Thanks, Tom. You get at perhaps the very core of the problem in your
writings.
Let's assume that some day we wake up, and technology fails us. For
whatever reason, it isn't available to us as it used to be....hard as it
is to imagine, let's just imagine for a minute or so that condition, and
what it tells us about our human condition given all of our technological
support.
We are in a condition in modern society where technology "allows" us to be
separate, alien from one another, distant, private....we commute long
distances by the use of technologies of many kinds, we use communication
devices to put us together with people who are long distances away....and
yet, some of us don't even know our neighbors....those people who would
seemingly be in community with us each day....day-in/day-out.
So, now we are in a condition, in our imaginations, where technology fails
us. What is one of the first things we are going to have to do? Put
ourselves into community with our immediate neighbors and our immediate
community, however it is that we define that, to help each other balance
the conditions which are presented to us without technology....probably
something akin to back to basics. Chop wood, carry water, grow food.
Isn't this the same condition that plagues us with regard to technology in
the work place, and how it is used to "transmit to flow" information. If
for some reason if technology weren't available to us there, we would have
to use the same kind of "relationship" tenant to get back to
basics....sharing information, building tacit and explicit knowledge,
person to person.
If you listen deeply to Meg Wheatley, you hear her message that she is of
the opinion that resilient communities, whether at work or at home in our
neighborhoods, are based on "relationship". Isn't it a paradox that the
technology that we have developed in our modern world is eroding something
so basic and precious to the human condition...that of being in
relationship with one another to "wonder" at our world. But technology is
eroding relationship only because of how we are using it....so, technology
is not the "bad guy" out there which should be avoided at all cost, but
rather, we need to build a relationship with technology too so that
understand the BEST OF WHAT IS and HOW TO USE IT PROPERLY.
Still thinking,
Linda Wing
--Linda Wing <lwing@usinternet.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>