to age 30, on average, than 67 and bumping elbows with a few billion fewer folks.
Yeah, it sucks, all the crap that goes on in the world and that 40,000,000 people die every year of starvation, disease and malnutrition but those 40 million are here in large part because of technology and technology will help us keep them alive. And, don’t forget, technology makes us instantly aware of the earthquake in China and the tsunami in Indonesia that wipes out 100’s of thousands but also leads to incredibly quick global response that saves even more and eventually will provide the means to warn people that catastrophe is coming so they can avoid disaster all together.
Quit demonizing technology. It’s not the problem. As with most tools, including the crude stone axes we fashioned to hunt with but used, as well, to bonk our neighboring cave dwellers on the head. It’s the hands wielding the technology that creates the problems.
Yet technology, in many ways, has allowed us to give value to human life on a scale unprecedented in human history. Believe me, for most of history, most humanity was considered disposable and allowed to live at the pleasure of those who ruled. You think the millions who labored and slaved to build the great pyramids, the great wall, the colisseums, the cotton plantations of the south and cathedrals of latin america had job choice or satisfaction.
It was the technology of the printing press, the steam engine, the photograph, the telegraph, the vaccine that enabled us to become not just humans but humanitarians.
PS – as for GPS, I only wish my daughter had it when I had to talk her out of a bad neighborhood she’d wandered into 1200 miles away from me – thank goodness for technology; I was able to get online and guide her by cell phone (oops, more technology!) back to her car. Same deal when my son missed his train to Mt. Fuji in Japan, I was able to get online and find a place for him to stay and a train schedule to help him safely resume his journey.
Use technology to …
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Thanks Corky, Marc and Tom,
We shall have to see what our guest says about Tom’s comment – likely the longest comment ever on this blog! Corky, we’ve written before about the need to continue get together in person – especially at meetings and conventions. Marc, so who pays only 20K anymore for an employee – seems a bit chintzy, no? Smile.
And, Tom, I don’t know how we do this – but Sheryl and I agree completely with Pat and completely with you. It’s part of our problem. Thanks for the time you took and the great examples.
Thanks, Thomas! You are definitley a cheerleader and huge proponent of technology. I’m not sure I demonized it at all. I agree there are great technologies that have made my life easier and faster. I’ve even developed some pretty cool pivot tables!
I live in Amish country. My local WalMart has horse and buggy tie-ups. I hear the clip-clop of horses on our old brick streets everyday. I see the beauty of simplicity and the value of technology.
You’ve listed many wonderful things about it. I just don’t like intrinsically linking it to progress and assuming all progress is good.
But, I’m like Michael…I agree with you and me too
Thanks for taking a lot of time to respond. And isn’t it amazing that we can be having this discussion! Ah…technology!
Thanks Pat,
Now I remember what I wanted to say! I agree with both – but what I don’t like (and just wrote this on someone’s blog – forget whose) is that so many people who “sell” technology don’t give a balanced approach to it. It’s always “oh, wow, isn’t this great!” I suppose, though, that you might say that about the Luddites – they often take the same approach in reverse, “This technology is driving us nuts.” Anyway – just wanted to add that.
From the Harvard Business Review today:
More Work and Less Play
U.S. workers’ leisure time shrank 20% last year, down from an average of 20 hours a week in 2007 to an average of 16 hours in 2008. During the same period, their average work week increased by 1 hour. Why the 3-hour discrepancy? Researchers at Harris Interactive speculate that stressed-out employees are spending more time at home checking their email and thinking about work – that’s not exactly work, but it certainly isn’t leisure, either.
SOURCE: Harris Interactive
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