In my rich county, people have used the same "antiquated" voting machines for a very long time, and never seem to have found them confusing or difficult to operate. In normal times, the obtuse Florida voters would have been ridiculed out of their neighborhoods for such deportments, but we don't live in normal times. Instead, they went to testify angrily before a committee of the Florida legislature. They asserted that somehow "the system" should have prevented voter mistakes and should repair these mistakes, no matter how dumb. Democrat notabilities, including Jesse Jackson and other agitators, joined the fray and, as usual, declared the case a civil-rights crisis. A couple of weeks later, it was reported in the news that MIT wizards were working on the design of foolproof voting devices. 

So, once again, technology has been called to the rescue. For the past thirty years, it seems that technology has been hard at work just to remedy the advances of human ignorance and stupidity, for which Steve Allen coined the word "dumbth."

Stephen Ambrose pointedly observed that the GI's resourcefulness was an important component of the US victory in WW2. In the Normandy campaign, GIs rigged Sherman tanks with improvised contraptions that could defeat the otherwise impenetrable hedgerows. They also managed to repair in the field broken jeeps, trucks, and armored vehicles that any other army would have abandoned. Many of these GIs were poor farm boys with little education, but smart and self-reliant. When they returned from the war, they saw the great break offered by the GI Bill for what it was and went to college on their way to a future that they could have never envisaged. They worked hard and succeeded. They didn't consider their achievements particularly exceptional because they simply viewed them as meeting expectations and opportunities.

This eagerness to conquer obstacles, this resourcefulness, and this self-reliance seem to be gone and forgotten. A simple voting machine and a "butterfly" ballot have become insuperable instruments of disfranchisement, in an age when education is available for all and poverty no longer means being hungry, cold, and deprived of a color television. Dumbth is acceptable, and it's MIT's business to make it functional.

Technological remedies for dumbth have just produced more dumbth. I was recently in my neighborhood drugstore when the computer conked out. In no time, the manager, a middle-aged man, closed all but one checkout station, and took it upon itself to handle a long line of customers. Obviously, he did not trust his young cashiers' ability to make change without help from the machinery. Making change used to be a skill that any middle-school student could master, but no more, because calculators have displaced the practice of arithmetic in schools. In another drugstore, a note on a vending machine read "This machine does not accept Nichols." The widespread use of computer spelling checkers was supposed to take care of such blunders, but they can't. They just encourage sloppiness. The bulletin board at my last place of work---a research outfit full of highly educated scientists---had interesting postings. In one, a man offered "For sale: Zildjian ride, crash, and high-hat symbols." Another listed a house for sale to "Principles only." I can't wait for the day when voice recognition devices will replace writing. No doubt that the whole language will have to be re-engineered so that "symbol" can designate a percussion accessory. Sloppiness and muddled thinking---let alone communication---are inseparable, and that, not bad spelling per se, is the serious problem. 

Social observers and politicians have long told us that survival in our highly technical society required ever higher levels of education for all. They are wrong. Only a small, specialized elite is needed to build smart machines for use by dummies. Now, if smart machines can cover for cashiers who can't count, writers who can't spell, and mechanics who can't diagnose car hiccups, what's wrong? It is that brain functions atrophy, intellectual laziness sets in, and judgment takes a backseat to mechanical process. Knowledge and skill are devalued, as the sheer ability to punch keys gives access to positions of responsibility that individual competence cannot warrant---see what happens when something goes wrong. Many asinine government policies find their justifications in spurious tallies that "social scientists" with an ax to grind and little insight in statistical analysis crank out with computer programs designed for dummies. What's next? Well, be prepared. In some research hospitals, physicians have started using software for medical diagnosis . 

Beati pauperes spiritu. The great democratization of advanced technology has made a lot of people happy, as the use of computers and similar contraptions still confers an aura of sophistication to keypunchers who know little more than keypunching. The aura, however, carries some baggage. Carpal-tunnel syndrome and other weird ailments are spoiling the ambient bliss of intellectual mediocrity. Think of a future full of barely literate keypunchers with bad backs, necks in braces, and arms in slings. For some time---how long?---the shrinking elite of MIT or Cal Tech will probably keep devising machines able to make them functional.

Automated functionality is just a way to hide the real problem, which is dumbth. Making dumbth tolerable is tantamount to betting our future on dumbth. Dumbth can only beget more dumbth, electronic gadgetry notwithstanding, and more dumbth is an open invitation for Big Brother to step in and take charge. This, of course, brings us back to the problem of the voting machines.

It is hard to understand how people unable to operate a Votamatic® could competently pick a presidential candidate, a much more complex question. It is also hard to understand how the device, which has been in use for decades without fuss, should suddenly become a baneful obstacle to the exercise of civil rights. Such considerations, however, are irrelevant to the Florida circus. There, Democrats have met dumbth and turned it into a political force to be reckoned with. We should expect more of that in years to come, as large reserves of dumbth are waiting to be tapped with MIT's help. 

The futurists' lofty predictions that advanced technology would raise our civilization to ever-higher states have been wrong, of course. There is no high-tech bliss. Dumbth has consistently hijacked technology to its own benefit, and we have only ourselves to blame for tolerating this state of affairs. The novelty of dumbth as a significant political force may be a salutary wake-up call. It may also be a last chance.