This house believes that we have become slaves to technology - moderator's introduction

The mixture of wonder and mistrust we feel towards new technology is no new phenomenon. A part of the movie industry has been thriving on it for decades, as can be seen for example in films like Terminator or 2001: A Space Odyssey, where humans lose control over machines and fight to get it back.

But in the past few years, it seems that there has been a growing concern regarding the invasion of technology into our lives. Our ways of working, communicating, socialising and so on are changing, often dramatically, at an incredible speed, due to successive innovations. Some experts claim that even our way of thinking is changing: according to Nicholas Carr, writer of The shallows: what the internet is doing to our brain, we experience a growing difficulty to read long articles and to stay focused, because of the habits we pick up on the internet, of just skimming through articles and jumping from one link to another. The impact that these inventions and innovations have on us is tremendous, and they affect a huge number of people. For example, to this day, there are two billion internet users in the world, which is almost five times as much as ten years ago, and 800 million people have signed up to Facebook.

These inventions make our lives a lot easier, whether it be in the context of business or of private life, but they also create needs, because we learn to rely on them. They can even be a source of addiction: in the United States especially, “rehabilitation” centers have been created for video game and internet addicts. This is clearly a sign of enslavement to some forms of technology and it is worrying many.

In the article “Slaves to technology”, Stefan Stern writes that the arrival of new technology leads to basic management mistakes, because people often lack training in using the technology that is available to them and according to him, the misuse or the overuse of technology often lead to a waste of time. For example, mails are known to take up an incredible amount of time and energy. “One characteristic of future success in business,” he writes, “will be the ability to harness new technologies, making it work for us rather than the other way around”

This makes one wonder however why technology is suddenly such a big concern, and even if it is actually a greater concern than it used to be. What is meant by the word technology, in the motion? Are we considering only the most modern technology? And what makes it different from “less modern technology”? Is it any different?

These are questions the debaters will have to find a clear answer to, to make the debate a fair fight of ideas, and not just of concepts or definitions. This motion will be hard to debate, due to the vastness of the topic and to the fact that we have already heard a lot about this. The challenge will be to have a structured debate, which doesn’t wander from one topic to another and to be careful with the slippery notion of freedom suggested by the word “slave”.  So let’s read what they have to say!

by PL