Technology and Wisdom

Did the seminar last Friday and among the powerpoint gems (those are really cool phrases that you come up with to fill up powerpoint pages) was a one liner I've used before "Technology is good, Wisdom is better".

One of the people at the seminar (among the very few--hey we're talkin real estate agents here, I wasn't surprised or anything) mentioned that line from the seminar in a Facebook post AND that started me thinking about why technology DOES NOT necessarily make us smart. We THINK it does. I mean we learn to work some new cell phone, or computer or Blu Ray player and we're stoked. WOW! Forget the passing years, we're really with the program! I'm thought a techie 'cause I can work a lot of techie stuff and got my higher education during the rise of the computer. Fortunately I also read a lot and most of the books I read back in the day had NOTHING to do with today's technology. Some of the books are just as golden today as they were 40-50 years ago.

What if technology doesn't work like that? What if we don't get smart? What if we actually get less smart and farther away from wisdom than when we started?

Driving home, I asked the question--WHY?

In one sense technology does make us smart---about the technology. Yes, we can use it, but that's a mixed blessing, because it's cool and it's generally quicker, or more satisfying than what it replaced--THAT is a key. REPLACED. What did the technology replace?

Technology SAMPLES and PROCESSES and COMMUNICATES information about the REAL WORLD. It tends to incorporate errors into each of those steps and they are seldom linear or predictable to the recipient of the communication, who gets a biased subset of the information available in the real world. The recipient could take a critical look at the communication and the process and the sampling, but that defeats the whole purpose--besides, surely someone already did that, HUH?

I was a scientist for about 20 years in another lifetime and did a fair amount of field work sampling habitats.
We were very concerned with those samples and started with carefully thought out sampling designs, then moved to protocols and finally determined the best sampling apparatus or on occasion built a new apparatus. Then we tested the sampling against other sampling regimens before we did full blown field work.

Today things are different. The technology drives the sampling design and protocol and analysis and communication. A new technology arises and it's assumed it's better and out it goes into the real world to do its thing and we wave the results gleefully in the air--eureka! Technology triumphant and we're smarter already! Oh really?

In businesses such as real estate where theory is treated like a guy wearing a tux at a bull riding contest, there little interest in what information is being left out, sampled in a biased way or just mismanaged. There's also the fear that someone else may out tech our business model--OMG!

Too bad, because real people live in real houses. They don't live in a virtual world defined by technology. The basics of living in a house or a tent or a cave haven't changed much since humans evolved. Can technology replace all that primal stuff just because the cerebral cortex is a pretty versatile and plastic part of a very complicated brain? Probably not.

Technology is good, but Wisdom is better.

Perhaps wisdom doesn't need technology as much as technology needs wisdom.