N is for naïveté...
At a community picnic last week the
crowds were thick and the mood upbeat as we were entertained by various street
performers, among them an enthusiastic African drummer. A number of us jiggled and
hopped along with the rhythm, flashing smiles and enjoying the common groove.
It wasn’t too long before the sun and the exertion had me panting. The woman
next to me grinned, fished about in her dilly bag for a bit, and then pulled
out a small pillbox. I watched fascinated as she flipped the lid and selected a
tablet with long acrylic tipped fingers. “Here,” she said, offering me a tiny
pellet, “pop this under your tongue, it’ll give you more energy.” I declined
with my kindest grown-up expression. (you know, the one that says “don’t be
silly dear”), and thanked her with a smile. Well, would you accept a mystery substance
from a stranger who could be a few squares short of the full chocolate bar?
..and what’s that got to do with anything anyhow?
Here we are in the middle of a still
accelerating boom of technological advancement. New devices regularly make
their entrance onto the market amidst fanfare and excitement -so often that we
are dizzy and wide-eyed, hardly knowing which to choose next. The general mood
is upbeat as we all tap and click our way to modern community. Are you up with
the latest buzz? Is the new iphone better than the competition? How many more
months should you wait before upgrading to a better laptop? Do you really know how
to get the most out of that gadget?
Even my grandma has a shiny new mobile toy
to juggle, reluctantly accepting a device that is as mysterious to her as
Egyptian hieroglyphs. Most of her blue-rinse buddies also have a mobile phone
stashed in the handbag, and/or a computer blinking and winking on a table next
to the wireless at home. I sat next to her when she first got hers, and tried
to explain which little boxes on the overcrowded screen were waiting for her
input. In the end I sent her on a crash computer course.. don’t let the irony
of that one escape you. But even after computing 101, she remains generally
confused about the inner workings of the grey box in her home, never deviating
from the exact key sequences that will take her to her email.
We are armed to the hilt with the latest
microchipped wonders, but an alarming majority of us don’t know how to use the
technology properly. Those who do, find themselves in a fools’ paradise of
sitting ducks. And it’s duck season. In a move akin to passing out loaded guns
to children, we are equipping ourselves with smart technology minus a safety
catch. Parents hand their offspring tablets and phones that have cameras,
microphones and access to social networks. Sure, the kids are miles ahead of Granny
trying to deal with email and dodge spam, but they are still babes in the wood
compared to the undercurrent of IT wizards, themselves kids in a candy store of
opportunities.
Privacy is the undecorated casualty of
this information explosion. Actually, it’s an information war. Ignorance is the
ally of our enemy, and we are prisoners of our own materialism. Sorry to say
that Grandma found herself cleaned out recently. She fell victim to a telephone
scam, giving remote access of her computer to a supposed maintenance firm. And
me? I’m not that much more savvy than Grandma really. I have accepted a tablet,
one full of cyber-mysteries and security systems that are continually superseded.
It lets me run a whole lot of sweet applications... but I have to confess a
woefully inadequate knowledge of all its sweet implications.
Whose job is it to make sure we are all
fully aware of the capabilities and risks of the products we are buying? Who is
responsible for Granny’s misfortune? Nobody’s
putting up their hand.
Somehow Naïveté isn’t so cute anymore.
