The Problem With Technology

I didn’t want to like this essay, but I did.

FROM ORION (Lowell Monke): “To develop normally, any child needs to learn to exert some control over her environment. But the control computers offer children is deceptive, and ultimately dangerous. In the first place, any control children obtain comes at a price: relinquishing the uniquely imaginative and often irrational thought processes that mark childhood. Keep in mind that a computer always has a hidden pedagogue—the programmer—who designed the software and invisibly controls the options available to students at every step of the way.”

I delved into this article half-heartedly, prepared to confront a stale and luddite treatise on “the problem with the world today.” I should have known better. Lowell Monke offers a well argued and thought provoking essay on the nature of children’s’ social and intellectual development and its relationship to the world around them, and how technology (currently) interferes with important processes that children use to learn about themselves, the nature of the world, and how to connect to place and people. I didn’t want to agree with him, but I found that I did — and realized that, as much as I love technology, I spend a lot of energy mitigating its influence on my own childrens’ development. There are many good takeaways from this piece and I recommend it.

You can read the article here.

Advertisement