Arguments on Technology

Can this aversion for neatness or organization (being organized) be attributed to the advent of computer technology?

The first thing perhaps my father taught me was to be neat. The first thing he would do when he got a new book was to cover it in a nice brown paper. He would bring in stock, rolls of brown paper, plastic coated sheets sometimes, and neatly cut it to size with a cutter. Cutters would be brought in stock, so that they are replaced once they lost their sharpness. Bad cuts would not work and techniques of cutting was to be learnt through practice. He passed this value to us. He would not allow corners of any of our textbooks or note books to be folded. He would never like papers torn incorrectly. After covering a book, it had to form crisp, pointed corners - no misaligned corners. The covers had to be tight.

On the other hand, he would never allow us to use a pen on a book (text book/printed text), and as far as possible, not even allow pencil marks on the books. Books were to remain fresh till they escaped your life. This, I think was impressioned into our personalities. We would never be allowed to wear un-ironed clothes. the trousers would never have more than one crease. The collars had to be stiff. The hair had to be combed straight....

We grew up with these values. And such values create an immense trouble when I see someone casual about all such things. In some ways, learning architecture or being an architect has amplified this distress. I can not stand misaligned sheets, badly torn papers, ill formatted drawings, crumpled tracings, dirtied and smudged sheets, folded rolls, corners of sheets dissolving due to glue tapes....

What I essentially want to say is that it wasn't architecture that taught me to be crisp, it was my basic family values. You don't find many people following such culture these days. I wonder if it is because there is a software / soft-ness to all these activities. Till the year 2000, we almost dealt largely with physical communication devices. Computer largely caught up only after 2000. I remember, it was only in 2001 that Information Technology was introduced as a vocational subject in the colleges. Today, there is a software for every kind of activity that you once did physically: remember photo albums? the old ones with black tinted papers where one would have to stick each photo carefully, or insert them into their photo holders. Or take for example  writing, where if you had to write, you would carefully select paper, depending on whether you are going to use a ball pen or an ink pen....Today, you have a software to type - where everything is flat. You have a photo album maker, where you just 'upload'. There is no sense of 'care' that goes into it. Unlike the album books where once you stuck a picture, you stuck it for ever (and you ruin it if you try to remove it), in the computer, you can keep on removing or adding / editing picture. Infact, the software detects smiles and faces or crooked photos...it suggests you what could be done to supposedly 'improve' your content. Word software has spell checks as well as grammatical suggestions. There are templates for portfolios. You just feed in data. Everything is ready where a user has to remain a passive information provider.

Is technology making us dumber? I say that because even after having such facilities, you don't find the physical space improving around you. (Can you imagine your camera not taking a picture unless the subject smiled?). Infact, the inconsistencies that we have in understanding such interfaces increases errors which damage our surroundings. Are we all a dumber race? Prof. Punde had a very interesting observation, where he said that our lives are 'embedded' today. Till a few years back, if you missed a telephone call, you would miss it forever - you would never know who called you. Today, even if you missed it, you have the entire history of that event on your calling machine. If you were listening to a lecture earlier, where if you skipped a word, you lost out the meaning of the sentence, you just ended up misinterpreting it, today, talks are on youtube/internet videos. You can rewind them n number of times and keep listening to one statement until you finally understood it. The idea of revisiting the past, the idea of holding a lot of past and carrying it into the future has drastically affected our whole engagement with time.

How does one see this condition - as a distraction or as an opportunity? Information is piling up, the whole world is in your palm, you know who is where all the time, you can control a person in America from India, working hours have changed, communication ways have changed....as teachers, how do you intervene with their world of technology? (well, I  have asked Prof. Punde to write a formal paper on this).

But technology is very considerate. It doesn't back-answer you / question you back at all! It allows you to do tremendous mistakes and takes all the balme on itself. (the computer would crash if you mishandled it. You are not affected by this physically in any way). It remains within the physicality of a dumb machine. Could you possibly impersonate a machine? A machine's attitude is what we have around - an emotionless, insensitive and dumb race. Are they mistaking machines as their role models? Since machines never make mistakes. Ever listened to a person from a call centre? They talk like machines - "Good morning sir, I am calling from ICICI bank, would you be interested in a loan?" - all in one breath, maximum 2 seconds to finish all that talking. They answer you like dumb people, there is never an emotion in their voice - they are just simulated.

As a teacher, I find it extremely troubling to adjust with this newness. I am uncomfortable, sometimes scared. Because I feel responsible. And my idealism is rooted in a space and time which is completely different from today's generation. Is it this feeling that makes you aloof, alone and single? Is it history's safe space that makes me interested in it? I hope interesting debates come up. I could have written a lot more here, but i realize that this will require a larger body to discuss and detail.