The Global Technology Crisis May Not Be What You Think

In response to this rising tide of technology influence, universities ban devices in lectures. Schools block and filter the content that students consume. Parents attempt to limit their children’s access to screentime. But Pandora’s box has been opened and nothing is going to slam that lid shut. We are facing a massive technology crisis – just not the one that everyone keeps talking about.

A few weeks ago, I ran into a former colleague from when I worked as a Director of Academic Technology. “Are you still a computer person?” she asked. “No.” I replied.

As I walked away, I reflected on my response. “Of course!” I should have exclaimed, because herein lies the real crisis: identity. We are all computer people now.

In 2001, Marc Prensky coined the term Digital Native¹ to describe a generation that would never know an existence without digital technologies and the Internet. He referred to the rest of us as Digital Immigrants capable of learning this new language and yet never fully becoming immersed in the culture. Researcher and anthropologist, danah boyd, describes this term as a “lightning rod for the endless hopes and fears that many adults attach to this generation².” While the intent of Prensky’s work might have been to raise awareness about the new opportunities for future generations, as boyd implies, it has instead resulted in the sentiment of the natives are coming – stoking fear and skepticism in Boomers and Gen Xers alike.

This country has a history of castigating, isolating, and rejecting those who threaten the identities of the majority culture, and this has certainly happened with the Digital Natives. The Internet and its associated digital tools challenge the control mechanisms and authorities on which older generations base their identities. Individuals can now learn from anyone, at any time, and from any place, undermining the structures on which educational institutions base their identities³. Any individual, regardless of geographic location or socioeconomic status, now has the potential to create and shape economic markets undermining the heart of existing corporate structures.

Both play and work look different for children and adults. Though robots, artificial intelligence, and big data threaten to hollow-out existing labor markets⁴, networks also empower individuals to engage in a new participatory culture that values creation and creativity. Parents must now navigate between helping their children understand this new dynamic that spans distance and time while also coming to grips with a more immediate economic reality as well as a host of new concerns related to privacy, security, and the perpetuity of data.

When individuals experience a social-psychological threat, such as that posed by technology, they often reject the associated idea as a form of survival and resist learning anything that may conflict with their previously held beliefs. I’m not a techie might be the rallying cry of those who have opted for self-preservation instead of facing their internal existential crisis. And yet, many of these same individuals have adopted technologies at an arms-length. They text via smart phones, join Facebook, bring Alexa into their homes, and value the convenience of Google but without considering the ramifications of their actions. The recent revelations of Facebook’s acquiescence to Cambridge Analytica, warnings about the dangers associated with filter bubbles⁵, and calls for more humane technology⁶ will hopefully be a wake-up call. Adults can no longer afford the perceived bliss of technology illiteracy — particularly parents, educators, and policy makers.

However, the Digital Natives do not fear technology. They neither see it as solely a tool for productivity or efficiency nor acknowledge it as some separate entity. Instead, they see their devices as an extension of their identity and a magnifier of their voice. What makes this new Digital Native generation different, is that they view technology as a source of freedom.

French philosopher Michael Foucault argued that to understand power, you have to see how it is resisted. And yet, he placed the caveat that real power only exists within a free society where citizens possess the capacity to resist. The marches that occurred around the world on March 24, 2018, will go down in history because they represent a tipping point in the power dynamics of generations. The students who organized rallies and marches around the world in the wake of the Parklands tragedy demonstrated the power of harnessing technology as an extension of their identities and an amplifier of their voice. More importantly, they leveraged these tools to form a new collective identity – one that spans race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and geography. Their challenge now is to maintain momentum in the face of entrenched structural authorities determined to maintain a vice-like grip on their existing power structures.

In a 2004 BBC news article⁷, Dr. Vincent Cerf, one of the original founders of the Internet, predicted the rise of significant social changes.

“The internet is a reflection of our society and that mirror is going to be reflecting what we see,” he said. “If we do not like what we see in that mirror the problem is not to fix the mirror, we have to fix society.”

So, let’s look in the mirror to see what the real crisis might be. Personally, I do not believe that we have a technology crisis at all. We have an identity crisis, and technology is making us reconsider the power structures on which we base our identity.

When the World Economic Forum announced the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in 2016, they issued a call-to-action: that as technology dramatically transforms society, we must ensure that it is both human and humane⁸. We are all computer people now. We all need to be techie, and we need to start acknowledging the challenges and privileges associated with this new identity. Because in five or ten or twenty years, when we look in the mirror of the Internet, it will reflect the society that we have all created.