Technology Advances, Humans Stand Still

[From article]
Americans now have more computer power in their smart phones than did the Pentagon in all its computer banks just 30 years ago. We board a sophisticated jet and assume that the flight is no more dangerous than crossing the street.
The downside of this complete reliance on computer gadgetry is a fundamental ignorance of what technology is.
[. . .]
What does it matter that millions of American students can communicate across thousands of miles instantly with their iPads and iPhones if a poorly educated generation increasingly has little to say?
The latest fad of near-insolvent universities is to offer free iPads to students so that they can access information more easily. But what if most undergraduates still have not been taught to read well, think inductively or have some notion of history? Speeding up their ignorance is not the same as imparting wisdom. Requiring a freshman Latin course would be a far cheaper and wiser investment in mastering language, composition and inductive reasoning than handing out free electronics.
[. . .]
Nature remains fickle, complex and unfathomable, and can defy even computer-enhanced theorizing.
[. . .]
Sophisticated electronics also often disguise the brutal premodern world with a thin veneer of postmodern egotism.
[. . .]
The ancient Greek poet Hesiod reminded us roughly 2,700 years ago that sometimes intellectual or material progress brings with it moral regress.
[. . .]
Billionaire tech wizard Steve Jobs gave away less of his fortune than did Andrew Carnegie. Google offshores profits with accounting gimmickry that would have made J.P. Morgan proud. The hip Solyndra bunch got government-insider money and concessions of the sort that Mark Hopkins and Collis Huntington garnered to build the transcontinental line. Yet the old robber barons at least used government money to create something; their modern green techie counterparts squandered it.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0314/hanson032014.php3#.UzJiqN2yO4A

Jewish World Review

March 20, 2014 / 18 Adar II, 5774
Technology is not wisdom
By Victor Davis Hanson