You can't eat your cake and have it, too

All day I have been thinking about tonight's post. I decided to incorporate the course's readings, so I read the chapter in Library 2.0 on Facebook, Second Life, etc. and libraries’ role in meeting the needs of young people who use these programs.

While reading with a cool breeze coming through the front door, my friend, Rajai, stopped for a visit. “I saw your light on and realized you were home for once, so I thought I’d say ‘hello’” he said. Although it was great to see him, to tell the truth, my heart kind of sank, because I was poised to do my HW. Years of living in Russia, however, taught me how rejuvenating and thought-provoking such spontaneous visits can be. It is very bad luck to spurn a friend from a cup of tea. So in he came, and thus began an hour-long conversation about technology.

Rajai is fluent with it, but he said that he does not embrace it. In fact, he has very mixed feelings about it. While he recognizes and respects the achievement of computer scientists and algorithms, Rajai does not think technology has improved life in the west. After spending two years in Niger in the Peace Corps, he got a job at DePauw in the International Center helping international students assimilate to campus life. The irony is, he is finding that he is having trouble re-assimilating into American life. He can take one course a semester at IU – a perk of his job—so he’s taking French linguistics and preparing to apply to graduate school.

He has doubts. “I’m having these crazy thoughts,” he said, “I find myself wishing I were a fisherman on the coast of Senegal.” He looked at me full of apprehension, sure that I would tell him he was crazy. I told him I didn’t think that was crazy, although I wouldn’t glamorize the life of a fisherman. He went on, “There’s a natural rhythm to that life that I want. I spend so much time on paperwork and micro-managing. It’s so ungratifying. At the end of the day, what do I have to show for my effort? I went to IU’s Financial Aid Office and thought I’d landed in a Chase Manhattan bank! Have you ever been in there, with its plush seats, piped music, cubicles, people in suits? It was a totally corporate setting. Colleges and universities are big businesses. I feel so out of place. And computers give me no peace. I find that when I use them, I become impatient and vain. When something goes wrong, I’m enraged with the machine. How could it do this to me? What is its problem? I expect it to work perfectly for me every time, without fail. But it wasn’t like that before when I wrote things by hand. Then, when my hand got tired, I’d stop for a while and let it rest. I didn’t look at my hand with bugged-out, angry eyes and rail against it for being tired. I took a natural break before returning to the writing. We are slaves to electronics. Everyone and everything is pulling me deeper into this world, but I’m not sure I want it.”

I told Rajai that while he was young, independent and healthy, why not be a fisherman in Senegal? When could he ever have such an opportunity again? I also told him that 20 years down the road, there might not be the natural rhythms of life he feels in Africa today. The Technological Age is like a roaring locomotive barreling across the frontier, stampeding everything in its path. It is unstoppable. It will conquer all places. “html” will do what Esperanto couldn’t – it will be the international language. You either climb on board or become ciphers like Katrina victims.

Who needs such people? What are they good for in the Technological Era? Who needs fisherman? Or miners? There are machines who do the work that a labor force used to do. At a DePauw speech last Friday, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. described a 22-story machine that chews up mountains in West Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains. It finds the coal and spits everything else out and down the slope into streams. 250 miles of W. Virginia waterways– the size of Delaware – are gone, covered with fill from strip-mining. The mountains are gone, flattened, and all that’s left is forsaken, dead refuse.

Every time I hear someone say, “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” I think of the Unabomber. He got caught by his brother when his brother read his manifesto printed in the NYTimes, in which the Unabomber wrote, “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.” His brother knew only one person who ever presented that saying correctly – his brother. He remembered how it irked his brother that everyone got it backwards. That was when he went to the FBI and told them he suspected his brother as the Unabomber. Although I completely eschew violence as a means for social change, I sympathize with the Unabomber’s fear of a society driven and overridden by machines. But it is unstoppable, like the Industrial Revolution.

It was great to converse with Rajai, but when he left, I hustled to DePauw’s library to catch the WiFi and put this post on my blog. The library was more crowded than I ever remember seeing it – mid-terms. I climbed 3 flights of stairs and finally found a table with an outlet. In went my laptop cable. Up came everything, and I logged on. The computer told me my sidebar was not working and it would investigate the problem. Fine, whatever, I never use the sidebar anyway. Then the computer froze. The cursor wouldn’t move, so I hit “control-alt-delete” to get out of everything, but that didn’t work. So, I turned off the computer. Then, I turned it on and clicked “e” for Internet Explorer. I am told it cannot be displayed. No problem. Maybe the Internet is swamped. I tried again. And again, and again, and again. Oy. What’s wrong? Is it my computer or DPU? I’m connected—no problem, there. I try Mozilla Foxfire, but can’t get it. I turn off the computer again and start all over.

30 minutes later I close up shop and descend to the Help Desk, where they have no trouble opening Internet Explorer. Then a girl comes up to say that she can’t open Explorer. Hmmm, say’s the HelpDesk lady. Why could I? Then another person says he can’t open it, either. But Foxfire opens. Everyone starts troubleshooting, trying to figure out why three of us can’t open it but the one can. I thank them for their help and exit.

Outside, the air is so fresh and the shadows so lovely among the campus trees, that I feel as though I was just released from prison. But I MUST make a post on my blog. So, I go to my workplace, quietly use my key to enter through the side door and slip downstairs to my office computer, where everything works. No problem. Thank heavens. And here is my blog post.

But look at what it took. What would I have done without this extra card to play? What would someone who cannot afford WiFi at home have done who has no campus such as DPU?

We are so dependent on technology, but technology is fickle. I do not like the relationship. I accept that I must learn to handle it, but it is only because I have to, not because I want to. I guess I can't eat my cake and have it, too.