Making things possible: July 12, 1999 issue of New Thinking

July 12, 1999 New Thinking:
Making things possible

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July 12, 1999

Making things possible

By Gerry McGovern

For most of us, technology can make things that we can already do that bit easier. (Sometimes, when it breaks down or doesn’t work as was promised, it can make things harder!)

For some of us, technology makes things possible, as I was informed this week by Siobhan Long, who works with people with disabilities. The Internet, email, chat rooms, discussions lists, websites, can open up a whole new world for people who are in whatever way blocked from participating fully in physical activities. Siobhan talked about how people who while non-communicative in a one-to-one or group situation, can become totally different in an online environment.

The vast majority of us want to be productive and pull our weight in society. During the 1980s, I spent a long time ‘unemployed’. I suppose you could say it was by choice. I had earned myself a good education but all of a sudden life seemed to lack any central meaning. I basically dropped out, spent periods where I slept most of the day, spent periods reading, spent periods writing, spent periods during absolutely nothing.

The Ireland of the 1980s was a bleak place; a hopeless place where you educated yourself to emigrate. Most of my friends were on the dole, some were budding writers, some budding musicians. Many felt disillusioned. Getting benefit from the state became a game, avoiding training programs became a sport. Yet I know that after drinking and smoking dope and sitting there in the blankness of it all, few found any lasting happiness or contentment.

John, a good friend of mine, finally got ‘caught’ and was forced to go on a gardening course. We talked about it like a prison sentence, and for the first couple of weeks he grudgingly served his time. Then something happened him. His work slowly began to cast into relief the comfortable, sucking void that he had sunk deeper and deeper into. That gardening course opened up to John the possibility of a real life, and he grabbed it.

Work is not the only thing to give life meaning, but it sure as hell helps. Being productive, earning a wage, paying our way, no matter how much we may grumble about it, gives us a sense of being alive, of being real, of being of value. Nobody willingly wants to be a burden.

Particularly because of our ageing populations, the digital age has major challenges as the traditionally productive part of the population diminishes. A question that needs to be asked most urgently is: Can technology make people productive who were traditionally not so?

People want to play a productive role in society for as long as they can. It is not simply a philanthropic thing for society to allow our old and disabled to do so – it is becoming more and more essential for the economic health of the economy that they are facilitated to.

You don’t need to be physically mobile to moderate a discussion list or an online chat. These and many more new skills can be carried out with total professionalism by members of society that taxpayers might have traditionally seen as burdens.

The very first time I used the Internet I was left in awe of the undreamed of possibilities that it offered. I am as much in awe today. But at the end of the day it is not technology that makes things possible. It is people dreaming and then implementing new uses for technology who are the ‘possible-makers.’

Gerry McGovern

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You don’t need to be physically mobile to moderate a discussion list or an online chat.