I have a followup to my impeachment post of yesterday, but before I post that, I wanted to announce the first episode of The Chronicle’s Tech Therapy podcast. I still find the whole idea of tech therapy problematic. I just hate the idea of treating technology as something one needs therapy for.

In a comment on my previous post, I stated my case this way:

I’m disturbed by the very notion that dealing with technology is paramount to dealing with depression or other serious mental issues. As long as anxiety surrounding the use of technology is seen as a medical condition, it will always be deemed problematic, something that requires intervention and is potentially evil. I’m reminded, in fact, of when evil spirits were to blame for many diseases.

The actual content of this episode focused on the issue of security and, in fact, suggested that CIOs and others need to have a good understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes with technology and not treat it like magic. Maybe it’s because I’m at a small institution, but I bristled at the idea of centralized control over IT. I think there are some areas of IT that need centralized control and some that don’t. I do think it’s important for faculty to at least talk to their IT staff when they’re considering a new technology project. But I also think IT staff shouldn’t respond to such projects with a definitive no just because they won’t have full control over it. I’m not sure I like the general philosophy of the expert running the show, Warren Arbogast, so I may find myself disagreeing more than agreeing simply for that reason. We’ll see.