At some crucial moment in the 19th century, the means of production replaced the meaningfulness of the product as a subject of intellectual discourse. Recently, the same thing occurred with technology. What is now of critical moment is information technology (the means of communication), and not the thought communicated. Process has replaced substance. There was a time when the intellectually vibrant discussed and fought over evolution, cosmology, the Piltdown Man or political persuasions. Now the crux of much discourse is the system one favors, the software one uses, or the e-mail one disgorges. Intellection has been technologized.
The importance of the replacement of serious thought with frivolities pales in comparison with the typical complaints concerning Information technology:
We are out of luck. No matter what portion of the Luddite spectrum we inhabit, information technology is now an integral part of our business, academic, personal and private lives. We have been caught and we can either affirm and use the equipment with fervor, or moan and complain and let the technology sweep us along. Most of us are open to the seductive quality of electronic gadgetry and the benefits that accrue from its use. The detrimental aspects are conveniently ignored. Even when the system crashes, we deceive ourselves into believing that this is merely a temporary setback, especially when we are again online within hours or days of the initial crisis. When not merely the system but much of the entire world that has evolved from the implementation of technologies crashes, it may be too late to change matters. We are now totally dependent on telecommunications. To eliminate this necessity from contemporary life would result in a major alteration of the world as virtually all of its inhabitants know it. But as fraud, hacking, privacy encroachments and other devastating effects begin to take a holistic toll, we may be forced to rethink our reliance on a technology that has superimposed itself upon us not merely because of its utilitarian value, but also because of the market forces driving its dissemination. One need not be technophobic to insist that we continually reexamine our needs, motives and implementations. In the long run, it will save us from the technocracy that is already upon us.
Rather than despair at this rather pessimistic depiction, we can lay out a program that will alleviate or eliminate some of these problems in an academic setting, and enhance the pedagogical process without conversely succumbing to technophilia. The problems and challenges noted above all result from a lack of acculturation, sensitization, respect and ethical training. The single most effective way to alter incursions as well as unethical and illegal activity is education. Students in the very earliest grades should be taught ethical behavior along with keyboarding techniques. They must be concomitants. Correct and responsible usage of technology generally, and the Internet specifically, is as important as learning the processes: typing, keyboarding, surfing, searching, accessing and using esoteric software packages are only one part of technological pedagogy. But social acculturation is often a distant second choice. If things were inverted and the ethical aspects were stressed, we would, in very short order, produce a crop of new citizens most of whom would have a different attitude toward the use of information technology.
Strong legal sanctions would also help. If we stopped worrying about naked bodies and concentrated on those criminals who do real harm - the crackers, scammers, thieves, terrorists, commercial deceivers and stalkers - all of whose activities are illegal under the Constitution, we would go a long way toward solving some of our problems. All of these cyberspace activities should be federal crimes, and carry very severe penalties. Make it clear to young computer aficionados that the courts will no more tolerate breaking into military sites than it will allow adolescents to mug tourists.
Finally, we must always bear in mind that technological devices, including personal computers, are mere handmaidens, not ends in themselves. With up-to-date equipment, good connections, and some luck, it is possible for a child to accomplish things that Manhattan project physicists, just a generation or two ago, could hardly imagine. But it is also necessary to maintain a balanced perspective. Computers stimulate, inform, create and help, but they are just tools, not animate, organic entities. They are not intelligent. Only their users are. Sometimes we forget this.
Robert Hauptman is a professor at St. Cloud State University and is editor of the Journal of Information Ethics.