The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 5/2/07 Section: Features

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It was a dark and stormy afternoon. I was on a mission: to deliver turkey, ham, veggie and roast beef grinders to hungry Super Bowl Sunday football fans. It was one of many fundraising programs I had to partake in for my high school crew team. I, along with teammates, had made the grinders that morning, and now I was on my way to a house in Granby, Conn. to deliver the goods. I was driving my parent's 2004 Volkswagen Touareg, guided by the friendly female voice of its navigation system. "Turn left in 500 feet," she politely requested. I looked at the map on the screen, then at the road ahead and then back at the map. Five hundred feet ahead and to the left was a wall of snow-covered trees. I checked the GPS information and my stomach sank. I had lost the connection with the satellite. My immediate reaction was to take out my cell phone and call my dad for directions but, just as I had lost the satellite connection, no cell tower was to be found. I was one town over from my own and I was lost, with six grinders in the back seat starting to smell.

The reason I bring up this little anecdote is to show that, however often overlooked it may be, we, as a global society, have become technologically dependent. Almost everything we do is dependent on technology, from communications to academics and from transportation to recreation; some form of technology has invaded almost every aspect of our lives. Is this a problem? For the most part, no. GPS, in conjunction with cars and airplanes, makes it easier to get from point A to point B, cell phones and the Internet make international and local communication affordable, online databases make research thousands of times easier and digital music, pictures and movies make entertainment easier to store and carry.

The problems with technological dependence were exemplified four years ago, on August 14, 2003, when 10 million people in the Canadian province of Ontario and 40 million people in the northeastern part of the U.S. were affected by a massive power outage. New York City shut down, including the iconic lights of Times Square. Metro North trains were stuck between New York and Connecticut for hours, cell phone towers went down, television broadcasts incident were not received by the people affected by the outage as they didn't have access to television and traffic was a mess as signals were out. What does this grave incident, as well as my more frivolous one, tell us? We need to be cautious of the extent to which we rely on technology and in broader terms, electricity. If a terrorist really wanted to paralyze a developed country, all they would have to do is pull the plug on electricity. Communication and transportation would be stopped. There's really nothing to do to stop the further implementation of new technologies, and no reason to resist them, but it's important to realize that our need for these technologies can be a weakness. I know I personally am going to practice reading analog clocks and make sure I know how to use a pay phone.

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