It appears I can’t let go out technology. A friend of mine on Facebook recently expressed his disapproval of technology through his iPhone, using a Twitter account, that automatically updates his Facebook status. In other words, his disapproval came wrapped in three layers of irony. Any such modern discussion of technology is almost bound to go this way. We are so surrounded by technologies engulfing every portion of our lives that it is difficult, if not impossible, to speak of Technology, as if it were a monolithic expression of anything using twentieth or twenty-first century inventions. What my friend most likely was referring to in his condemnation of technology was not the automobile, contact lenses, the vacuum cleaner, sliced bread, bound books, the mechanical pencil, the telescope, bicycles, paper, or the wheel (all revolutionary technologies in their own way, sliced bread obviously being the most important of these products if popular sayings be any accurate measure of these things), but one of the products or pieces of software he was using to communicate his disapprobation.
In an entertaining article (again in the New Yorker, I don’t know what it is about this magazine) Adam Gopnik, a columnist who I have a love/hate relationship with (for starters, on the hate side, he loves hockey and is Canadian, what’s with that?), writes about the problematic nature of talking about technology in any effective way. The impetus for his article is the division of contemporary writers of technology into warring camps, camps Gopnik labels the Never-Betters, the Better-Nevers, and the Never-Wasers.
Into the first camp go the prophets of technology, the men and women who claim we are living in an era of unprecedented opportunity, communication, and interconnectedness that will surely lead to a techno-utopia where wars are thwarted by a Twitter conference between opposing factions, the lion and the lamb frolic through verdant fields, and human nature is overcome by the ubiquitous posting of baby pictures on Facebook. The Better-Nevers, on the other hand, claim that technology is destroying the foundation of our society, impairing the ability of the individual to think rationally and deeply, destroying the richness of print culture, and we would all be better off if the development of further technologies had ceased with the printing press and maybe electricity so that the mass of intellectual giants restrained today by time-wasting modern technology could plumb the depths of Cicero’s oratories under better lighting. The Never-Wasers are the naysayers to both groups--new technologies have been developed in cultures for hundreds of years. They are always controversial, always have their preachers and their detractors, are always accused of deadening the mind of the broader public, are always hailed as the next step toward a better world, and generally speaking wind up being neither or some weird mixture of both.
The printing press led to greater access to scripture and the Greek classics and provided a platform for contemporary authors to reach a wider audience. Likewise, the printing press was appropriated by royal governments in their suppression of dissent (the internet is used for similar purposes today) and, since royal families had more money, most of the stuff printed for the first couple hundred years of the printing press was pro-government propaganda. The eighteenth century saw the so-called Enlightenment, but the seventeenth century (the first full century where the printing press was in wide use) was marked by awful wars and conflict. The English even cut a king’s head off. The printing press which led to the print culture so much admired by the Better-Nevers has a checkered past and was itself derided by humanist scholars like Erasmus of Rotterdam for its dehumanizing, mechanized quality. In the same manner, the printing press which the Never-Betters claim as an historical model for what the internet and social networking are achieving for our contemporary period did not lead inexorably toward progress and civility, but was used by human beings of various persuasions, some desiring to carry out noble ends and some desiring to kill and suppress as many of their enemies as possible.
As should be clear from the argument of my first post on technology, I tend toward the Never-Waser side of this debate. The Better-Nevers imagine a golden period in the past that is receding with every new subscriber to Facebook. Conversely, the Never-Betters imagine a culture finally breaking free from the restraints of the past and exploring a golden age unlike any seen before us. The Never-Wasers call bunk on the whole thing. This earth is messy, and its inhabitants are messier still. Imagining that a piece of technology will a) clean up the mess, or b) destroy the whole thing, is far too glib of an assessment. The truth, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in the murky middle.
In an entertaining article (again in the New Yorker, I don’t know what it is about this magazine) Adam Gopnik, a columnist who I have a love/hate relationship with (for starters, on the hate side, he loves hockey and is Canadian, what’s with that?), writes about the problematic nature of talking about technology in any effective way. The impetus for his article is the division of contemporary writers of technology into warring camps, camps Gopnik labels the Never-Betters, the Better-Nevers, and the Never-Wasers.
Into the first camp go the prophets of technology, the men and women who claim we are living in an era of unprecedented opportunity, communication, and interconnectedness that will surely lead to a techno-utopia where wars are thwarted by a Twitter conference between opposing factions, the lion and the lamb frolic through verdant fields, and human nature is overcome by the ubiquitous posting of baby pictures on Facebook. The Better-Nevers, on the other hand, claim that technology is destroying the foundation of our society, impairing the ability of the individual to think rationally and deeply, destroying the richness of print culture, and we would all be better off if the development of further technologies had ceased with the printing press and maybe electricity so that the mass of intellectual giants restrained today by time-wasting modern technology could plumb the depths of Cicero’s oratories under better lighting. The Never-Wasers are the naysayers to both groups--new technologies have been developed in cultures for hundreds of years. They are always controversial, always have their preachers and their detractors, are always accused of deadening the mind of the broader public, are always hailed as the next step toward a better world, and generally speaking wind up being neither or some weird mixture of both.
The printing press led to greater access to scripture and the Greek classics and provided a platform for contemporary authors to reach a wider audience. Likewise, the printing press was appropriated by royal governments in their suppression of dissent (the internet is used for similar purposes today) and, since royal families had more money, most of the stuff printed for the first couple hundred years of the printing press was pro-government propaganda. The eighteenth century saw the so-called Enlightenment, but the seventeenth century (the first full century where the printing press was in wide use) was marked by awful wars and conflict. The English even cut a king’s head off. The printing press which led to the print culture so much admired by the Better-Nevers has a checkered past and was itself derided by humanist scholars like Erasmus of Rotterdam for its dehumanizing, mechanized quality. In the same manner, the printing press which the Never-Betters claim as an historical model for what the internet and social networking are achieving for our contemporary period did not lead inexorably toward progress and civility, but was used by human beings of various persuasions, some desiring to carry out noble ends and some desiring to kill and suppress as many of their enemies as possible.
As should be clear from the argument of my first post on technology, I tend toward the Never-Waser side of this debate. The Better-Nevers imagine a golden period in the past that is receding with every new subscriber to Facebook. Conversely, the Never-Betters imagine a culture finally breaking free from the restraints of the past and exploring a golden age unlike any seen before us. The Never-Wasers call bunk on the whole thing. This earth is messy, and its inhabitants are messier still. Imagining that a piece of technology will a) clean up the mess, or b) destroy the whole thing, is far too glib of an assessment. The truth, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in the murky middle.
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