Well, the tumbrels are rolling. And once again we can guess that a disproportionate number of the condemned are trainers. It was sad to receive a communication from ASTD that the deadline for "early" registration has been extended an additional two weeks. Maybe not, but to me that means registration is down. I confess that I am not attending. Even in "good" times when I have attended I have not found value for the cost either in the sessions or the wandering around perusing vendors that will have disappeared or consolidated by the same time the next year.
No doubt the trumpets will be blaring for the latest internet solution that will dramatically cut costs, eliminate the necessity for live trainers, will be "highly interactive," will be widely embraced by trainees expected to invoke its magic on their own time, and result in a fully functional and engaged workforce. The truly amazing thing is that some companies will buy it. This despite the historical road littered with the rusted hulks of "teaching machines," expensive and unused video applications, and even more recent electronic solutions.
I buy into Marshall McLuhan’s observation that the technologies we invent are extensions of ourselves. The automobile can be thought of as an extension of the feet. The telescope is an extension of the eye. The computer is an extension of our communication and cognitive processes. However, according to McLuhan, every process of extension has a counterpart he terms “amputation” that modifies some other extension. The telephone extends the voice, but also amputates the art of penmanship gained through regular correspondence. With radio, television, and the internet we have simultaneous access to events on the entire planet. However, the electronic culture diminishes, or amputates, many of the close ties of family life and other mental, physical and psychological benefits based on face-to-face oral communication. The simple act of turning on a television can reduce a room of people to silence.
The fascination with extensions has historically overwhelmed the concern for amputations. Global warming and other planet-level events may be good examples of this neglect of consequences. Along with what we gain, something is lost. Beyond that, living with the new technologies changes people. They don’t miss what they don’t know. We may have a generation of salespeople, managers, college students who really believe they have learned all of the necessary skills from their machines; that things like Twitter really are all you need to feel connected. Then again, there have been many schemes to replace the classroom and the often talented and dedicated people who preside over them. This is one more assault.
The amputation produced by technology is the loss of the experience of direct human interaction. So, as we rumble our carts full of trainers, classroom teachers and professors toward the guillotine, perhaps we should pause to hear McLuhan’s warning that when we prize extension over amputation, “we do so at our own peril.”