Monday, August 08, 2005

A Society Drunk on Technology

Frank Work, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta, has been blogging on the Identity Trail.

We sometimes lack the willingness to think and analyze before we act. In a world where we become impatient if it takes more than a second to download a two thousand page document, where we expect an immediate reply to our email, where we expect someone to answer their cellphone wherever, whenever we call, where we demand instant credit and immediate gratification of our wants, we tend to look for the immediate fix to problems. And, we usually adopt the techno-fix, so strongly do we believe in the power of technology. But the techno-fix, the quick-fix, is not always the best fix: there is, after all, the law of unintended consequences. There is an old Luddite saying: “Act in haste, repent at leisure.”


He's right of course: We sometimes lack the willingness to think and analyze before we act.

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