(This is part of the Brejcha Personal and Disability Resource Site, and after reading this page you can Click here for a Menu . But for now, Welcome to my:
copyright 2001 by F. Alexander Brejcha
NOTE: 7/8/09 - This was originally published in the October 8, 2001 issue of the Philadelphia, PA, USA edition of a multi-lingual, International daily newspaper Metro which is an impressively well-rounded daily. I made a few corrections (updates), but basically this is as it was published and I retain copyright.
Occasionally I come across semi-Luddite commentaries in the press bemoaning technology and science for their dehumanizing influences -- ironically probably typed on a computer and very possibly e-mailed to the publisher. I doubt they were written by hand and carried in. But they miss the boat on how empowering and humanizing these 'inhumane' technologies can be if we take advantage of the incredible potential they offer.
Granted, my perspective differs because of my status as an individual with extensive disabilities due to M.S.. Only a few decades ago, I would have been a prisoner -- by necessity -- in a nursing home, dependent on fairly continuous nursing and/or attendant care. But a power wheelchair allows me mobility that would be exhausting or impossible in the manual wheelchair I use at home (now I use the power chair at all times due to reduced streangth and fatigue problems); urological supplies let me keep my dignity and continence; medicine controls my spasticity; a specially equipped sailplane allows me to take piloting lessons to enhance my recreation; an impressively adapted van I drive from my wheelchair allows me to run errands and take my wife to dinner -- and it lets me make a 66 mile daily commute to my night job in the city at Graduate Hospital where I worked for twenty-seven years (23 in a wheelchair, until it closed in 2007 and I went out on SSD as I could not find another accessible night job). My job was not affected by progressing M.S. that changed me from 'able-bodied' to paraplegic. This is because office computers allowed me to work a critical job where the lives of people literally depend on my performance. And as for the worn notebook computer that always hung on the back of my wheelchair (replaced three times) when not in use and my desk-top computer at home (also updated), they allow me to work a sideline as a professional writer of fiction and non-fiction to amuse and educate readers all over the world.
These same computers have also allowed me to build and maintain an award-winning disability resource web site at http://www.netreach.net/~abrejcha or http://disabilityhelper.org where I offer extensive resources for people with all manner of disabilities needing help. Through my site, I also interact and communicate with people all over the world whom I never would have met otherwise -- including a fellow disability advocate (also with M.,S.) in Russia whom I have now been fortunate enough to marry after casual e-mails and subsequent physical visits developed into a full-blown relationship.
Is this the same technology that is supposedly making life more isolated and lonely? Are peer support, education, entertainment, and romance inhumane? I think not. What is inhumane is the way we take tools that make our lives easier and use them as an excuse for not listening, watching, and helping where needed.
Sure, cell-phones, voice mail, and electronic mail do distance us in some ways, but in so many others, they make it much easier to stay in touch. I can now call my wife on the spur of the moment to say "I love you", or on the way home from work I can call to ask: "is there anything else to add to the shopping list?" And my E-mail at alexbrejcha@yahoo.com allows me to quickly respond to questions from the other side of the country -- or the world! -- when a frightened newly diagnosed person with a disability who found my web site writes to ask me how to deal with some particular problem... a question easier to ask anonymously without having to physically seek out answers from 'able-bodied' stranger after stranger who often can't relate.
And sure, some impersonal scenarios undeniably result from an increasingly mechanized and automated society, but it is our RESPONSIBILITY -- if we are to remain a caring species -- to be aware of the line that separates us from machines, and to take advantage of those aspects of new technology which CAN enrich our humanity. There are SO MANY ways that we can be better and more attentive spouses, parents, and people, if we use these technologies as enhancing tools, not dehumanizing or isolating barriers.
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