tech vs. manners & skill

Technology, writ large, opens new doors for good and for bad.  Concentrating on the latter here, technology can make us weak and ill-behaved, so that we may want to work to correct for these effects. For example, rely on automatic parking and GPS directions and our population's spatial awareness and spatial management skills may suffer.

Ethics and manners also suffer. For instance, in the first half of the 20th century, it was by & large good manners not to bring a stick to a fist fight, not to bring a knife to a stick fight, not to bring a gun to a knife fight, etc. This ethic was there to correct for the opportunity that technology provided for devaluing fitness and bypassing time-honored skills. Respect for these levels of engagement, as well as our obligation to have manners and to respect skills, is today strangely absent from popular narratives.

Laws themselves are a form of technology that can in turn prompt us to ignore our cultural obligation to be ethical as well. Reliance on any one technology, including laws, smartphones, or guns, can in this way nurture a population that gives short shrift to spatial and social awareness, fails to reward physical fitness, and selects against cultural and professional morality. Dropping free-energy per capita may eventually lead to the decline of our social systems, but we may want to try to keep new technologies from helping expedite that decline.