Blaming Zoom

Confusing the technology with its use makes it worse

“I hate Zoom,” we say. Or we opine on how Artificial Intelligence will make humans unnecessary. “I’m a Luddite,” a friend says, excusing her inability to create a playlist.

When did we start blaming technology? Well, the Luddites did it, of course, breaking up industrial machines in protest. We can go back further. In the 4th century BC, Plato recorded that Socrates distrusted writing. It froze ideas and prevented conversation about them, slowing knowledge. Of course, without writing, we wouldn’t know that he believed that.

And there’s the rub. “I found it on the internet,” we say, when what we mean is that we found it on a website, a website written by another person. It’s akin to someone saying “I found it in the library” — it says nothing but the location of the information. The technology is being confused with how it is used.

When the atomic bomb was being developed, J. Robert Oppenheimer came to realize that an uncontrollable power had been unleashed. He and other scientists protested its use. The atomic bomb was the ultimate Frankenstein’s monster, a product of scientific exploration that had deadly repercussions. It is perhaps because it was actually used, to horrific effect, that we began to get confused.