By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

I recently had a conversation with a neighbor who doesn’t own a computer. She’s younger than me by a few years, so age is not the reason. She doesn’t trust computers and mentioned that she’s not sure she trusts the smart meters New York State Electric and Gas recently installed, wondering if they would spy on her. That’s not an unwarranted concern: recent articles talking about car technology have noted that manufacturers are collecting far more information than drivers and riders might wish. I mentioned not so jokingly that I don’t want a smart house: not only does it make me uncomfortable, but I worry about what would happen if the power goes out and there was no way to enter or leave my home.

I had to laugh when, a day or two later, the daily New York Times e-mail that I receive discussed the problems of technology. It opened with, “Two months ago, what should have been a routine software update by a security company, CrowdStrike, crashed millions of computers around the world running Microsoft Windows. Airlines grounded flights. Subways stopped. Operators of 911 lines couldn’t dispatch help. Stores shut down. Hospitals canceled surgeries.” The article went on to note the problem didn’t last long, but the fact it happened – not because the system was hacked, but because there was a basic problem with the system – troubled the author. 

I call myself a luddite, someone opposed to technology, but that’s not really true. After all, the only reason I can hear is technology: my cochlear implant is a complex piece of technology that has greatly improved my life. Without that and my hearing aid, I am functionally deaf. (Being able to hear loud thuds does not really help with communication.) E-mail has been a boon because friends who rarely wrote a snail mail letter are far more willing to e-mail. (I still love snail mail and regularly use it. But there seem to be fewer people doing so every day.) I finally gave in and got a cell phone to use for phone calls and texts. Well, mostly texts: I hear better on my landline and one of my phones types what is being said in case I have difficulty with understanding a person.

If I think about this in historical context, then I have to wonder if people felt the same way about electricity and water heaters since at one time they were the new and scary technology. We moved from ice boxes (yes, they really used blocks of ice to keep things cold) to refrigerators. The difference is now those refrigerators may have computers that people can hack from outside the house; few people even realize their frig has a password they should change. I still think of the casino that was hacked a few years back through the heater in the aquarium in the lobby; the hackers managed to get ahold of the casino’s list of high rollers, something I’m sure the casino did not want to share. Does that happen often? I’m willing to bet more than we realize. The government does require businesses to tell people if their information has been exposed, but, since most businesses would rather not let their clients know, that lack of notification probably happens far more than we might think. Plus, there have been cases that people were only informed years later when the government forced the business to make the information public.

I can all too easily see the good parts of technology and its potential problems. But technology is here to stay. We need to learn to be careful and make certain the government has laws in place to protect us. That is slow going, though, because most legislators don’t have the background to understand the every-changing technical challenges of our world. Thinking of this reminds me of a catch phrase my family used, one that appeared in the original movie version of “Westworld.” The owner claimed that “nothing can go wrong.” Of course, if you saw the movie, you know that was not true, nor is it true in real life. We need to be prepared for things to go wrong and have procedures in place before problems arise.