The end of culture?

"Technology is the end of culture. Technology is the end of religion. Technology is the end of mystery" (Me, today, 2005).

I've been thinking recently about information technology, progress, culture, knowledge and information literacy. Does a constant drive towards progress as solutions, as technologically defined systems remove the real meaning from life, the mystery, the knowledge that it is bigger than all of us, our sense of place in the world? Whilst this may sound trite, it is a strand of thought that I think is worth exploring.

I'm thinking of how paradigms like information literacy and lifelong learning as conventionally defined may in fact disempower (is that a real word) people. Religion, art and culture have traditionally codified the human experience, to pass on the subconscious, timeless truths that cannot conventionally be recorded. In its efforts to codify every element of what it is to be human, with technology taking the place of humans in manual tasks, and increasingly efforts through knowledge management systems to extract the essential value from individual employees for the benefit of the organisation, is modern society removing from us what it is to be essentially human.

Perhaps I'm taking too static an approach here. Culture and human experience are more like a continuum perhaps, constantly evolving. This is just the next phase. Digital culture exists, doesn't it.

Worth thinking about...