An essay called “Tech Bane: Why Most Colleges Don’t Want You to Learn What You Need to Know” by Thomas W. Davenport is a little different. It is filled with factual information and lots of opinions about the topics it covers. It will not be a good fit for a Business Administration or MBA level course, but it will give some interesting ideas and opinions for those who want to broaden their horizons. If you’re looking for a good overview of the state of technology, this might interest you.
So, what exactly is the problem with “Tech Bane?” Well, there are two. First, the writer seems to have a rather narrow view of the world that only deals with the current technological advances, and seems to forget that a decade ago, things were even worse. Second, the writer doesn’t really go much beyond basic economics in his assessment of the current state of things. It is true that he takes a fairly critical look at the state of technology in general, but it seems that his own view isn’t really that different than most people’s.
However, I do find one problem with “Tech Bane,” and it is not something that can easily be fixed. He writes: “The reason that college isn’t interested in the latest technologies is that these kinds of innovations will eventually be obsolete. After all, the history of the information age has been littered with failed businesses and innovations that never took off.”
I don’t know whether this is meant to be an indictment of the business schools who don’t care about how technology affects students, or whether he is just being a bit silly, but I think he is being a bit silly here, and he does not provide any supporting evidence for his statement. He is also overstating his case in that he argues that there has never been a time when technology has been so bad, so there is no need to worry about it. This is, in my opinion, a pretty big misstatement of the situation.
First of all, if you look back at the past, we do seem to have had a lot of problems with computer technology, but they have mostly been solved, rather than simply ignored. We seem to have run into a few major problems that seem insurmountable now, but, because of the incredible advances in technology, we have overcome them.
For example, the Internet and the information highway brought us the ability to communicate with each other and the rest of the world at a rate that would have seemed unthinkable just a decade ago, and, which in turn caused our understanding of our own world to expand exponentially. We have seen the development of the automobile, the Internet, the cell phone, the computer itself, and other technologies that, when they were first created, were thought of as impossible.
The idea, “All progress in our society is driven by the fear of failure, which is only held in check by the laws of physics” is, I think, an accurate description of our present society. As long as we continue to fear that failure will happen, we will continue to make mistakes and fail to keep learning. When we realize we can learn from our past mistakes and move forward, we start to grow. Unfortunately, though, we are in the “failure to learn” stage now, and there is no turning back.
Technology can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how we look at it. Technology does change our lives for the better, or it can be a problem, depending on how we handle it. I hope Thomas Davenport realizes this and is honest about it. Please consider all this.