Technological Creep And Personal Choice

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times––indeed, that very well-known line is just as prescient as it ever was; a sentence that could fulfill the opening lines of many books that could be written, even today. We like to believe we live in a world of convenience, of instantaneous delivery. A world filled with technology so advanced, so crucial, that our lives are streamlined, liquid, unmolested by the friction of analog, unreliable modes, methods, and machinery.

Just yesterday, in line at the local convenience store, I watched a woman in her late 60s attempt to pay for her groceries through an app on her phone. Touch and go was the idea behind this app, but she struggled with the tech or something was not working.

Well, the transaction was somehow canceled and the process had to be done all over again. She ended up paying by card, a little frustrated. Who knows how or why this particular piece of tech failed at that moment. I asked myself why a person, particularly of this age, feels the need to have this tech. There seems to be a kind of pressure, a coercion of tech and its insistence on being everywhere, all the time.

It is not hard to imagine someone, after installing a touch-and-go app of the kind I mentioned, feeling a bit...clever. Or included might be a good word for it. So insistent and ubiquitous as tech is, we have certainly fetishized its users and usage, and have accursed those without that very tech with a kind of FOMO feeling.

I say this fully aware of the tech I use every day and am used to, profit from, and entertained by.

But there seems to be a bridge of a kind; a connective tissue running throughout many of our shared cultural conversations. One, the ubiquity of tech, particularly its bombardment on our daily lives and two, the often-expressed observation that we are living in a world that we increasingly fail to recognize. This rapid disfigurement (often technologically induced, as well as aesthetically altering) can, and I believe has, led us into a type of mass culture shock.

The pressures on the individual and that individual’s relationship with up-to-date tech are mounting. And as older generations struggle to properly use these new devices, these new apps, these new codes, etc., a new, much younger generation is struggling with their identity and sense of self because of their reliance, and their addiction to these new manmade toys.

Ask almost any college professor you can find and you will likely hear a similar tale; college-age kids will not, and many times cannot, read. Many can barely write at levels much lower than expected. Because of their reliance and addiction to their cell phones, they lack curiosity about the world and are increasingly blunted into states of paralysis and non-thought.

I have read dozens of these stories from professors who, as one might imagine, are often disenchanted with their profession, after having witnessed a generation of once bright, thoughtful, engaged students blasted away by toys. Essays and papers that too, were similarly engaged with the topic, are now spit out by A.I.

It is not necessarily that children are actively dumber, but without a chance to exercise intelligence, find it, and cultivate it, they surely will remain outperformed by generations of not so long ago. It is one thing to use A.I. and tech as a tool. However, raising a generation that is so ill-prepared that A.I. and tech are their only forms of resource and ability feels like a grand error, on a massive scale. I digress; I will leave the kids alone.

Returning to the pressures of the individual and their relationship with tech, I phrase it that way because I believe it is an individual choice. While certain aspects of technology are unavoidable, I would advocate for a personal constitution of a kind. One that is at once literate about technological advancements and creep, but is understanding of its limitations, and when and where to draw the line in regards to its wisdom and use.

For myself, I believe it must start with the cellphone. We have all seen families out to dinner, where every member is on their phone at once. We have all seen parents handing over their phones to a toddler, as a kind of pacifying agent. We are likely all guilty of closing a social media app, and instantaneously re-opening it, sensing a kind of muscle memory commandment.

I have noticed that people who read and write on their phones are less likely to finish articles, to finish their own work, because the configuration of the screen and the scroll makes essays and pieces feel longer than they are––we gauge content by the length of the scroll, often forgetting that it is a much narrower space to fit text.

When I think about the cell phone and its newfound membership as a body appendage, I consider myself lucky––I have a cell phone, a decent one. I use it for the camera tech, for various creative projects. In fact, mostly, to me, it is nothing but a camera. However, I do not have a cell phone. I have no phone number, no voicemail box, and no text messaging system. In fact, I have not heard a voicemail in a decade.

When I am away from home, it stays put away in my office. It never goes to sleep with me, it does not even contain an alarm. Sometimes, the battery will die and I will forget to charge it for days. I say am lucky because this, unfortunately for many people, is simply not an option. They need their phones for their lives. It is quite understandable, and likely the norm. However, I don’t need my phone as a phone, and I have worked to design my life in that way. There may be a time when this changes, no doubt, but for now, I keep it at a distance.

I mention the cell phone as an example; a personal one where I have made a choice. To set a boundary on some level of what I feel the appropriate level of interaction is with a “device”.

I am convinced that while tech has given us so much, and has undoubtedly improved the human condition, there is also the chance of its overuse. That like anything else, you can have too much of a once-good thing. I believe our current world truly takes some thoughtful, careful navigating if we are to live our lives to their fullest capacity, our fullest dignity. Perhaps I am a bit of a Luddite, but I believe we are reaching a precipice; a place where technology and all its attractive offerings may very well take much more than it gives.

JSV
2025

Judson Stacy Vereen is the author of American Pleasure, 62 Poems from Judson Vereen, and Like A Bird Knows To Sing. He is also a staff contributor to Wrong Speak, where he publishes a bi-monthly opinion column. His substack page is Dispatches from Bohemian Splendor.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.