Technology in the Human Service Field

CHAPTER 28 TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIALITY IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM: CURRENT CHALLENGES FOR THE HUMAN SERVICE GENERALIST EUGENE M. DEROBERTIS AND ROBERT SALDARINI

Human services can be characterized as a broad social movement designed to counterbalance the emphasis on rugged individualism in American culture (Cimmino, 1999, p. 13). Thus, part and parcel of the human service orientation toward helping others is the notion that human service generalists place “a portion of responsibility on society for creating conditions that reduce opportunities for people to be successful by perpetuating social problems” (p. 14). Among the myriad challenges that human service generalists address in their work are problems involving the development of the self within the social context (p. 10). As is well known, Maslow’s (1968) hierarchy of needs speaks to the importance of interpersonal relations in self-development with his articulation of needs for love and belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization. Hansell’s motivation theory also addresses the need for a co-constitution of the self by noting that humans need intimacy, closeness, belonging, self-identity, and social roles (Schmolling and Burger, 1989). Accordingly, it is in the interest of competent service delivery for human service workers to be aware of burgeoning trends in the interpersonal dimension of our lives that pose new challenges to a healthy social climate and optimal self-development. Such trends can be found in the ever-increasing reliance on technology in American society.

TECHNOLOGY AND PARADOXICAL HUMAN CONNECTEDNESS

As the sun sets on the past century, so fades the concept of an individual “being out.” With line and cell telephones, beepers, pagers, voice mail, and the Internet, technology has set up an almost ubiquitous communication network. People from all walks of American life are undergoing the process of becoming unceasingly connected. On the surface, it appears that this network would only enhance the quality of life. In fact, technology constantly allots new opportunities for individuals to manage their day-to-day affairs in a more convenient, even life-sustaining way. For example, technological means for managing work affairs, contacting baby-sitters, and going to school on-line offer great potential to help people with limited means meet their responsibilities and strive toward their aspirations. Ironically, however, this unprecedented technological connectedness is also manifesting a relational paradox. Literature on the connection between the growing reliance on technology and increasing social alienation has been burgeoning since the mid-twentieth century. Recently, a study done at Carnegie Mellon University reported that individuals who spent just several hours a week on the Internet experienced higher levels of depression and loneliness (Kraut et al., 1998, p. 1028). Thus, the new millennium beckons the exploration of how current technologies and technological trends set the stage for a pervasive sense of loneliness in today’s culture.

TECHNOLOGY AS A CONTRIBUTOR TO ISOLATION AND LONELINESS

As was noted above, the notion that technology has the potential to exacerbate a sense of social alienation is far from contemporary. In 1958, Rollo May wrote: . . . Human beings . . . have lost their world, lost their experience of community. Riesman presents a good deal of sociopsychological data in his study . . . to demonstrate that the... lonely, alienated character type is characteristic...of people as a whole in our society and that the trends in that direction have been increasing over the past couple of decades. He makes the significant point that these people have only a technical communication with their world.... (May, Angel, and Ellenberger, 1958, pp. 56–57) Despite the enormous changes that have occurred in America since May wrote these words, societal behavior indicates that his observations continue to ring true in the twenty-first century. One can identify at least two interrelated ways in which the force of technology continues to contribute to a culture-wide feeling of loneliness. First, the deepening devotion to technology and its advancement has alienated individuals from sharing a sense of personal meaning and value in life. As Viktor E. Frankl (1978) once put it, “In the impersonal climate of industrial society ever more people obviously suffer from a sense of loneliness.... People cry for intimacy. And this cry is so urgent that intimacy is sought at any expense, on any level, ironically even on an impersonal level...” (p. 82). Research in the area of television viewing, for example, attests to Frankl’s observations. Studies show that lonely people not only watch more television (Canary and Spitzberg, 1993), but also attempt to use television to alleviate their loneliness (Rook and Peplau, 1982; Rubinstein and Shaver, 1982). Second, the increasing use of technological language has alienated people from their worlds by disposing them to interpret life in objectivistic, impersonal ways. For instance, in 1992 the Internet was most familiar to those who were trained in technology, yet “dot-com” is presently entrenched in conversational communication. The New York Times Almanac reports that 200 million people are members of the Internet community, and Information Technology (IT) “techno-babble” has become a mainstay of American language. As the millennium progresses, it will be worth noting the degree to which IT-based language contributes to the alienation and loneliness that May refers to in his continuing discussion of Riesman’s famous book, The Lonely Crowd (Riesman, Glazer, and Denny, 1950): “... People have only a technical communication with their world.... Their orientation [in Riesman’s study], for example, was not ‘I liked the play,’ but ‘The play was well done,’ ‘The article was well written,’ and so forth” (May, 1958, p. 57). With this said, one can evaluate some of the dimensions of what may rightly be called “techno-loneliness” as they have come to manifest themselves. For a more concrete understanding of the current, almost technophilic state of the American culture, one needs to examine the shift of technological empowerment from organization to individual. Corporations had possession of “the big machine” (i.e., technology) until well into the 1940s. This point has been widely illustrated in films such as Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 Modern Times. However, as the transistor and micro-circuits gave way to cost-effective digitization, technological tools such as computers no longer served solely as corporate number-crunching machines. With the advent of the Internet, the world received a true naked resource, a completely democratized source of information protected by the First Amendment. The new information technology was transformed into a powerful multimedia communication platform and directed toward an almost insatiable consumer market. This new information infrastructure created communication vehicles that gave connected individuals the ability to “reach out and virtually touch” anyone in the world. Experiencing a heightened sense of empowerment, society at large began embracing these communication systems with exuberance in gadgets ranging from pagers to PCs. To be sure, people in the helping professions now had a more powerful vehicle to access all sorts of information from theoretical and empirical research within the social sciences to information regarding the various social subsystems needed to facilitate human service delivery. However, in tandem with the obvious benefits of efficient, effective information availability in everyday life, American culture has experienced a simultaneous expansion of social isolation. This phenomenon of technology-induced alienation affects all age groups. In contemporary society, steady advances in communication technology have served to wire children to entertainment. Video entertainment, in a myriad of on-line and off-line forms, is replacing more socially oriented pursuits such as board games and playground activities. Further, video games are enabling parents to acquire personal time and establish a silent environment. Taking this to a broader perspective, one needs to focus on the fact that the video games children are playing often do not promote cooperative, pro-social values. Rather, the object of many of the favored games is to crush, kill, and destroy any and all competitors. Thus, the fact that video gaming is coming on strong as a kind of digitized babysitter raises a renewed concern over the impact of anti-social experiences on observational learning. Studies show that aggressiveness in young children increases with the correlative amount of violence that they view on television (Bandura, Ross, and Ross, 1963; Joy, Kimball, and Zabrack, 1977), and thus it seems reasonable that one ought to be wary of the alienating potential of such entertainment. It is unsurprising that these concerns are supported by Daniel Goleman’s (1995) assertions in the area of emotional intelligence that children’s EQs are on a steady decline in America. As he notes, depressive symptomology affects approximately one-third of all teenagers (p. 232). As the dawn of virtual reality (VR) gaming breaks, the isolation of this new dimension is already evident in its language. Specifically, the human participant is known as “the patron” and his or her virtual self becomes “the puppet.” Disconnecting from the game grid is considered “falling into the meat.” The virtual experience is a true detachment not only from others but also from one’s own body. Should the market demand that VR gaming imitate current video trends, impressionable children will then have the opportunity to practice the worst forms of anti-social behavior in an ever-more-realistic environment sanctified under the word “fun.” Education has seen massive reform as a result of the exploding emergence of technology for instructional purposes. Pre-literate children are given lessons from training software to “touch the screen,” whereby there is no need for a teacher. Reliance on the computer in lieu of human contact continues into higher education via distance learning. In the years to come, teachers will need to be aware of the pitfalls associated with replacing interpersonal exploration and discovery with repetitive text-image-driven affirmation of content. In tandem, school administrators cannot view distance education as a financially lucrative means of removing teachers from classrooms. The need for human contact is an important part of learning, and the isolated computer-student paradigm does not allow for the touch and feel of warm expression and full empathetic insight by another individual. In addition to the teacher-absent situation, removing the student from the traditional learning environment may alienate students from their peers as well. Unless the educational setting taps into interactive video classroom instruction, the student is visually isolated from classmates altogether. Paralleling the world of education, the American workplace has seen revolutionary changes in its organization. Telecommuting is burgeoning as a popular alternative to the day-to-day physical commute to one’s place of employment. In past decades business affairs were conducted in suits and dress shoes, but today a wide range of business proceedings can be held in “boxer shorts and bunny slippers.” Without doubt, many who work only from their homes have begun a slow degradation away from cultural ritual whereby they no longer physically prepare to interact with others. For some, the isolation from colleagues and the limited social atmosphere of the home office has been manifested in correlative malaise (Katz, 1987). On a broader scale, managers and clerical support staff throughout the country are spending significantly more time on their jobs, thus making the workday substantially longer than its perceived eight hours. In a recent study by Rosen and Weil (2000), the number of hours employees use technology after the “end of their work day” increased consistently throughout the 1990s. Included in their findings were the following observations: For the Managers/Executives, three-quarters are using their computer after work hours, half are using e-mail and the Internet, and other communication technologies. Clearly, technology has extended the workday long after standard work hours. In fact, when asked how much time they spend using technology after work hours, half said less than one hour per day, one-third said 1–2 hours per day, and one-sixth said they were hooked up for three or more hours a day. Supporting this perspective, an article in The New York Times based on an Internet survey indicated that a quarter of all regular Internet users reported that the Internet had increased the time they spent at work (Markoff, 2000). As a result, people are spending less and less time with colleagues, friends, and loved ones. With the Internet’s vast communication capacity, technology continues its movement into social relations by intervening in the personal dimension. On-line and connected, the millennium years offer real-time chat. It would be difficult to dispute that when used to provide a cost-free channel for communication it serves its purpose well. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that it is the spirit in which this technology is appropriated that makes all the difference. Should chatting become a substitute for intimacy (e.g., cybersex), interpersonal encounters are avoided. When chatting acts as a habitual surrogate for human contact, the need to pursue a social life is forfeited. The proliferation and easy access to sex chat rooms and bulletin boards may provide a convenient way for some people to avoid investing time and energy into existing relationships. The demand for this type of service far exceeds any other, as pornographic Web sites are the leading E-businesses among those that are acknowledged as E-commerce.

THERAPEUTIC SERVICES AND TECHNO-LONELINESS

Rather than helping to reverse this trend of increasing alienation, psychology has often contributed to the technology-induced loneliness of American culture. As Knowles (1986) notes, psychologists have generally tended to overlook the fact that human beings exist as “real selves” in dialogue with others (p. 3). Simpatico with the individualistic current within American culture, mainstream psychology has more often chosen to identify human beings with their individual ego functions. People are reduced to organisms whose main task is to adapt to their environments via calculative thought processes and managerial tasks. Other people are thereby interpreted as potential need objects and never true subjectivities, or unique individuals. Thus, psychology has often been a symptom of technologized culture, unable to wrest us from our interpersonal alienation. A look at the models that have dominated the American psychological milieu since the democratization of information technology will demonstrate the overtly technological current in psychology and psychotherapy. In the 1950s, behaviorism was the dominant force in American psychology. As is widely known, strict behaviorists saw people as biological machinery shaped by environmental contingencies. Consequently, attempts at psychotherapy from the behavioral perspective revolved around instituting processes that would cure individuals of their supposed dysfunctional training, so to speak. Counseling had little to do with anything like baring one’s soul or engaging in interpersonal encounter. The job of the psychotherapist was to perform techniques designed to reorganize behavioral response patterns so as to allow one to once again obtain pleasure from one’s environment. Human beings were viewed as objects of technical manipulation. In the 1960s, with the advent of the so-called “cognitive revolution,” cognitive psychology began picking up momentum in America and is currently the most prominent trend in mainstream psychology (Robins, Gosling, and Craik, 1999). Rather than employing a radically mechanistic view of human existence, cognitive psychologists began to see humans as complex biological computing systems (Ellis and Hunt, 1989). As Ellis and Hunt put it, The cognitive revolution was... the simultaneous development in six sciences of new knowledge bearing on mental processes. Computer science had by far the greatest impact on psychology. The information-processing (IP) or “computational” model of thinking has been the guiding metaphor of cognitive psychology ever since the 1960s (p. 515). Utilizing the IP model as their theoretical foundation, cognitive psychotherapists have traditionally framed their work in terms of concepts such as logical decision-making, ego control, and self-regulation. The focus of psychotherapy is typically rational thinking and managerial functions (e.g., stress management, pain management). In the spirit of Gabriel Marcel’s critique of modernity, traditional cognitive psychology views life as a set of problems to be solved by the individual ego, rather than a mystery to be shared with others. Rarely is there an emphasis on probing dialogue or a co-exploration of meaning, value, or purpose. Counsel itself is largely constructed from the language of the lonely. The field of human services is grounded in a perspective that promotes “a sense of personal gratification in social life” (Cimmino, 1999, p. 13). Thus, the above analysis suggests that a genuine approach to the delivery of human services would be mindful of the potentially alienating characteristics of technology in the lives of clients. Accordingly, conscientious human service intervention can ideally provide an alternative to traditional intervention strategies and contribute to a therapeutic force that discloses technological entrenchment and guides clients away from the alienating potentials therein.

THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGICAL DISTANCING ON COMMUNICATIONS AND PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

Related specifically to the increasing use of communication technology in the human service field, an issue of growing concern is the need to use technologically mediated communications in a professional manner. Computer-facilitated communication is fast becoming an integral part of the work of human service agencies. Since human service workers must display competent communication skills in order to operate within various agency roles (Cimmino, 1999, p. 18), an understanding of the impact of current information technology on communications is essential. E-mail is a form of communication that is primarily linear text processing. Since its inception, this means of communicating has quickly beckoned the creation of personalizing characteristics such as emoticons (i.e., faces created with keyboard characters for the purpose of communicating emotional intent). With comparable haste, the term “flaming” was coined to describe loaded and biased language, insults, and derogatory humor intended to offend the reader. Both the necessity of personalization techniques and the emergence of flaming bear witness to the fact that there is a certain shortcoming inherent in this new communication forum: many of the subtleties of human expression cannot be easily conveyed when talk is mediated by a text-driven processing platform. Perhaps more importantly, this distancing has the potential to generate an over-inflated sense of empowerment through anonymity. In effect, individuals are transformed into “sender” and “recipient.” The anonymity of computer-mediated interactions diminishes the sense of responsibility that is experienced when communication occurs in person. Without the identifying nature of a face-to-face dialogue, informal day-to-day discourse achieves a certain sterility that opens up the possibility for lapses in E-ethics. To quote Rollo May (May, Angel, and Ellenberger, 1958): The anonymous mode...is the mode of the individual living and acting in anonymous collectivity, such as the dancer in a masked ball or the soldier who kills and is killed by individuals whom he does not know. Certain individuals seek refuge in this mode as a means of escaping or fighting their fellow men; the latter is the case with the authors of anonymous letters . . . (p. 122) The experience of technologically induced distancing can be taken up as license for a release of accountability. As this sense of pseudo-empowerment increases, individuals may seek to push the boundaries of social propriety. For example, there are documented instances of gross disrespect of authority as demonstrated by e-mailed insults, obscenity, and threats to teachers, employers, and government officials that would not have occurred prior to technologically induced anonymity. Given that the majority of computer-mediated communications are presented as detached from their authors, the human service generalist needs to be mindful of the temptation to stray from the ideals of professionalism in such communications under the cover of facelessness.

FINAL REMARKS

The new millennium is offering ever-expanding opportunities to enhance the quality of life as technology grows at a geometric rate. Current research is being done in areas of biotechnology and information storage that will render obsolete what is currently leading edge. Hewlett Packard and other research laboratories are working on molecular storage, in which information processing will be molecules wide and atoms deep. Already, pharmaceutical companies prepare to program medication. Yet, it should not be ignored that a vicarious byproduct of technology’s greatness is its propensity to obstruct fulfillment of the human need for interpersonal contact and personal growth through social engagement. The Amish community demonstrates a view of technology that contrasts strikingly with mainstream culture; i.e., containment of technology is viewed as necessary for community. Education of Amish children is completely devoid of scientific theory and the applications of contemporary technologies. Their lives center on human interaction, whereby any object that isolates a member from the community becomes irrelevant. Present-day Americans could benefit from acknowledging the wisdom of the Amish social philosophy. Technology in the new millennium creates both bridges and barriers to human contact. Competent human service delivery in the new millennium will require a fundamental grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of technology in the social world.