The Technology Trap

Cars are fabulous tools, aren't they? You get in one and it will take you places you would never dream of walking to...

But does the car do this all by itself? Once you turn it on, can you just leave it to its own devices and expect to end up where you want to go? You don't actually have to know the road rules, do you? Can't the car take care of that by itself? What if you press the cruise control button? Does that mean you can make yourself a cup of coffee and expect the car to take care of the driving?

Not in this decade. I can't vouch for the advances in the transport industry that may come in the rest of this century, but for the time being you still need to drive the car in order to get anywhere (and not crash and burn).

Yet, strangely, when it comes to computers, a lot of people are happy to let the technology do the driving. This isn't completely unusual, as hardware and software designers go out of their way to make things "user friendly", which is more or less code for "does most things without user interference... er... input".

Basically, most designers assume most people are hopeless when it comes to technology, and the more the tools can do by themselves, the more likely people are to use them (after all, it requires less brain power on the users' behalf). So computer programs do a lot of things without you telling them to.

This can create a number of problems:

It's easy to assume that what the tool does on its own is all it does, when it might have a wide variety of uses and applications that need your input.

You can fall into the habit of trusting the machine to know what it's doing, but computers can't make value judgements (it's all maths to them) and it is very easy for them to get off track.

While they can't make value judgements, they can make assumptions. Computer programs also like to believe they know what they're doing - and sometimes they'll over-ride what you want them to do, assuming they "know better".

For an example, the grammar and spell checkers on your word processing program can pick up many genuine errors, but they also flag anything they don't recognise or understand... and they also miss things that they haven't been programmed to notice. Since any language other than maths is usually too fluid for computers to completely understand, that means a lot of things are marked as being wrong when they might not be, or not marked at all when they should be. So, like a car, you should use a spell checker, but not trust it to find its way on its own. You still need to pay attention to your own words in order to guide the tool so you can make sure the end product says what you want it to say.

It's the same with bibliographic software and other programs. You need to know what you are doing so you can make sure the tool is doing what you want it to. Don't just hit the cruise control button and assume it will all work out.

What is the Technology Trap?

It's when you rely on the technology instead of learning the ins-and-outs of things for yourself. It's when you never learn how something works when the computer isn't doing it for you, so that you can stay in control of what the computer is doing.

If you don't know how to write a bibliography, how will you know if the bibliographic software is doing it correctly? What would happen if there was a problem with your computer and you couldn't use the tool? Would you be able to do it manually?

If you don't know the difference between "too" and "to", how will you notice if you've used the wrong one - especially if the spell-checker doesn't pick it up?

Tools are great, and they should be used - but you should always be in the driver's seat, paying attention to what they're doing and guiding them. Technology is no replacement for knowing what you're doing.