Technical Failures

I call the members of the class together via Skype. But not even fifteen minutes into the conversation, my voice starts to break up into robot-like static. I hear the laughter and gasps from the other team members as I struggle to get my reception back. Unplugging the microphone, then plugging it back in, brings me to little avail. Even messaging doesn’t do the trick: I see a swirling circle on the screen, which indicates that the internet is somehow stalled. It ends in a mini-disaster, as I struggle to summarize my notes from the first few minutes of our sessions together. I tell myself that maybe I need  a new computer with more memory and fewer programs on it.

I can never blame anything on technical failures, because machines are just parts of one’s mind. They are extensions of mind, in the sense that they perform specific functions in response to commands and contingencies. The fact that those conditions were not present in my machine today does not make me less accountable for the situation. It means that I need to have a back-up plan when things don’t go right, or conditions are not met. The same  is true when one’s car breaks down, or one’s cell-phone runs out of power. But the interesting thing about technologies such as these is that they often create an illusory sense that nothing could go wrong, especially if they are working well. In a sense, there is a feeling that machines should be more a more proficient and ‘perfected’ over time. We even promise ourselves this perfection when we refer to different versions of a technology as ‘upgrades’. There is hardly ever such a thing as a technology ‘downgrade’, is there? Yet I am sure that examples abound where technology does the opposite. I have a feeling that it happens precisely when the machine becomes a sought-after dependency.

A concern that I had recently is that technology can make human ability seem obsolete, in the sense that what I could do without internet twenty years ago seems to pale in comparison to what I can do now (or certainly what I can access). It might seem that way, but is it really that way? This can lead to a depressing feeling that one is not fully human in a social sense unless they have the apps that allow them to interface with others. And even worse, if technology fails, it looks as though the human being has not sufficiently prepared for that failure. Anyone who cannot connect online in a collaborative project of that nature is bound to feel obsolete if they personalize that experience. But on the other hand, technical failures sometimes remind people that they do not need to always be in the mainstream of efficiency and connectivity, to feel a basic aliveness. That  aliveness shines through no matter what situation, though at times being connected via machines even seems to obscure the aliveness. Too much efficiency could rob people of the ability to reflect, while too little efficiency might alienate me from others who are operating in that high speed realm.