The Four Hundred

Say it often enough, and it becomes real. Ignore proof to the contrary, and it becomes a myth. IT certainly has its share. Maybe the biggest and best-known industry myth is that computers are dehumanizing. Nah. No more so than hammers. Well, I suppose a hammer can be dehumanizing, if it's used to bludgeon somebody. But to paraphrase Charlton Heston: Computers don't dehumanize people; people dehumanize people.

Now that I think of it, old Charlton would make a credible spokesperson for technology advocates. You can just see him waving a mouse at a bunch of Luddites and yelling, "From my cold, dead hands!"

Over the years, IBM has been the object of enough myths to earn it an honorary spot on Mount Olympus. And I suspect it's been the source of a few myths, too. One myth that IBM happily propagated for years was that a manager would never get fired for making an IBM purchase. That was back when even a midrange system was accompanied by manuals measured in pallet loads and IBM had engineers on site as part of the deal. Because computing was user-hostile and unduly complicated, and IBM was the Zeus of technology providers, the belief among DP decision makers was that IBM would not let an installation fail. Have a problem, and the lobby would congeal with blue suits. Strange interchangeable men wearing wingtips and conversing in acronyms would lay hands on your machine, and miraculously it would heal. And, for a while, this was true. Until IBM lost seven or eight billion dollars and unloaded many of its costly systems engineers, thus shattering another revered myth: the legend of full employment.

Then, as now, the workplace has always been a myth-rich environment. How long have people believed that the person who comes to work first and leaves last is the most valuable and dedicated employee? Not necessarily. Perhaps he's merely less competent or more easily distracted and therefore unable to complete a day's work in a standard shift. Maybe he's just trying to impress the boss. Or perhaps he delays going home because he can't stand being there. Or, like many workaholics, he stays because he has no life outside the office. Or maybe his individual heroics are compensating for a flawed system and thus helping to perpetuate it. There are many reasons why people over-work, but the myth persists.

Or how about the notion that people get more done when they multitask. Now I know you multitaskers will object, but from my observations, multitasking is a great way to look busy while accomplishing little. It requires a lot of churn, which gives the illusion of productivity, but more often leaves behind a jumble of partially completed tasks. Unlike computers, we humans cannot partition our brains to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. Although our subconscious whirls away in the background, doing whatever the subconscious does, our conscious focus is limited to one activity at a time. The fact that our attention has been conditioned by commercial television to shift every eight minutes or so, does not mean we're multitasking. Pretending that people function like computers is neither healthy nor realistic, and, in extreme cases, may be insulting to computers.

We are equally fanciful about the tools at our disposal. Surrounded by cell phones, pagers, wireless messaging, e-mail, the Web, and the fax, we cling to the illusion that we have actually improved the quality of our communication. In truth, we've improved the variety, speed, and efficiency with which information is transmitted. But information is to communication what bricks are to a building. Technology certainly has the ability to shrink time and distance, but it does not provide meaning. It does not distinguish between the important and the trivial, the nourishing and the toxic; nor is the sheer volume of data that we can now transmit a substitute for relevance or a measure of quality. In fact, most of us get so much information that we are unable to savor any of it.

When you get a broadcast e-mail from the company president, do you feel you've experienced a full communication? And how would the sender even know if you understand the message or agree with it? Research shows that the words of a communication contain only seven percent of the total message. The rest is tonality, posture, and the subtle body and facial movements that convey the intention behind the words. The physical presence of the speaker is, in effect, the energetic manifestation of the unspoken meaning of the message. Technology is capable of transmitting the message, but not the meaning.

The quantity of electronic information we are able to access drives another popular myth, namely that we are all more connected. That's certainly true, if you count the number of phone lines in my house, but electronic connection is a poor substitute for personal connection. Television is often credited (not without cause) with linking people from diverse cultures. Yet T.S. Eliot described the technology accurately when he said, "It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time and yet remain lonesome." The difference between connecting with people through technology and connecting with them in person is the difference between getting a virtual embrace and getting a real one.

Undeniably, we are connected to an unprecedented variety of information sources, and we have the means to reach people in remote places (provided, of course, that they have access to the same technology). Yet in some respects, electronic connection works against personal connection, because it has become a convenient substitute for the hard work of relating--like sitting children in front of the TV, instead of interacting with them.

Our reliance on technology, coupled with clever advertising, raises our expectations of fulfillment and contributes to the myth. "Reach out and touch someone," the phone company implored us, positioning its product as a delivery vehicle for human affection. And indeed that possibility exists. But the implication in the marketing campaign--one that the technology provider is eager for us to believe--is that the means equal the ends, making the method of delivery synonymous with the message. Thus, the marketing campaign would have us imagine that the mere placement of a call implies affection. Maybe, maybe not.

Interestingly, the Internet is subject to some of the same myths and expectations that radio and television have endured. As soon as its potential became evident, enthusiasts began to extol it as the ultimate instrument of democratization. Of course it has that potential, but history suggests that once the veneer of idealism was peeled off, radio and television would produce somewhat more modest results.

Over time, the miracles of technology become ordinary with repetitive use, and old myths are replaced by new ones. People no longer press up to store windows to watch the wonder of television as they once did, and if Mr. Watson is needed these days, he probably checks caller ID before picking up the phone. Rather than shouldering the hopes of democratization, television is now denounced as a purveyor and cause of violence, and cell phones are thought by some to cause brain cancer. That's progress.

Perhaps creating myths is just a way to keep our hopes and fears manageable, to explain something we don't understand or to acknowledge something that seems self-evident. Convenient beliefs about our technologies absolve us from seeing the behaviors driving the myths. Ultimately, it's easier to say that computers are dehumanizing or that the Internet should be censored because it traffics in pornography than to examine the choices that propel technology use.

The critic Clive Barnes once made the following observation about television, but it is just as applicable to any of our newer technologies. "Television," he said, "is the first truly democratic culture, the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what the people do want."