I wanted to share with y’all an interesting column from today’s LA Times (subscription may be required).

It’s written by a historian lamenting the creativity- and discovery-smothering impact technology could have on us all. Not that I completely agree with him, but he raises an interesting point near the end of his essay:

I worry that as these cyber-conveniences stream through our lives, they atomize us. I worry that in their magnitude and pervasiveness, they hasten our transformation from social actors into solo consumers. Finally, I’m concerned that this growing exclusion of serendipity from our lives and learning could leave us short of the sort of broad knowledge of how things happen, the way things work — in our neighborhoods and the world at large — that citizens of a democratic republic require.

This essay is not completely unlike another one I read through a professional assignment I’m working on. Quote from this writer:

We live in a country founded on principles of individual choice, individual responsibility, and individual freedom, but we live in an economic environment which conditions us to think and behave like a herd of sheep. A mass market economy needs mass market thinking to make masses of money. It promotes a mentality that buys into an array of false concepts which it can then package, make generic, and sell to the largest possible audience. How are we to nurture the individual creative spirits of our young people when a large part of our culture promotes conformity, seducing us with the security of the well fed, distracting us with a vast web of superficial electronic entertainment.

Now, before anyone jumps all over my ass about the creative process inherent in developing new technology, etc., etc., I’m not saying that I think technology is sending us into certain world destruction. But I do think both authors raise a valid point that some of our newer technologies may have a stifling effect on creative thinking. Of course, this problem extends much, much further beyond technology–we’re becoming a society that for the most part, wants someone else to do all our thinking for us. That’s scary.

Anyway, read ’em, they’re both worth a ponder for the day.