The clueless society: September 28, 1998 issue of New Thinking

September 28, 1998 New Thinking:
The clueless society

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September 28, 1998

The clueless society

By Gerry McGovern

On Friday night a video got stuck in our video player. We rang up the video shop to inform them and that’s when the fun started. None of the staff knew anything. The manager wasn’t there and nobody knew whether we would get a credit if it was the video cassette’s fault, whether we would have to pay rental until we got the cassette out, etc.

On Saturday I couldn’t get Microsoft PowerPoint to work. It kept coming up with an error screen which said that I should shut it down and start it again. I spent half an hour messing around and then gave up. The idea of ringing up support crossed my mind but was chased away by experience. The last time I had rung such support I was left waiting for ages and then got stock answers with the final one being, “I’d advise you to re-install the software.”

The first summer job I had was in a hardware store. An oldish man took me under his wing. He had been in the store for thirty years, he proudly told me, and he knew everything about hardware. It was great to watch him deal with customers. It left a lasting impression on me, not simply the depth of knowledge and understanding he had but the pride and dedication he brought to his job.

I know that today life-long learning is the in thing, life-time job security has gone out the window, and we are all supposed to be singing the ‘change is good’ mantra. However, I feel that we may be in danger of turning our society into a place full of jacks of all trades and masters of none.

When I got that summer job in the late Seventies, the idea of giving thirty or forty years dedicated service was seen as something a young person should work towards. Now, it seems almost ridiculous. Today, if you’re not changing jobs every three years and finding new skills as you skip down the road of life-long learning, you’re out of step.

I wonder how many apprentices there are today in comparison to twenty years ago? Or, how many trades you can now apprentice at?

My brother-in-law is a mechanic and has a small garage beside his home. A couple of months ago we were having a chat and he joked that I’d probably know more about cars these days than he does. He smiled as he informed me that engines are increasingly being controlled by computers. I told him that I knew probably more about fixing a car than fixing a computer. We both laughed.

I cannot escape from the uncomfortable feeling that the more intelligent our machines get the more dumb we become. Just what are we life-long learning? What sort of real skills are we acquiring? In twenty years when our glorious digital world gets broken - as everything breaks at some point – will we as people have the remotest clue how to fix it?

Let’s not long for a misty past but let’s not just skip blindly into the digital future without asking a few hard questions. When nobody knows how to fix anything anymore, worse, when nobody wants to fix anything anymore, where will we turn to for support?

Gerry McGovern

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When nobody knows how to fix anything anymore, worse, when nobody wants to fix anything anymore, where will we turn to for support?