To the Editor:
Ms. Doris Knapp, writing in last week’s Free Press Standard, argued that Commissioner Larry Garner should be excused from becoming familiar with and using computers and e-mail for county business. While I understand many people are unable to keep up with trends in technology from year to year, the Internet is not some youthful fad. No, far from what some would have you believe, the world of e-mail and instant messaging, texting and blogging, Wikipedia and Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, is not simply the realm of adolescents and adult slackers in their parents’ basements. These types of innovations, which Ms. Knapp was so quick to dismiss, reflect the forces of technological and scientific change that are fundamentally reshaping the globe with unprecedented speed and effect. They have, as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has famously argued, flattened the world, ushering in a new era of economic interdependence and worldwide competition.
So what does all of this really mean for Carroll County? It means that the road to sensible and sustainable economic development (not coal mines) includes technology. And, understanding our elected leaders should embrace those very forces they’ll need to harness to put more of our community’s unemployed in well-paying jobs. Although some of us may still long for the days of typewriters (glorified pen and paper) and printed reference books (still in widespread use despite their unfair advantage over hand-copied manuscripts), if we intend to compete and prosper, we all need to embrace computers to some degree. Speaking as a proud Democrat with all due respect to Mr. Garner, perhaps it’s time we started searching for leaders who would know the difference between a server and a waiter.
Taylor Thompson
Carrollton, OH
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