Brief, little story. mk and I are colleagues at a research institution. About a year ago, we submitted a grant together, the details of which are unimportant, but in our opinion, the minimal cost of the research could have had some really high impact findings. Anyway, when we got the review back one of the reviewers actually criticized us for not proposing to use enough cutting edge technology! It was one of those things that literally made me laugh out loud as I read it.
Who has read the Foundation series by Asimov? Basically there comes a time in this series, where all technology, at the 'user' level, is done by priest-technicians, who understand that "I press these buttons in this sequence, put this type of metal in here, push this next sequence of buttons, and I create nuclear power." I can't help but wonder if we're creating our own techpriests, skilled, but almost uneducated professionals who don't know a damn about how it works (Magic) only that it works. To make a poignant example, when I was still in high school, my AP Biology class learned how to run a Polymerase Chain Reaction to replicate DNA, and then how to use gel electrophoresis to analyze that DNA. Now, rather than explain how such processes work, in depth, at the chemical level, as was appropriate for the class, the explanation we got was essentially "Smarter people than me figured it out, it's magic." Now, I was motivated enough to learn about the process myself and understand the mechanisms involved, and actually taught my classmates about it during study session, but the fact of the matter is, I had a trained, professional educator telling me it was 'magic.' I'll end my lament of the US educational system with a quote. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke