Overusing technology won't make you happy

Vishnu K. Mahmud, Contributor, Jakarta, vmahmud@yahoo.com

By nature, I am a tech junkie. Whenever the latest hi-tech product comes out, be it a PDA, laptop computer or MP3 player, I've just got to have it.

When was the last time you remember seeing people carrying paper-based day planners, simple calculators or cassette-based walkmans? Instead of using public phones, just whip out your cell phone and make the call on the go.

It seems that technology has made our lives better. Or has it?

Do all these gadgets and gizmos really advance mankind? Or do they make life more complicated, and more prone to security threats and privacy problems?

Considering that the cost of technology continues to fall as new products come out, are we now so dependent on advanced tech tools that we have forgotten how to use simple, low-tech solutions?

Take the elections for example. The General Elections Commission (KPU) recently held a controversial tender for Information Technology equipment to be installed throughout the archipelago. They plan to have computers in practically every regency in the country in a bid to speed up the election returns.

The same can be seen in the United States. California is one of many states that are beginning to use touch screen voting technology to try and avoid the comical yet tragic problems that occurred in Florida during the last American Presidential election.

Can these tools improve the time and accuracy of the ballot count?

In America, people are beginning to ask questions regarding the viability of the technology. For example, "close sourced" software is used, making it impossible to know what exactly the voting machines are programmed to do or calculate during the polls.

In addition, under the original specifications, voters were not given receipts to ensure that the computers recorded their ballots accurately.

The State of California, under intense scrutiny, ordered changes to the system as democracy advocates called for e-voting standards to be established.

For Indonesia, it is planned that thousands of computers will be linked to a central data center, which would transmit and tabulate the results in real time.

However, the costs of the hardware and software are considerable for a country that is still trying to crawl out of the economic crisis of the late 1990's. In the quest to ensure a fast and accurate election, was a simpler method overlooked?

We can perhaps look at Canada for an example. A friend of mine was recently the Deputy Returning Officer at one of the many voting stations for the Quebec provincial election last year. A life-long tech geek, she had to administer the entire process by hand.

Her duties included greeting people, explaining the voting process, ensuring the sanctity of each ballot, and finally counting as well as certifying the results. After the polling station closed, it took less then four hours for the returning officers to tally the results, which were then reported to the election office.

The Canadian poll did not require state of the art computer systems or touch-screen voting machines. Nor did it require millions of dollars of investment in supporting infrastructure such as high-speed networks and electric power.

The entire process in Canada was successfully conducted thanks to the political involvement of its citizens and, most importantly, well organized preparations.

All the technology in the world does not guarantee speedy or accurate returns in a ballot count. Careful preparations and open, public participation in the elections, however, can enhance public confidence in the polls and ensure that no "monkey business" occurs.

This low-tech solution is also not prone to any potential security or privacy problems that could ultimately plague computer-based models.

Information Technology solutions have the potential to be programmed and diverted from their original purpose by corrupt parties involved in the democratic process. An open count by the people, however, is a pretty powerful balance in any democracy.

As such, we might do well to take a step back and see if we are the masters of technology, or whether technology is making us into slaves. With all these gizmos, are we actually more organized?

In most cases, we simply stored more junk then we actually need, cluttering up our lives up with unnecessary information. Can we really say we are better off than we were before?