This morning I was putting the finishing touches on my Primary lesson, looking for a particular scripture I wanted to share with the kids I teach at my church. Alas, I am not much of a scriptorian. I know the basic stories and I can paraphrase lots of verses. I even have a general idea of where many of them can be found. However, I have not mastered full memorization of very many, and there are even fewer I can recall the exact reference of book, chapter and verse for.
My solution is simply to go to the scripture section of LDS.org (see link on the side of this blog) and put in ANY word or phrase I want to find a scripture on. The site’s search engine will zoom through the index and pop up every single scripture there is with that word or word combination. So that’s what I did this morning. I put in the word: “resurrection” and found what I was looking for.
It’s a great tool. But I’m afraid I’ve used it so much that I’ve become like the students in my GED class who cannot do even very basic arithmetic functions in their head because they are so used to the crutch of the calculator.
So I am wondering about how much I let this tool (or any technology I rely on, for that matter) be my servant and how much it makes me its slave.
I remain undecided. On the one hand, the important thing to me is that I DO look these scriptures up and study/ponder their meaning. Isn’t that more important that how I find them? Yet perhaps I truly have done a disservice to myself by copping out to the quick search time after time rather than training myself to be more familiar with the books on my own.
I believe it is important that I know my times-tables and that I can adequately add, subtract and divide. Still, I consistently use a calculator when I balance my checkbook. I see no harm done by using a dishwasher and vacuum cleaner rather than washing all my plates and utensils by hand and beating rugs with a stick. Nevertheless, it saddens me that so many valuable homemaking skills are being lost in our world of freeze dried food, microwave cooking and sweat-shop produced clothing that are less expensive to purchase than they would be to make yourself.
At what point does using technology to make things quicker and easier cross the line of “help” to actually become a hindrance in terms of loss of personal skills or circumventing community networking? A lot of good things come out of old fashioned quilting bees and barn raisings besides builidngs and blankets.
I suspect that some of the nostalgia for the way things were done in the "good old days" is seriously misplaced...still the mad rush to modernization that has brought us so much "new and improved" may not be the panacea it claims to be.
What technology or tools do you find most helpful? Which ones do you prefer to avoid?
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2 comments:
I don't believe that we can be chained by technology as long as we know how to do a thing without the gadget that assists us. I know how to do real, library-based research, but prefer to use the internet as much as possible now. I have the skill set and experience doing book-based research, but internet research is much more efficient. These days you need to know how to use basic search commands to use the library catalog systems as well anyway. However, there are still times when I need good old-fashioned bound volumes to find what I need, and I know how to get a hold of them and use them. The same goes for math in your head. I'm probably the best of anyone I know at doing math in my head. I worked in a bakery for years and you get really good at addition and multiplication that way (3 bagels at $.45 plus two muffins at $.85, etc.). I'm even pretty good at long division in my head and can estimate figures really well especially. Given a pencil and paper I can do most anything up to basic algebra. However, I use a calculator constantly. Why bother doing it in my head if I don't have to? My work requires a lot of percentage and division figures to get dimensions and positions correct, no way I'm doing those in my head all the time, or even on paper. In fact, the primary software I use will do a lot of sums, differences, products and such for me right in the places I need it to do it, that is FANTASTIC progress if you ask me. I think it is important to know HOW to do a thing yourself, but better if you can have a tool to help you do it faster and better.
I've been a technophile my whole life though. I've used computers and A/V equipment as long as I can remember. My dad was always into the latest and greatest gadgets and I was always right there with him poking at things and figuring out how to work them.
That being said, there are places I actually prefer less technology. We went out of our way to find a car with manual transmission, windows, and door locks. It has been our experience that automation in vehicles just tends to break down more, and we'd rather do those little tasks ourselves rather than have to fix those systems at some point down the road. Automated systems have their own sets of frustrations and problems, just like any other system. The important thing is finding a balance that works for you and increases your productivity more than it increases your frustration.
hmm, the PC would have to be tops on my list. Writing papers, spell checker, e-mails has been a big help. Plus, it serves as my entertainment center, I finished my B.S. distance ed, and am currently completing seminary distance ed also. Do my taxes, learn Russian on it, ect. The down side is I don't spend enough time reading the things I should. Right now, the next big contender would be a dish washer. I have been doing dishes by hand for over a year now and it takes up a lot of time.
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