Technology and Us
By Robert Rickover

“What is the best use of technology?”

This question is asked more and more as the pace of technological change has accelerated. Greater speed, power, inter-connectedness etc. can produce all sorts of obvious benefits. We visit distant places quickly and cheaply thanks to jet airplanes. We have access to cheap, reliable power in our homes and in our cars. With the computer revolution, we can create, manage, transfer and store vast amounts of data in ways that would have been unimaginable to earlier generations.

But with those benefits have come come very serious drawbacks. The jet that can whisk you to Hawaii or Paris can also be used to kill thousands of people and inflict billions of dollars of damage. Cheap power is often generated by unsafe, polluting plants. Computer technology and the internet can be used to invade out privacy and spread false information around the world at the click of a mouse.

“What is the best use of technology?” is certainly an important question, one that probably deserves a good deal more attention. But there is another, related, question that is rarely asked, one that may ultimately be far more important:

“How do we make the best use ourselves as we live our lives employing these new technologies?”

Take our interaction with computers. I first saw computers being routinely used in the mid-1960s by ticket agents in airports. A third of a century later, they are everywhere - at work, in schools, at home.

By the early 1980’s there was increasing talk of Video Display Terminal (VDT) problems with eyes, neck pain etc. Terms like repetitive stress injury(RSI) and carpal tunnel syndrome entered our everyday language. It became commonplace to see people walking around with special braces for their lower arms and wrists. Surgery is increasingly a last resort.

Why did this happen? Was it faulty computer and furniture design? This is what ergonomists have argued and a whole industry has sprung up to re-design the work environment to make injuries less likely. Countless magazine and newspaper articles give ergonomically-inspired advice on proper sitting, screen and keyboard placement etc.

But the RSI epidemic continues unabated nonetheless. Why?