You know that feeling when you are rolling over the apex of a terrifying roller coaster hill and heading into the free fall?   As it plummets at ferocious speed, you have no input, no say in the matter.  You just have to go along for the ride.  You may or may not like it.  It makes no difference. You have to adapt, in an instant.

That’s the best metaphor I can come up with for how I feel about the technological change that’s sweeping us along through our little piece of the ride through human history.  Past technologies that were radical in their impact (e.g., wheel, steam engine, printing press), spread through humanity much more slowly, thus permitting us, the human animal, time to adapt (as we were designed to do through millennia of evolutionary biology).  But now for the first time in human history, we are living through some kind of flash-adaptation experiment over which we have, what feels like, no control.

This difference is profound.  Let me first state clearly:  I value highly the many virtues of our advancing technology.  But the gains are mostly obvious, while the losses can be harder to see.  I want to talk about two of those losses, two ways in which technology is robbing us of essential aspects of our humanity:  a) Time to think and feel, and b) Human in-the-flesh interaction.  I could write a thesis on either of these subjects, but for now, I’ll share just a few observations.

We are a sped up culture that’s getting faster every day. This pace is fueled by our technology and by capitalism.  Processing speed, ever-accelerating, drives everything.  Most importantly, it drives our financial markets.  And of course, once they’ve got the disease, we all catch it pretty quickly.  We are all along for the ride.

We want, and are expected to deliver things, instantly.  Much of the world of work has morphed into a rapid-fire do-fest, at the expense of thoughtful analysis.  Our kids, raised on a steady diet of digital devices, have shortened attention spans and act increasingly on impulse.  If we wonder about something, there’s no hypothesizing or thinking or exploring or discussing . . . just google it and get the answer, instantly.

It’s like we’re devolving into Pavlov’s dogs . . . all stimulus-response, all send and receive, with no cerebral cortex interceding to process or reflect; no time to think or feel or connect deeply.  This, ironically, at a time when the problems we face are exceedingly complex (calling for deeper thought), and when our alienation from one another is ever more evident (calling for deeper feelings and connections).

I get that technology is revolutionizing access to information that we need to solve problems, but we still need minds that have been nurtured and trained in the art of thinking, and we still need the time to do the thinking, in order to put all that great information to proper use.  And we still need time in our daily lives to appreciate and cultivate ideas, aesthetics, art, music, friendship, and all of those low-tech slow-poke things that make life worth living.  Our speed-demon pace threatens all of that.

I wonder what this profound change will mean for us on many levels, especially its long term implications.  My favorite thought experiment on this subject is contemplating how the Cuban Missile Crisis would have unfolded if it happened in today’s act now environment.  It’s not a comfy thought.

Our technology is also eating away at meaningful in-person human interaction.  My mother argues that it all started to go south with the television, which in its own subtle way, began pulling people apart.  Before that, people spent their limited free time visiting with neighbors, playing or working outside, or listening to the radio.  But television, with its mesmerizing screen (there it is, the original sin), slowly drew people in from out of doors, away from others and toward a more individualized, even isolating experience.

Today we have screens on steroids, their seductive and addictive qualities capturing our attention at every turn, even when we are with other people.  Let’s face it, we barely notice each other anymore.  We don’t listen carefully or focus for any sustained period on our fellow human beings.  As our phone-companions seek to cater to our personalized whims and needs, we journey deeper and deeper into our own private bubbles of existence and drift further and further from any larger sense of community and all that comes with that.

In a matter of a decade or two, we have drastically eroded the human experience of eye contact, informal and spontaneous conversation, awareness of other people, and human interaction in general.  What do you think this will mean for us?

I know our technology carries enormous efficiencies and tremendous opportunities to broaden knowledge and to make connections with others that break down traditional geographical and other barriers.  And the fact that you are only able to read this blog because of technology, is an irony that is not lost on me.

But I just wonder what this insidious change does to our overall human development, to our sense of empathy and emotional connection to our fellow human beings? I wonder how fulfilling life will be if the stuff of human interaction is predominantly mediated through a machine? And I wonder how well we’ll be able to solve problems, appreciate beauty, and feel things deeply if our lives are operating at warp speed?

Am I just becoming some old fogey who can’t deal with the latest advance?  Or is there something here we need to recognize and wrestle with before it wrestles us to the ground?