The power of low-tech in a high-tech world

We’re all living in a cyberpunk novel now. 

Unconstrained billionaires have space programs and robot armies. People are falling in love with and marrying AI chatbots. You can make movies where you’re the star by typing a few sentences. Companies offer designer babies as a service. We’ve got brain implants for controlling computers, flying cars, robotic surgery, AI-controlled prosthetic limbs, and millions of drones in the sky.

So why is the most effective form of communication still a hand-written note?

Resistance is futile

I’m a technology-oriented person, and most likely so are you. What that means is that we’re interested in new innovations and products, and we’re often eager to try them out to see whether they can make us better at our jobs or make our lives better. 

Very often they do. But there’s a big downside. 

New technologies tend to make us forget old technologies — along with the skills and mental habits to use them. There’s a social element to embracing new stuff, and very often a network effect. And this can make us less effective. 

Take social media, for example. In the beginning, we called it social networking. It was great to be able to connect with people we already knew and with new people we found interesting in some way. We could stay in touch with friends that would otherwise drift away from our lives, and have group conversations on topics of mutual interest. At some point, the media joined in, distributing their stories on the social networks. We could all read stories, then comment on them. 

Over time, the algorithms evolved to benefit the companies in control of those algorithms. What began as something that served our interest in staying connected and informed ended up as something else entirely. It used us to serve the advertising goals of the social networks, the political goals of the politicians, the division and disruption goals of foreign adversaries and the prurient goals of the trolls, haters, spammers and scammers. 

The cliché is true: We became the product. 

Now, social media is likely to make us feel disconnected and misinformed. And yet the idea of subscribing to a good print newspaper, reading it and discussing it in person with friends seems impossibly quaint, antiquated, and lame, even though doing so would make us better connected to those around us and better informed, and if everyone did it our democracy would be much healthier. 

The truth is that we get our social interaction and news on social media now because it’s easy and feeds a deliberately designed compulsion. We all know it makes us feel bad and divides our society, but we can’t resist.

Some TikTok users can’t imagine listening to an audio book. Some audiobook listeners can’t imagine reading an ebook. Some ebook readers can’t imagine reading a print book. And yet science tells us that reading a print book is by far the best option. 

Hand-written notes are more powerful for memory than notes typed in a notes app. Hand-written notes to others are far more impactful than a text. A phone call is far better for effective communication than a WhatsApp message. 

Most of us know all this, but we still can’t bring ourselves to do it. In fact, we tend to think of reading and writing on paper as a throwback habit of our great-grandparents.

The truth about tech

If you read me often, you know I’m nomadic. My wife and I travel abroad full-time and don’t keep a permanent home. One of my favorite places to visit is Oaxaca, Mexico. 

Oaxaca, the city, is a quaint Spanish-colonial town surrounded by a big, ugly, modern city. Oaxaca is also the name of the state, where about half the population is fully modern and half consists of indigenous people whose lives are a mixture of traditional and modern. Many live in remote villages, and a two-digit percent of them don’t even speak Spanish. They instead speak only indigenous languages, the biggest of which are in the Zapotec or Mixtec language families. 

The most traditional of these peoples embrace mainly technologies invented centuries or millennia ago. They grow, raise and forage for most of their food, which they grind using ancient stone tools, and cook over wood fires. They make their clothes from scratch on looms they built by hand using fabric they dyed from plants foraged in the mountains. They can identify medicinal plants on sight and navigate by the stars. These are not specialties. I know people there who can individually do all these things. They have way more skills because their low-tech lifestyle demands it. 

Our high-tech society is impressive in the collective. But it robs individuals of skills. Most kids now can’t write cursive. And they can’t read it, either. They can’t read an analog clock or a paper map. 

The acceleration of technological innovation also accelerates the rate at which we lose skills. 

Videogames, smartphones, and dating apps — aided and abetted by the trauma of the COVID-19 lockdowns a few years ago — have left many young people alone without the skills to meet and connect with anyone, leading to a loneliness epidemic among the young.

But losing old-fashioned skills and old-school tech knowledge is a choice we don’t have to make. 

How to get a low-tech edge

During a Meta earnings call in July, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg said that in the future, anyone not wearing AI glasses will find themselves “at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage.” 

Zuckerberg’s prediction is both right and wrong. He’s right to say that those without AI glasses will find themselves at a disadvantage. But he’s wrong to say that it will be a cognitive disadvantage. Instead, it will be an “informational disadvantage.” 

The word “cognitive,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, means “of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering).” I believe that over-relying on advanced technology like AI glasses is precisely the mistake that will put most people at a “cognitive disadvantage.” In fact, it’s already happening. 

Thousands of scientific reports all lead us to the same conclusion: Over-reliance on advanced technologies dulls critical thinking, weakens memory, reduces problem-solving skills, limits creativity, erodes attention spans, and fosters passive dependence on automated systems.

I recommend that everyone take a good look at what’s happening to us all and act to reverse the process. Specifically, we need to shift our perspective from thinking that newer technology is always better to embracing a “right tool for the job” mentality, whether that be  old tech or new. And we need to overcome the stigma around using antiquated tech.

For example, AI chatbots are fine substitutes for search engines for unimportant information. But if good information matters, search engines are still better. (Yes, they take longer to use, but you’ll usually walk away with better knowledge.)

Videos are great for mindless entertainment or how-to instructions. But for understanding complex ideas, you’ll learn best by reading a book. (And this goes double for understanding the complexity of people by reading fiction.)

Algorithmically-filtered and sorted news is fine for skimming headlines to get the gist of what’s happening. But nothing beats an actively curated RSS feed of quality news sources. And the smartest people are always going to be those who read high-quality newspapers and magazines front to back. 

Messaging apps and platforms are OK for quick-and-dirty co-worker communication. But email is better in just about every way. And if you really want to communicate something to someone that they will never forget, write them a note by hand on paper. 

What all these old-school approaches have in common is that they’re harder and take longer — and they leave you smarter and better connected. 

In other words, if you strategically cultivate the skills, habits, discipline and practice of older tech, you’ll be much more successful in your career and your life. 

And here’s one final point: The more high-tech our culture becomes, the more impactful old-school tech will be. So yes, by all means become brilliantly skilled at AI chatbot prompt engineering. 

Just don’t forget how to write a note.