Technology, the silent killer.

Khaki pants, and a slightly loose fitting, but professionally and expertly tucked-in dress shirt. The professor walks in, slowly, to a crowd of eager students chatting away to each other in the precious few moments before class begins. As he stands at the podium, the chattering stops, and the hum of the students is replaced momentarily by the insistent clicking of ballpoint pens, the flurry of notebook paper, and the occasional pressing down of the red button initiating the start of a virgin voice recorder tape.

This image, however, has found an unsuitable but more technologically progressive replacement. As the professor walks in, the number of students innocently chatting is outnumbered by those opting for virtual communication: shut out from the actual, physical people around them in lieu of those reached via text, email, or instant messenger. The professor walking in is a mere act, nothing suggesting any necessity of stopping the five facebook chats they have going on.

Computers replaced notebooks, ipods replaced paying attention, cell phones replaced conversation, and technology replaced the sacredness of human interaction at large.

The pandemic is nothing short of a global phenomena, grasping the University of New Mexico tight in its mechanical, suffocating hands en route to a global takeover. Rather than engaging in a first-hand experience in which the professor explains material, some of them, at certain points, choose rather to redirect your experience, thus altering the course of your education. “And then...well, actually, you can just read about it on the article I put up on ereserves.” What, exactly, is to be said about this redirecting of our thoughts, ideas, and education? No longer does it seem that the logical approach to having a question answered is to directly approach the teacher. Now, rather, there are multiple steps you not only can, but should take, before daring to approach the ever busy college professor.

Step one: check the syllabus

Step two: check e-reserves for any explanatory documents

Step three: email the TA

Step four: email the other TA

Step five: email the professor

In no way is this gradual (but certainly noticeable and significant) shift in student/professor interaction and quality of education subject to the decisions of the professor him/herself. Professors, like us, are victims struggling to overcome the limitations and social changes technology has imparted onto us.

Take your basic, 100-level, generally popular university course; such as Psychology 105, among many others. There you are, sitting in class, laptop open with 10+ sites open on the screen. There you are, surrounded with a few friends, and eight hundred others. Your name will not be learned, nor will you ever get anything less than a hazy, distorted view of your professor. He will always be a blur off in the distance, his voice echoing poorly with the slight time lapse through the speakers. It’s Auschwitz. You are a number, not a person. You must complete your duties, submit your online quizzes in a timely manner, or suffer the consequences.

But what exactly are the repercussions, in terms of our UNM community, of a technological makeover? The danger lies within the disconnect between student and teacher ultimately catalyzing a disconnect between student and education. Most recently, our ability to take quizzes and tests online, rather than in the classroom, further advances the disconnect between student and education by removing the educational setting. For example, the quiz that may be taken at our leisure, on our couch with this week's American Idol blaring incessantly from the speakers, may by association of the environment impart to us the notion that the information we are receiving from the quiz is not important, or that the information simply doesn't matter.

Iain Thomson, associate professor here at the University of New Mexico, warns heavily of the implications and dangers of the technologization of the university. In his book, Heidegger on Ontotheology: The Politics of Education, Thomson notes that students are no longer students of knowledge, but rather tools for increased profit for university administration and their ultimate gain. Rather than cultivating knowledge as meaningful in and of itself, it has morphed into a tool whose goal is to ultimately give students a piece of paper (the sought after degree) so that they can make more money in the “real world.”

Professors are not at fault, but are victims to this technological onslaught and business-like mentality that the public university system at large has been forced through economic factors to adopt. While we may not be able to control technology, we can control the way it attempts to control us. For I believe that it is not technology itself that is intrinsically bad, but the way that we use it. Rather than relying on it to divulge us from personal connections (why ask your teacher a question in class and risk getting embarrassed when you can just send him a completely disconnected email?) we must see it as a mere part of our lives, not an all-encompassing facet. We must slow down, and remember that although we might just be student # 532 in a classroom, that does not mean that we should not remind ourselves that our work does matter, and the knowledge we gain is beautiful, useful, and valuable in and of itself. We must use technology, and not be used by it. Unless we want the UNM bookstore to dissolve and receive a campus-wide email announcing that every textbook shall now be downloaded via Kindle.