IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020 - 12

with causation and, from what we
have seen, to misuse sources. She
blames the decreased enrollment
in the Boy Scouts on hyper-connec-
tivity, showing that enrollment was
falling after the introduction of the
smartphone by Apple in 2007.
Unfortunately, the situation is more
complicated - enrollment in the
Boy Scouts of America peaked pre-
Internet in 1970, began to fall, and
has experienced some ups and
downs without ever regaining its
maximum. Membership appears to
be in a slow decline but there is no
way to assign this to connectivity.
Albright's discussion of the Scouts
is part of a larger argument - Ameri-
cans are becoming untethered from
nature. She may have a valid point
here. Although visits to U.S. National
Parks have been increasing, the num-
ber of different individuals attending
the Parks has been shrinking. Visits
to the Parks are buoyed by a smaller
number of individuals visiting more
often than in the past.
At times however she paints with
a wide brush - blaming the tastes of
digital natives for her bete-noir of
fast foods and American supermar-
kets. Because the digital natives
untether themselves from nature she
avers they have lost an appreciation
for naturally grown foods. She makes
the inevitable invidious comparison
between the Americans and the
French - the latter having food stalls
in cities overflowing with naturally
local grown foods freshly brought in
from the country. In fact, Americans
have grown increasingly discerning in
their tastes and consumption of food
in the last generation. Much of this
can be attributed to the supermarket
chain Whole Foods which not only
promotes sophisticated foods but
also seeks to obtain produce and
baked goods from local suppliers.
Albright mentions this brand but dis-
misses them with the familiar pejora-

12

electricity to go from 10% to 80%.
Smart phones are wonderful but the
difference between having and not
having electricity in one's home
dwarfs the novelty and convenience
of the iPhone and its fellow travelers.
Albright asserts that these devic-
es of digital connectivity will have an
" impact equal to the printing press. "
At this point I wish I could deploy
Marshall McLuhan much as Woody
Allen uses him to confront a bore in
Annie Hall. McLuhan's Gutenberg
Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man is a major, convincing, dis-
quisition on the disruption and
creation derived from the movable
type printing press. He explains how
the press and its applications creat-
ed what we call modernity: " Print is
the technology of individualism " he
asserts and has given us the privi-
leging of the visual over the aural,
the spread of literacy, the nation
state, the Protestant reformation,
commodification of literature, the
mechanization of handcraft, and
capitalism. Albright talks about how
brains are being altered through the
multitasking indulged in by her digi-
tal natives. She is an intellectual
descendant of McLuhan who wrote
at length on how human perception
has been altered by print. McLu-
han's changes took place over cen-
turies and it is likely that any truly
important changes wrought by
Albright's hyper-connectivity will
take decades to evolve and become
apparent, and it seems unlikely that
they will be of the magnitude that
McLuhan so convincingly describes.

tive, " whole paycheck, " implying that
most Americans can't afford to shop
there. But in fact, the less expensive
supermarkets have been emulating
Whole Foods in pursuing the up-mar-
ket shopper and offer many of the
same inducements: local produce,
bread and desserts baked in the
store, coffee beans of every descrip-
tion. Moreover, while fast food chains
were once dominated by McDonald's
we have seen in the last decade or
two the growth of such outlets as Au
Bon Pain, Pret a Manger, and Panera
Bread whose products can be fresh
and of high order. We are a long way
from McDonald's or, if you have dis-
tant memories, the Howard John-
son's of a half century ago. One is on
stronger ground in claiming that the
so-called TV dinner of the 50's is a
salient example of untethering from
nature, or perhaps the introduction
of canned foods in the 19th century.
It is true that we are experiencing
a technological revolution - no one
would dispute that. But the book
lacks historical perspective. What is
unique about this revolution is not so
much its consequences but the
speed with which it has occurred.
The Apple iPhone dates from 2007
and it and other smart phones have
spawned industries: think of Uber
and Lyft. Two thirds of the earth's
population have cell phones - most-
ly smart phones. The specter of a
family at dinner with each member
hunched over its iPad or iPhone is
aptly described by Albright. But when
looking at the consequences of tech-
nological revolutions it's the slowly
evolving ones that have had the
greatest consequences. About 1.25
million people are killed each year,
worldwide, by motor vehicles. It's a
statistic which apparently generates
little alarm, and it's a number that
has held steady for years. It took 32
years, from 1908 to 1940, for the
number of American homes with

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

Reviewer Information
A. David Wunsch is the book review
editor of this magazine. He is a Pro-
fessor Emeritus in the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engi-
neering at the University of Massa-
chusetts Lowell. His email address is
David_Wunsch@uml.edu.

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DECEMBER 2020
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