“They memorize schedules, names, addresses, phone numbers, passwords, birthday’s, and grocery lists, so we don’t have to. And increasingly, we rely on them.” -Morville, Ambient Findability, pg. 67
What are we doing to ourselves? Lots of people are starting to ask this question about the wave of dependability Americans have shifted on to the electronic devices that are starting to define our culture. We all knew this day would come, or at least it’s started to come. It seems like just yesterday I was sitting on my couch in the ’90s watching futuristic movies starring characters who could communicate and interact with a simple screen that they held in their hands. (I’m not going to get into holographs and teleportation because we still haven’t crossed that threshold yet, but you get the point) Well that day is here and are we really better off?
In Morville’s book, Ambient Findability, on page 67, he states, “.. our mobile devices also enable us to become smarter (or at least more informed) individuals.” Morville does go into how the technology is almost at a standstill right now because of limitations on hardware, but it still leaves the notion dangling that we are still yearning for more — still infatuated with the stuff that makes our lives easier to handle.
Morville’s statement regarding the technology making us smarter and more informed is somewhat misleading, because it’s not addressing the steps backward we have taken. This has been a hot subject in our classroom discussions — the fact that we no longer have to memorize phone numbers, birthdays, passwords, names, addresses, etc. We have something there to do it for us! My question is, what information have we used to fill that void in our brains? Are the memory cells once filled with information about our best friends birthdays, our emergency contact information, and our meeting times now piled up with even more song lyrics and other society-deemed useless information? Maybe. Maybe not.
In the midst of our changing culture, it’s really hard not to conform to society’s new guidelines. There are those who can manage, but there’s going to be a breaking point when it’s just not plausible to function outside of the box anymore. Consciousness is going to be key here. Consciousness to remain in touch with the information that we really need to remember. Consciousness to put down the phone or the kindle for a few minutes and re-acquaint yourself with what is literally around you at that moment. Consciousness to remember that, while knowledge is a wonderful thing and access to that knowledge is essential, life is not lived through that machine.
