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The expanding national debate over technology's future was spotlighted very effectively last week in a Family Circus comic strip.
Dolly (the little girl) was praying on her bed. She asked God to deliver us. Instead of saying "deliver us from evil", she asked God to "deliver us from email".
I thought it was prophetic. Email and texts are fine for person to person communication, but we definitely should be delivered from spam and e-marketing.
It's just one of many issues involving electronic technology. The development of AI has made it much worse. I read a recent newspaper article about how schools have to accept Google AI if they want to continue to have Google search engine capabilities.
Google shouldn't be allowed to dictate. State departments of education should advertise for bids to develop a search engine specifically for schools that doesn't include AI, with the right to reject all bids. The state could find out what it would cost and then discuss whether to pursue it.
My experience with AI is mostly tied to email and word processing. I've used it to send very brief email responses, such as the confirmation of a meeting time. Otherwise I always write my own responses. People deserve my time and attention.
AI is cumbersome with word processing. I've been a professional reporter and writer for nearly 40 years. I would rather take the responsibility of writing correctly than have AI at times insert errors.
If the computer doesn't recognize a word such as Lynd, it changes it to a word it knows. Lynd therefore becomes Land unless the user goes through the steps to get the computer to learn the new word. It slows down the writing process.
For people who aren't professional writers AI might seem to speed things up. The risk is that they'll get lazy. They might not bother to choose a better word or work toward the best sentence structure.
It's possible that computer scientists can eventually improve AI to the point that it truly enhances writing. We're not there yet. The public shouldn't have to put up with its drawbacks.
Until now AI has been allowed to develop as technology companies wish. They've also been allowed to set in motion plans for large data centers, each of which could take up as much as a half section of land. They'd be about as large as the city of Ghent.
More time should be taken to find out if we really need the monstrous data centers that are being proposed. They shouldn't be fast tracked like Hermantown and Pine Island. They shouldn't happen until the public has a chance to learn about them and decide if they want one next to their communities.
We're rapidly getting to the point of deciding who should control society's information systems. There was a "man behind the curtain" in the Wizard of Oz, but he was easily exposed as someone who wasn't especially great or powerful.
Electronics in 2026 and 2027 could be more complicated. It's started to resemble George Orwell in "1984". Maybe Orwell was right. Possibly he only miscalculated by 42 years.
Some of you might be reading and wondering if I'm anti-technology. I don't think I am. I'm not totally opposed to it. There's just a need for basic good sense.
I came of age before the Internet burst on the scene in the mid 1990s, back when it was perhaps a mistake to instantly make everyone an Internet user.
It could have been introduced gradually, in a way that individuals could have learned how to use it as a tool. It might have been possible to use it as needed, get what we want out of it, and distinguish it from our conception of reality.
Instead many people, especially those under 50, are almost slaves to electronic machines. We saw all the way back in 1938 the dangers of what can happen when people fail to use critical thinking.
Despite widely publicized disclaimers, there were people who jumped out of buildings upon hearing the Orson Welles broadcast "War of the Worlds". They thought Martians were truly invading. Almost a century later it's still very possible for technology to cause irrational behavior.
One of the most important functions of government is to protect citizens, to protect them from anything that's not in their best interest. Technology oversight and regulation are needed at least to some extent to be sure that public interest is served.
The thing to do is to nurture the baby and pour the bathwater down the drain. That basically sums it up. It illustrates technology almost as well as the comic strips.
-- Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent