Self-Cleaning

A great new invention has come out recently--a machine that folds your clothes for you. Yes, you heard me—it folds your clothes. The problem is, you have to feed the clothing items into the machine one by one. I'll save my $1,000. By the time I feed it all in, I could have folded it myself. Then, I see there is one where you just put all the clothes in a drawer, and it will sort and fold the items (all but socks--don't get me started on socks)--for a mere $16,000. <Insert every surprised, appalled, befuddled emoji here> $16,000???

I have written about my feelings regarding laundry before. You can read about it here if you want. I have to admit, it made me chuckle a little. My feelings haven't changed at all--and either has the nature of laundry.

But, this isn't about laundry. 

It's about technology.

I am surrounded by self-cleaning appliances. My oven will burn the overspill off after 4 hours of smoke-producing high heat. But, it leaves behind ashes that I still have to wipe out. And, that one black spot that won't go away with any amount of elbow grease and toxic chemicals. 

My microwave self-cleans with steam, but like the oven, I still have to wipe the sucker out when the process is complete. 

My washing machine and dishwasher have self-cleaning buttons too, but I still have to remove gunk from the crevices and drains every once in a while. 

In other words, none of these things can measure up to my idea of clean. 

One piece of technology that does live up to my expectations is the voice recognition button on my cable remote. I love that thing. No more searching for previous episodes of Madam Secretary or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. I say the word; it finds the show. A far cry from having to turn a dial on the console television of my youth. Of course, we only had five channels to choose from, so it wasn’t as tedious as it sounds. 

Enter technology in education. 

Just like the technology in my home doesn’t live up to my standards—set impossibly high in my youth by the cartoon, The Jetsons—educational technology has its flaws. Mostly in the way it is being used—or misused. 

Don’t get me wrong. I love the opportunities that abound, the information students and educators can gather in a relatively short amount of time. What I don’t love is the replacement of personal face time with screen time. I don’t love that some people seem to think that a computer can teach a child—or an adult for that matter.  Can it give them facts? Sure. Can it teach them to think critically enough to discern good information from bad? Nope.  I worry that in some cases throwing kids on a computer program has become the new babysitter, the equivalent of wheeling in a TV from the AV department and popping in a movie. 

We need to  integrate technology into our lives without letting it take over our lives. We still need human interaction, collaboration, the back-and-forth dialogue that helps us see different perspectives and hopefully teaches us to respect others even when they don’t subscribe to our world view. 

Smart phones aren't making us smarter. They are just making life easier. We only get smarter when we learn from our experiences and interactions, when we learn to think for ourselves. 

Just like the bottom of my oven, life can be messy. Instead of pushing a button and having it all magically fix itself, we need to use a little elbow grease, break a sweat scrubbing up the muck and crud. 


There’s no self-cleaning button to clean up the messes we make. 

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