James Drogan

One of my students has written the following in response to the question of what to do when technology fails.

'Michael says, "Once the systems are down all we can do is wait until they are started back up."I don't know about all of you, but I often find a moment of peace when this happens.

I was travelling for work today and was driving through the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York.I spent about an hour without cell phone coverage.My employees need to regularly reach me by phone on and off through the day, but for the most part it is not a huge emergency if they cannot reach me for a limited time.I actually had time to think about what I wanted to think about, whether it be how beautiful the tops of the mountains looked with snow, or to formulate priorities for when I reached my office.

Of course when I popped back up I had phone messages, and then a period of time where there was much phone activity to get caught up.This still may qualify as a failure of technology, with a recovery period, but it is limited and planned.The system still moved forward, even if there were slight delays in answering a specific inquiry.

I guess my point in all this is, sometimes a technology "failure" need not be a "bad" thing, and further it might not be so horrible to take back control of the technology, at least in limited doses.You don't continuously have to have access to the internet at night when you go to sleep.You can shut off your cell phone once in a while when you go to lunch, or if you are in an important conversation or meeting and want to control the amount of distractions that may come up.As with other aspects of life, balance is always important.'

I am reminded by this student's words, recent experiences of watching people walking on the streets of New York City, and the e-mail streams that I find myself swimming in that we seem to increasingly, willingly or unwillingly, find ourselves in a digital bubble.  In this bubble we are more-or-less oblivious to much of what goes on around us.

Like a blind person, our senses are reduced to what we can touch with our DSD (digital sensing device).  We miss much of what is going on life even though we may sense things in a new and more powerful way with DSD.

It becomes a question of breadth and curiosity, on the one hand, and depth and isolation on the other.

How does something like this make it into the digital bubble?  Well, you might say, the same way this picture made it into this post.

I contend, however, that in this digitization much of the message of the moment is lost.  In the move towards expediency we have moved away from the experience.

We are, in some significant ways, ill-served by the digital bubble.  Being over protected from the full panoply of the world's sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch we compromise our ability to build a sensory immunization system; we limit our ability to build ethical, critical thinking, and communications skills.  We're safe in the bubble, but left at sea when the bubble bursts.

Always on, always connected, and always transmitting.  I wonder whether, in the long run, this is a good thing.