Right? Right.

It's fairly obvious that there are a number of things that bother me. Little things perhaps. Or, maybe, not so little things. I think you'll have to grant me that I do think about a number of things, and this perhaps more than is really good for me, but it's hard not to.

For as long as I can remember, I've wondered why we have so many problems. For longer than I care to remember, it seems that things are just getting worse. To be perfectly honest, I don't know why. I have my suspicions, and I'm sure a lot of other folks have their suspicions too. Yet, in the end, it's just damn hard finding someone you can actually talk to about anything. I think that's sad.

Let me phrase the "problem" a little differently. If we're so smart, if we're so advanced, if we're so technologically savvy, if we're so insightful, if we're so on top of things, why do we have so many problems to begin with? Everywhere you look things seem to be broken: banks, schools, politics, government, law, corporations, work in general, child rearing ... and the list just goes on and on. Why is that? Why can't we get anything to work?

Is it really because life is so complex? I don't think so. Complicated ... I might be able to buy that, but complex? Nah. Is it because crazy ideas are being propagated at an frightening rate; that is, ideas like radical, religious fundamentalism, neo-liberal economics, or neo-conservative politics? There have always been differing ideas on how the world should be interpreted and understood, so why should it be different now? Granted, we have tools and instruments that can cause a lot more damage than those of by-gone days: biological and chemical agents, nuclear bombs, high explosives that people are willing to strap to their bodies, drones, fragmentation rounds, chemical and biological agents, and people willing to strap this stuff to their bodies. A bit extreme, don't you think?

No, I suspect we cant's get our stuff together is simply because we don't want to. We're tired of it all and just can't seem to get out of it. Last century, we tried violent mass suicide - twice (the two world wars), and when that didn't work, we tried to deep freeze ourselves (Cold War), and failing that, we've tried poisoning ourselves (pesticides, GMC, pollution), ruining the climate (global warming, crop failures) perhaps hoping to starve ourselves to death, and we even sabotaged the financial system (I think in the hopes there would be enough personal suicides to get the wave really going). And nothing seems to work. We're still here, we've still got the same old problems, and we're not one step closer to a solution to any of them than we were when we first came down out of the trees.

You know what I think? I think we're simply a pretty disappointing species ... as far as species goes. What do we really have to show for all our supposed talents and abilities. Not a whole helluva lot, if you ask me. I think we're right to want to pack it in. The trouble is, we can't even get that right.

The man behind the curtain

The "information" gadget non plus ultra is the computer. Don't we just love our computers. It doesn't matter what size, shape, color or speed, we love them. They're everywhere, too. Our traffic is controlled by computers, they help us fly and land planes, they control much of our driving ability, they collect data against terrorists (or innocent people, it doesn't matter, as long as they are collecting data), they get us to the moon, Mars or Jupiter, they guide our missiles, they give us our passports and they send us notices from the finance authorities. They are simply everywhere. We can't work without them anymore. In fact, we can't live without them anymore: from copy machines, to (not-so) smart phones, to laptops, notebooks, and desktops, they are an intimate part of all our lives. We can't get enough of them and we have no idea what they do to us. We think we know what they do for us, but it's a lot less "for" than "to".

Still, I just love the words we use to describe them: fast, powerful, smart, and – my personal favorite – sexy. They're machines. They're things. OK, Steve Jobs and Apple tried to make them accessories and furniture, but they didn't quite succeed. Computers have receded into the nethermost corners of our lives, and these are the most nefarious, because we take them for granted. But the ones we "have to have", that we flash around, are accorded a reverence that they may not deserve. What's so special about them anyway?

They sit on our desks and stare us down workday in and workday out. They spit out reams of tables and figures that we don't have the time to double-check so we take them as correct. They give us access to others because we hardly get out at all anymore. They get us things (downloads), make our lives convenient (just ask Amazon), and control every move we make, every thought we think, and every moment we'd like to rest. That's not what I call "special". But, in spite of it all they can get more bits to more places faster and more reliable that has ever been possible before. And, it is this simple illusion that makes us think that "we are making real cultural progress – and the that the essence of that progress is information technology". (Roszak, 1986, p. 29)

So, is that progress? Is this what we understand progress to be? It is becoming ever more difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Is that what we want? Have we ever stopped to ask ourselves how substantial all this information technology is? I don't really want to believe that progress is an illusion, but when we stop to take a look, things may not be as real as we would like to believe. Simply pay not attention to the man behind the curtain.

Reference
Roszak, T. (1988) The Cult of Information: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of Thinking, London, Paladin Graftin Books.

Roszak and Eliot

If you have never read Theodore Roszak's The Cult of Information, you don't know what you're missing. It should actually be mandatory reading for anyone who thinks they have something to say about technology or the so-called information age. Of course, to get anything out of it, you'd have to approach it with an open mind, so if you're unwary of technology or downright obsessed with it, it would be better you just let it go. I don't contend that everything the man says is right, but I would argue that what he has to say is worth thinking about. William James once remarked that what most people call thinking is simply a rearranging of their prejudices, and I can't say much has changed since he said it. But, if you are willing to earnestly consider a clearly stated position on a well-defined subject, I would say the time spent with the book would be more than worth the effort.

There was a time – and not all that long ago – when a distinction was made between some very similar things. For example, data was just whatever it was, a date, a color, a statement, a fact. Information was something "more": it was data that was used to make a decision, or at least contributed to the making of a decision. Knowledge was something "more" than information; it was something one knew, what could be used to act in an informed way, to exercise a skill or provide an argument. Finally, at the top, we had wisdom ... well, who even knows that that is any more? This isn't a new phenomenon, I'm afraid. In 1934, the poet T.S. Eliot wrote (in The Rock):

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

He knew where we were headed ... and what do you know? We're finally there. We no longer talk about data at all, and everything else ... and I mean everything else ... has been simply turned into information.

If the motto of the 80s was "whoever dies with the most toys wins", the motto today is "whoever dies with the most information wins". Though I would say that whoever dies, dies. It doesn't really matter what they have when they do.

Let's face it, we love information: from baseball statistics to football scores, to monthly rainfall measurements, to the mileage we get with our cars, to stock-market prices and indices, to interest rates, to the most common boy's name of 1913, to the number of jobs not created since the latest tax cuts. It doesn't matter what it's about, as long as it's what we think is information, we love it.

In this regard, the title of Roszak's book is not all that far off. We've made information and the acquisition of information a kind of cult. And as is the case with every cult, it needs it priests, and there is no shortage of them either. We call them "experts" these days.

We're going where?

We've never had it so good ... or so I'm told. But have you ever stopped to think about anything you thought you already knew? For example: what does "good" mean in that opening line? Do we know what "good" is? Do we all agree? Do we agree generally or specifically? Or, what about Good (with a capital "G") or "the Good"? It's not something we do everyday, but it is something that we should perhaps do more often.

Actually, I've got a number of favorites, if you will, and among them are "better" and "progress". I picked those two because they are often related in our thinking. I mean, you often hear them used in the same sentence: "We have progress to thank for the fact that things are better now than they ever were before." Granted, we need to know what "things" we're talking about, and we also need to ask "where" the speaker is (I'm not sure a mother watching her child in Somalia starve to death is thinking that particular thought).

But let's just stick with the "better" and "progress". First, however, a quick grammar lesson: the word "better" is a comparative. It is the comparative form of "good" (good, better, best; whereby "best" is the so-called superlative). If we were wondering earlier what "good" is, we have to wonder even more about whatever it is that's more than that. The point is, however, that "better" can only be seen in relation to what we believe to be "good". If we don't agree on the starting point, the next step is always more difficult. And then we have "progress". We probably generally agree that when we speak of progress we are speaking about some sort of advancement (an implied "better"), some kind of moving forward (wherever that is), or movement towards a goal. So, where has "progress" brought us that everything is "better" than it was before?

Let's take one of my favorite topics: time. We're a fairly techno-crazy generation: smart phones and iPads and broadband and personal navigation systems. Truth be told, one of the promises of the Industrial Revolution were inexpensive machines and labor-saving devices. Where did they all go? All our most modern gadgets are anything but time-saving. Always on, always accessible, always connected ... and the family? Automation promised us more free time, more leisure, but how many of us have any leisure at all anymore? What do "power weekends" have to do with relaxation? At the time of the American revolution, the average person worked about 1000 hours a year, and the whole basis of our economy was agriculture and crafts. My relation of mine told me that when he started his job at the bank, he was required to put in 140 hours a week ... not in writing, of course, but nevertheless "demanded". The average American is now working 3 jobs (if they're working), mostly part-time so there's not a lot of time with anybody, even if they do have a family? I read recently that had we plowed all the time we saved with industrialization into the work week instead of into the pockets of a few we'd only have to work about a day a week (at livable wages), but instead, everyone in the Western world is being forced to work more and more for less and less (real wages in the US have been stagnating or declining since 1979).

And so my question: is this progress? is this better? I don't think so. But, that's just me. Each and every one of us should take a bit of time and reflect on just what's good and what might be better. It's not just a matter of personal preference, I'm talking about something much more fundamental. I'm talking about real quality of life, not just the promise of it.