Strange Connections

So, I mentioned I was reading Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which was referenced in another book I'm working through, The Ingenuity Gap by Thomas Homer Dixon.

In the chapter titled Complexities, Dixon describes how as a youth he was able to deal with the basic maintenance of a vehicle and understand the workings of all the components, but as time marched forward, cars became more complex, to the point that:

...even most professional mechanics are little more than diagnosticians now.  The modern car is trundled into the shop and hooked to computerized diagnostic systems, and faulty engine modules are replaced in their entirety.  If the faulty modules are repaired at all- rather than simply junked - they are rarely fixed in shop but instead shipped to specialized facilities with the specific expertise needed.  As the complexity and sophistication of our cards have increased, we can no longer repair them in our backyard or in our garage grease pits.  Instead, we increasingly rely on distance expertise and knowledge.  In short, the rising complexity of our machines has reduced our independence and self-sufficiency.  It's ironic that as technology does its job better and empowers us in various ways, it leaves us with less control, power, and freedom in other ways.

This seems to me to relate to the idea of unintended consequences and something we should be careful of because the less we know, the more vulnerable we are to being deceived by the so called experts.  The proportional amount of knowledge that a person needs to know to be functional in an urbanized and technologically advanced society is growing much faster than most individuals are able of assimilating. Without the motivation and resources to keep up with the most basic understanding of the world around us, most of us will become even more dependent on the things we don't understand.