Wednesday May 7, 2014

Reflecting on Technology: Jay Cousins

So today I have spent quite a lot of time reading a comprehensive feature on Technology in Africa- Technology in Africa, 2014 Digest By Tefo Mohapi just in a bid to have as much background information about technology in Africa as I prepare the second part of my Africa’s Transformative Narrative pieces. The whole publication is a compilation of contributions from a host of technology, development, healthcare, innovation, peace building and accounting experts who have accomplished a lot in the technology scene in Africa and globally. It goes a long way in explaining the disconnects and linkages between technology and other similar innovations in the continent and prescribes how all actors including the government, the public, the private sector and external actors can make technology more beneficial and affordable for the perceived poor people of Africa.

A graphic designer's impression of  Africa  made from a motherboard

However, it is the last bit of insight into technology by Jay Cousins titled Reflection On Technology that really drove the point home for me. Here is an excerpt from his submissions:

“Africa's greatest assets are already developed. They are Technologies we once possessed in the West, but have forgotten how to use. Technology is a tool applied to achieve a result. If we are willing to apply this thinking to Virtual, and Physical, why not to our own intellectual and emotional states? Why are we constantly in pursuit of recreating ourselves – poorly – trying to create the perfect Humanity mechanically, fleeing ourselves in the process and failing to look at or admire our own capabilities. Man is technology, as is every creature, plant and thing that replicates itself on the planet. We are a form of technology used by Genes to continue their existence. Technology is not always used consciously and it can unconsciously affect the user. 

We evolve together, we shape our tools and in turn they shape us and how we live. We started to neglect the development of the Self, in favor of the shaping of our environment our External Technologies. As our technology developed, we began to adapt ourselves to the Environments we created. We lost our fur, we shrank, our social and emotional behaviors shifted from Nomadic to Sedentary lifestyles. The tools with which we surrounded ourselves, affected our minds, our approaches and our metaphors of existence – consider the language we use, how many of our terms relate to War, how many of our metaphors of society are based on Factories and industrialized processes.

Many of us have forgotten how to repair, maintain and improve ourselves. We are dependent on and disconnected by the Externalized Technologies we use to sustain us, whether Physically, Mentally, Spiritually or Emotionally. On top of the hardware that we ourselves possess, we each have our own operating Systems, comprised of different scripts and stories. We have created layer upon layer of stories and relationships. The more scripts we wrote the more bugs we added to our systems. We seek to simplify our lives, yet we strive to achieve this by increasingly complex solutions. We seek to use technology to reconnect us with each other, further disconnecting us in the process. Many of us are incapable of thinking outside of these frameworks. We approach a problem with a technological solution in mind. We think “How can I solve this with an App?” rather than “How can I solve this?

We must address problems, starting with the problem, not with the solution. Just because an External Technology is mentally more available because it's sexy this year does not make it the Best Solution. Why do we externalize so many of the functions we naturally possess to technology? Why can we not perceive ourselves as the basis for our progress? We have a very bad story for ourselves, one where we perceive mankind as negative, needing to be controlled, to protect ourselves from the “others”. Our stories of the future are no better, Armageddon, Environmental Destruction, Economic Collapse, take your pick. These stories comprise elements of our Operating System. Scripts running in the background affecting our development and interaction with each other and the world around us. Many of these scripts are competing both internally on a Human Scale, and replicating like viruses on a Social Scale. Constantly interfering with one another, sometimes intentionally, but more often than not due to Bugs and Flaws, hereditary issues based on long dead and unnecessary social constructs”

Jay Cousins works in Egypt with local communities to explore how they can improve their lives and solve local and global challenges using locally available resources.

The publication has been made available online by the publisher – iAFRIKAN.