Heavy things on ideas and humanity

This essay (Mythinformation by Langdon Winner, in The New Media Reader) hooked me in the second paragraph. Winner calls the cover stories of Time and Newsweek that declare the computer age a “revolution” garish. Garish. In the next paragraph, he explains that marketing has forced many “revolutions” on society. Revolutions in laundry detergent or floor wax. It’s a metaphor, Winner says. He extrapolates the metaphor to examine it. Will there be a real revolution socially or politically brought on by computers? Winner says not really, and after reading his essay, I agree.

Winner explains the “utopian fantasy” initiated by computer companies and perpetuated by journalists. Computers will be the great equalizer, the fantasy declares. But Winner explains, sure, as more computers do the jobs of unskilled workers, unskilled workers will be free to pursue careers as janitors and fast-food waiters. He explains that the social power and controls and class systems won’t change as fast as the technology does. He makes a clear distinction here about what is superficially plausible and what will really happen.

Some people will find this hard to stomach. After being inundated for years about how “knowledge is power” and “computers will truly democratize society,” it’s tough to believe that yes, computers will change how we do things, but they wont change really what we do or who we are. We may monitor our banking on the computer, but we still bank. We may shop on the computer, but we still shop. Only the tools are changing. Winner postulates that since humans have known existence within spatial and temporal limits, transitioning in one generation to a virtual system of space and time is not possible. Maybe it isn’t even possible over many generations.

I find this so interesting. A few months ago, I was researching an article about eating organic food. A nutritionist I interviewed explained to me that by eating a variety of foods and even shopping for them at different places, I was nurturing my hunter-gatherer instincts. I had forgotten I even had them, but once I realized that it was really much deeper, hard-wired, human-animal behavior to shop around, I was satiated. If I have that much-unknown desire to hunt for variety in something as simple as my diet, and that that is essentially hard-wired into my basic animalistic instincts, then instincts to exist in defined space and time must be even deeper. And the consequences for ignoring them are probably even direr than just bad nutrition.

Everyone knows smart kids that can’t hold their own in a conversation. Everyone knows people with IQs off the charts that couldn’t ride a city bus. Computers and the Internet may be providing alternate social forums for these people, but they’re enabling these people to deprive themselves of something vital to the human experience: face-to-face real-time real interaction with other real human beings. I fall victim to it every day. I email or call or IM when I could just walk across campus and talk to someone in his or her office. I buy things on Amazon.com instead of driving to the mall, discussing the pros and cons of products with salespeople and physically handing them money. When I use these technological so-called “advancements,” am I really just cheating myself out of my own right to human existence?

Winner seems to think so, at least a little. He closes his essay by saying that so far, the computer “revolution,” is being guided by something all too familiar: “the absent mind.”

This is getting heavy. I think in researching theory and the deep meaning of humanity, one should take a break after doing deep thinking such as this. So, I’m going to go do that. And maybe also get a sandwich. Thinking this hard makes me hungry.