Technology is the Enemy

500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider

On Monday, in Big Sur, California, I walked in a river barefoot. The water was bracingly cold. I must have massaged a couple of special acupressure points because I had a wildly transformational experience. I walked out of the river realizing that everything that is wrong in my life and in yours too is connected to technology.

I hate technology now.

I’m getting rid of every bit of it right after I finish writing this on my computer. I swear, when the battery runs down on this thing I am chucking it in the garbage. Then I will be free, finally, free.

To be fair, it wasn’t just the river that caused this awakening. I read an article that said using your cellphone will make your head explode, and if that doesn’t happen, you will grow another head. That’s what Maureen Dowd said in the New York Times. Nicholas Kristof, another respected columnist, recently wrote that the minerals used to make the electrical capacitors in your iPhone, iPad and iWhatever are sourced by warlords in the Congo who exploit women and children and the waste generated by the disposal of our tech toys is fouling the planet.

But I’m not getting depressed about that, because I see a bright future where we walk everywhere. And we talk to people, really talk to them and get so close we can see the food in their teeth. And when we want to make a film we don’t use cameras and pixels but we just draw really fast on a cave wall using a piece of chalk. When we want to distribute music or ideas or anything at all we just hand it to somebody and tell them, “Run man, run like the wind all over the world and give this to everyone you see until you drop dead from exhaustion.” Man, that’s really exciting. That’s, wow, I, um… you know, I’m kind of rethinking this a little.

We camped out in Big Sur. The tent we used was probably designed on a computer. It was a brilliant design with folding poles that telescoped out of themselves and supported lightweight ripstop fabric that kept us warm and dry. Our flashlights were solar-powered. The camp stove was tiny, backpack-ready, but capable of heating a pot of water in less than four minutes. I didn’t really walk barefoot in the river, either. I was wearing Vibram Fivefingers made of polyamide fabric on top and a TC1 performance rubber compound for the soles. I doubt I would have gotten the same performance by strapping a couple of big leaves to my feet.

Maureen Dowd didn’t actually say your cell phone would make you grow another head. The reason I know is I used technology to check her quote at this link. I mangled the Kristof quote, too. You can check how badly, using technology.

If there’s any doubt how tightly woven technology is in my life, that doubt was erased when, back in Los Angeles on Tuesday, I was talking with the owner of a local yoga studio. It’s a donation-based studio, which means that people pay what they wish for the classes, and that reflects an ancient faith in the basic goodness of people. But he’s also streaming video of the classes live on the web, both as a way of bringing yoga to people everywhere and also to generate a revenue stream for the studio.

Technology is bringing us greater accountability (I can’t fake those quotes), speed of communications (people all over the world read this article instantly) and yes, the fun of scampering along in a river without smashing your toe on a rock.

It’s easy to be a hater, but it’s harder when you really consider what you’re hating. Is it technology that deserves our wrath or just the way we are using it?

You can follow me on Twitter by clicking here, unless you hate technology. Then you can wait until you run into me and I’ll tell you about what I wrote.

Goldman-Sachs, Animal Welfare and the Broken Compass

500 Words on Thursday | by Lee Schneider

Wearing Vibram fivefingers is a lesson in guidance systems. For those who’ve not seen them, fivefingers create the feel of barefoot running. When I use them, every pebble is an acupressure point. My left heel can’t bang on the ground like it used to. This is running carefully observed, and it’s recharged my faith in the idea that the body self corrects. You just need to listen to pain. Yes, pain. Pain is part of the runner’s guidance system.

Now, something’s happened to the guidance system at Goldman-Sachs. There was pain in investments designed to fail. The guidance system is kicking in now, because people outside Goldman-Sachs are paying attention. I’ve been thinking about investing in a stock and a bond fund and I asked the brokers, “Is there any exposure to Goldman-Sachs in either of these funds?” They told me I wasn’t the first person to ask. Lots of potential investors want to steer clear of Goldman-Sachs. That’s what I mean by a guidance system. There’s a moral compass, and it always points north.

Something’s happened to the guidance system at Johns Hopkins University’s surgical training program. Recently I wrote about animals used in surgery training and in labs. I found out that only three medical schools in the country, Johns Hopkins, University of Tennessee College of Medicine at Chattanooga, and USUHS, allowed students to operate on animals. I wrote each school and asked why. The Tennessee folks declined to comment. The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) said “animals are only used where no acceptable computer, simulation or other educational alternative exists,” which ducks the question, because alternatives do exist, and they are more than “acceptable.” An article in the Journal of Surgical Research has called simulation the new paradigm in surgical education.

Then there’s Johns Hopkins, where the director of surgery, Dr. Julie Freischlag, wants students to operate on pigs. The students get two surgical lab sessions and use pigs to try out various surgeries.

Dr. Freischlag has been quoted in Nature news saying that the sessions help students decide if they want to go into surgery. The lab also trains those who won’t become surgeons but still need to know how to start intravenous lines and work with sutures.

“The first time our graduates stitch you up in the emergency room as interns, they will have already done that on live tissue before. They will be safer and better. I think most of us would hope they have actually done that on someone or something else before us.”
Dr. Julie Freischlag, quoted in Nature news

Every year, about fifty pigs give their lives at Johns Hopkins. A lot more pigs give their lives to become bacon. Still, we’re talking medical school here, not Denny’s. There’s a standard to uphold, and the majority of US medical schools find that students learn more by working on simulators. A student surgeon will have supervised operating room experience as well. So the image of a first-time surgeon saying “Wow, I’ve never operated on a real person before – hand me that sharp knife thing” is just false.

Gerald Moses, who heads the simulation lab at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, put it like this: “Sparing animals discomfort elevates the whole paradigm of learning.”

Do we really train compassionate doctors by bringing suffering to animals? If it causes pain, shouldn’t we be listening? I’m going to think about that on my next run, feeling every pebble underfoot, and self correcting.

Photo credit: MonkeySimon via Creative Commons License.