I read my colleague @paulaabowles’s blog last week with amusement.  Whilst the blog focussed on AI and notions of human efficiency, it resonated with me on so many different levels. Nightmarish memories of the three E’s (economy, effectiveness and efficiency) under the banner of New Public Management (NPM) from the latter end of the last century came flooding back, juxtaposed with the introduction of so-called time saving technology from around the same time.  It seems we are destined to relive the same problems and issues time and time again both in our private and personal lives, although the two seem to increasingly morph into one, as technology companies come up with new ways of integration and seamless working and organisations continuously strive to become more efficient with little regard to the human cost.

Paula’s point though was about being human and what that means in a learning environment and elsewhere when technology encroaches on how we do things and more importantly why we do them.  I, like a number of like-minded people are frustrated by the need to rush into using the new shiny technology with little consideration of the consequences.  Let me share a few examples, drawn from observation and experience, to illustrate what I mean.

I went into a well-known coffee shop the other day; in fact, I go into the coffee shop quite often.  I ordered my usual coffee and my wife’s coffee, a black Americano, three quarters full. Perhaps a little pedantic or odd but the three quarters full makes the Americano a little stronger and has the added advantage of avoiding spillage (usually by me as I carry the tray).  Served by one of the staff, I listened in bemusement as she had a conversation with a colleague and spoke to a customer in the drive through on her headset, all whilst taking my order.  Three conversations at once.  One full, not three quarters full, black Americano later coupled with ‘a what else was it you ordered’, tended to suggest that my order was not given the full concentration it deserved.  So, whilst speaking to three people at once might seem efficient, it turns out not to be.  It might save on staff, and it might save money, but it makes for poor service.  I’m not blaming the young lady that served me, after all, she has no choice in how technology is used.  I do feel sorry for her as she must have a very jumbled head at the end of the day.

On the same day, I got on a bus and attempted to pay the fare with my phone.  It is supposed to be easy, but no, I held up the queue for some minutes getting increasingly frustrated with a phone that kept freezing. The bus driver said lots of people were having trouble, something to do with the heat.  But to be honest, my experience of tap and go, is tap and tap and tap again as various bits of technology fail to work.  The phone won’t open, it won’t recognise my fingerprint, it won’t talk to the reader, the reader won’t talk to it.  The only talking is me cursing the damn thing.  The return journey was a lot easier, the bus driver let everyone on without payment because his machine had stopped working.  Wasn’t cash so much easier?

I remember the introduction of computers (PCs) into the office environment. It was supposed to make everything easier, make everyone more efficient. All it seemed to do was tie everyone to the desk and result in redundancies as the professionals, took over the administrative tasks.  After all, why have a typing pool when everyone can type their own reports and letters (letters were replaced by endless, meaningless far from efficient, emails). Efficient, well not really when you consider how much money a professional person is being paid to spend a significant part of their time doing administrative tasks.  Effective, no, I’m not spending the time I should be on the role I was employed to do.  Economic, well on paper, fewer wages and a balance sheet provided by external consultants that show savings.  New technology, different era, different organisations but the same experiences are repeated everywhere.  In my old job, they set up a bureaucracy task force to solve the problem of too much time spent on administrative tasks, but rather than look at technology, the task force suggested more technology. Technology to solve a technologically induced problem, bonkers. 

But most concerning is not how technology fails us quite often, nor how it is less efficient than it was promised to be, but how it is shaping our ability to recall things, to do the mundane but important things and how it stunts our ability to learn, how it impacts on us being human.  We should be concerned that technology provides the answers to many questions, not always the right answers mind you, but in doing so it takes away our ability to enquire, critique and reason as we simply take the easy route to a ready-made solution.  I can ask AI to provide me with a story, and it will make one up for me, but where is the human element?  Where is my imagination, where do I draw on my experiences and my emotions?  In fact, why do I exist?  I wonder whether in human endeavour, as we allow technology to encroach into our lives more and more, we are not actually progressing at all as humans, but rather going backwards both emotionally and intellectually.  Won’t be long now before some android somewhere asks the question, why do humans exist?