The
most wrong assumption in the sci-fi movie classic "2001: A Space
Odyssey" was that technology would liberate humans from a life of
hassle. Made 42 years ago, Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece shows 21st
century humankind going about its business in a leisurely fashion as
machines do the bull work. A gentle Strauss waltz plays in the
background. Futurists of the past clearly thought that if machines
could help humans do eight hours of work in six, people would have two
more hours of free time. That didn't happen. Instead, people started
doing 10 hours of work in eight hours. Humans were offered the gift
of free time, and they turned it down. Many now plan their 24-hour day
around how much computers will let them do. The phenomenon of
assignment overload goes well beyond work. After all, we multitask in
our off-time, as well. We simultaneously watch TV, surf the web and
talk on the phone. The technology lets us turn our cars into second
homes and offices. It's amazing, when you think of it, that states
actually have to pass laws telling people not to text-message and drive
at the same time. Some of this speed-up could be the legacy of the
two-job couple. The tranquil housekeeper of generations past has pretty
much disappeared. No one's home during the day to do the laundry,
cooking and other household chores. So when breadwinners leave the job,
they try to stuff all these domestic duties into their "free" time,
again with the help of technology. They call the folks while
driving. They shop on the Internet for presents while waiting at the
doctor's office. Were it not for "time-saving" technology, they'd have
no choice but to do less. And the more they can do, the faster they
want to do it. "Waiting has become an intolerable circumstance,"
cultural critic David Shi has noted. "We get on an elevator and
immediately rush to the close-door button for fear of waiting 10
seconds." If the computer doesn't download a Webpage in 15 seconds, we
move on. All this doesn't seem to be making people very happy. An
entire industry has grown around reducing stress. The popularity of
yoga and meditation, which train people to become aware of the present
moment, speaks of the need to combat the ill effects of jumping from
thing to thing. An elementary school in Silver Spring, Md., offers a
stress management class for second-graders. Merchants do a brisk
business in scented candles with alleged calming properties. Meanwhile,
Americans gulp all varieties of legal and illegal drugs "to take the
edge off." But doing one thing at a time is more than some people
can take. Hence, power yoga, which purports to combine the meditative
process with burning carbs. Perhaps all this frenetic activity is
itself a drug to drive off the demons of depression. Weaker family ties
and friendships leave many vulnerable to loneliness. Television and the
Web offer only the illusion of companionship. The most famous scene
in "2001: A Space Odyssey" shows a sassy computer named HAL 9000
turning into a crazy human-like "being." He begs for his life as an
astronaut removes his modules one by one. (The humans in the movie are
the ones without emotion.) When humans malfunction, we now use such
machine-related terms as "flameout" and "overload." Indeed,
"multitasking" started out as a computer word, referring to the
machine's ability to run several programs at once. Have soulless
machines commandeered our waking hours without our consent -- or have
people chosen to let technology-driven busy-ness hide the pain of being
human? That question is worth pondering.
To
find out more about Froma Harrop, and read features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web
page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2010 THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL CO. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
