After telling a friend in California about buying a computer for my kids and signing up for Internet access, I got this e-mail from him: “What a wonderful world your kids are inheriting.” The e-mail included a NASA Web address so my kids could view the Red Planet from the Mars Polar Lander. We’re still waiting for it to phone home. It doesn’t look good.
But my friend is right. We are bequeathing to the next generation a brave new world of technological marvels, many of them outgrowths of the now-embattled U.S. space program. There’s plenty of innovation going on in neighborhood garages these days, too.
That we-the United States-stand atop the high-tech universe is no accident. By nature, we are a nation of discoverers and trailblazers, free to work high-tech wonders in the greatest democracy on Earth.
Today and onward into the next millennium, high technology will be the high-tide that raises all ships.
“We’ve taken actions that have led to the creation of a whole new generation of digital wireless phones-you know, the kind you hear go off in restaurants, movie theaters and presidential press conferences,” President Clinton recently joked while patting himself on the back for his wildly successful, high-tech-friendly economic program.
But it’s not just high tech for its own sake. No doubt, the sale of millions of mobile phones, pagers, Palm Pilots and PCs is great for business, not to mention communication and public safety.
The greatest value of science and applied technology has been to increase efficiency and productivity. The toil of human labor has been eased and our standard of living elevated.
But as magnificent as it is, high technology is nothing without high humanity.
It wasn’t Omnipoint technology that saved a drowning motorist last year. It was Paul Zaicek, a 37-year-old construction worker for Omnipoint who dove into the chilly waters of New Jersey’s Passaic River to pull Phillip Owfie out of his sinking car.
At the other extreme of emergency outcomes, it wasn’t the lack of enhanced 911 technology that put a 911 caller in harm’s way. It was a lazy dispatcher. She put the caller on hold for several minutes to finish a personal call on another line.
Computers, Internet links and mobile phones are worthy educational tools, but they are no substitute for good teachers, solid and safe schools and loving parents. Having one without the other would be a real Digital Divide.
Truth is, the big question at the dawn of the new century will be not whether computers work or fail at one stroke past midnight on Jan. 1. It is whether we human beings succeed or fail to coexist peacefully on the same planet.
For that, a silicon chip is no match for the human heart.
