Suzi Gablik

On a Planet All Her Own

Suzi Gablik must have felt out of place standing behind the podium. After all, it was covered with computer equipment, and she was there to give a speech on why computers were hurting society, as part of an RU art gallery opening.

The room, filled mostly with RU students and professors , settled in for a speech many knew they would not agree with. The audience was familiar with Gablik. She is a nationally known art critic who has lived in Blacksburg for years. As the audience entered the McGuffey auditorium that night, more than a few stopped by and personally greeted her.

The whole evening was rich with irony. She prefaced her remarks by saying that she does not own a computer, nor does she know anything about them. Then she started to speak about why she believed that the move into a cyber-age is bad for humanity. When she spoke, it was impossible to ignore the image of her being shielded by a desk full of computer equipment and dwarfed by a gigantic computer projection screen behind her.

Five minutes into the speech, a voiced boomed from the back and asked that the fan be turned off. The last rows couldn't hear her. She was speaking without a microphone or a P.A. system. Professors scurried around the room in desperate pursuit to find the thermostat - eventually giving up and suggesting that the back rows move up. During the confusion, someone joked that fan was being controlled by a computer.

So, what is Gablik's gripe with computers? Several were mentioned. Computers use up too many resources, computers take jobs away from people, and the main point to her argument - that computers were so impersonal and so increasingly necessary that they are dehumanizing humanity.

She illustrated this argument by discussing mail. We lose something, she argued, when we write and read mail on a screen instead of writing it with a pen on paper.

After thirty minutes of railing against new technologies' affect on the human spirit, she opened the floor for questions. One student expressed a connection with Gablik's anti-computer sentiment, saying that she has consciously decided to not use computers, even though this has caused her trouble in her classes.

"I think she is a little reactionary," said one art professor after the speech, "It just seems like a knee jerk reaction to computers." The same professor questioned Gablik about how she feels about privacy during the Q&A session. She agreed with his sentiments that privacy was a major issue in the dawning technological age.

The other questions were more adversarial. One questioner asked Gablik if she ever used common items like the telephone and microwaves. He and a few others pointed out connections to just how important computers are important to all our lives.

"The problem with technology is it always expanding and changing and we can't stop it. The Chinese call it the middle way, and we don't have the middle way in our society, which is to stop at a certain point when we have what we need," Gablik commented at the reception that followed her speech.

She seemed at the crossroads of accepting what she has and fearing what will replace it. She grapples with a paradox of the way things are and the way things will be. She admitted several times during the night that technology will advance no matter what she does, but along the way she is going to be quite vocal about how she sees humanity crumble every time technology is advanced.

What do you think? Leave your feedback below.

Name:   

E-Mail: 
Year:   

Major:  

Comments: