Week 7 #17 Technology

We learned during the horrible week when our systems were down that technology is something of an Achilles' heel. When it works it's great. When it doesn't it's tragic. Or can be tragic. I tend to be melodramatic. :-) All of my life, I have heard my father say that technology doesn't make our lives easier, it just increases the standards we are expected to live up to. Before indoor plumbing, bathing once a week was perfectly acceptable. Before automated washing machines, clothes could be worn more than once before washing. When most clothes were "homemade" rather than "store-bought" a little girl would wear the same dress every Sunday to church until she outgrew it and then it would be passed down to her little sister to wear. Now, there are whispers of negligent parenting if a child is seen wearing the same outfit several weeks in a row. (OK, maybe that last one was a little melodramatic too.)

Now, cell phones are so prevalent that pay phones are disappearing. E-mail is so common it can be nearly impossible to find a customer service phone number on a company's website. "Don't call us. Just send us an e-mail." Some magazines and journals are only available electronically because they are no longer published in a text format.

I know that economics plays a huge role in determining what happens in our society. Payphones are no longer a profitable venture. Providing phone accessabile customer service requires employing more people so that someone is available to answer the phone. Effective E-mail customer service probably requires a smaller staff to provide the same quality of service as the phone version. I can't argue that paper is not expensive. But, not everyone can afford a cell phone, not everyone has access to the Internet (libraries are limited in the quantity of access they can provide) and sometimes the power goes out during the block of time you have scheduled to do your research for a paper.

My point is that our society is structured in such a way that if someone doesn't have access to things that many take for granted, such as a telephone or a car, many(if not most) people will be unwilling to make accommodations for that person and may think less of them; may even judge that person as inferior or unworthy. MLK Jr. had a dream that his children would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. While we work to eliminate racism I hope we don't allow classism to creep in and take racism's place.