Xlibris returns with William Van Dusen Wishard, author of Between Two Ages.
Where does technology fit into all of this understanding?
That the explosion of new technologies is a primary force driving global change is not exactly a stunning revelation. While elementary forms of technology are older than Homo sapiens, the first systematic approach to science and technology was expressed by Francis Bacon in 17th century. Much later, Einstein emphasized that “concern for man himself and his fate must form the chief interest of all technical endeavors.”
Concern for humanity and its fate…..is this the chief interest of technological research today? Possibly it is in the health and medical fields.
Let me interject here that I’m a firm believer in technology. Nearly two decades ago, I had a quadruple heart by-pass operation using the latest medical technology. As I’m still around, I’m sold.
Simply from an economic standpoint, in the 20th century, the U.S. grew by $48 trillion, much of that growth based on new technology.
But questions arise as to whether we really know what we’re doing.
I was once talking with a group of college students. We were talking about what’s going on in the world, and I asked them what they thought about where technology is headed. One girl said, “Well I don’t know about technology in general, but as far as the Internet goes, I am completely addicted to it. Every morning when I wake up, the first thing I have to do is go to YouTube and see the latest videos that were uploaded overnight. I know I’m addicted to the Internet.”
I was a bit surprised by this, and asked the other students if they felt the same way; if they felt addicted to the Internet. “Absolutely,” was the response from everyone. Then I asked if addiction to the Internet would characterize most of the other students on the campus. “Totally, no question about it,” cards@jacquielawson.com they said.
Think of what addiction means. It means that I no longer control my life; that something else—whether the Internet, drugs, shopping or whatever the addiction is—controls my life to a certain extent. Thus addiction of any kind diminishes me as a person.
Doubts about technology are being expressed.
The Economist, probably the most authoritative news magazine in English, asks, “Is the speed of technology development exceeding humanity’s moral and mental capacities to control it?” Newsweek magazine says flat out that “information overload is outstripping our capacity to cope, antiquating our laws, transforming our mores, reshuffling our economy, reordering our priorities and putting our Constitution to the fire.”
Why do they make such statements? For one thing, the experts tell us that the pace of technological change doubles every decade; that because technological change is growing at an exponential rate, the 21st century will see one thousand times more technological change than did the last century.
What does such rapid change do to us as individuals?
Psychologists have long known that subjecting people to more change than they can fit into their mental picture of life causes serious psychological problems. Thus the U.S. government estimates that half of all Americans will, at some point in their lives, experience some form of mental illness. Some experts even say that by generating such rapid change, we are tampering with the preconditions of rationality.
How is communications technology affecting Truth? I once had dinner with Alvin Toffler, who was one of the world’s foremost authorities on how technology is changing our lives. I asked him, “What is the result of everyone having access to all philosophies, all social and political theories, all knowledge, all spiritual beliefs, all news simply by the press of a computer button.” He replied, “It’s the end of truth.”
I don’t think he was suggesting that truth doesn’t exist any longer. Rather, I think he meant that we’re at a point where truth is no longer accepted as “self-evident.” It’s ever more difficult to achieve a consensus on what is Truth. We certainly have never known the full truth of why we got into Iraq.
Look at the disagreement of what is the truth regarding abortion, stem cell research, marriage, or even what constitutes a family. People have different views as to what constitutes “truth” on these issues.
Information technologies fragment collective systems of belief, whether political, religious or philosophical. This is why our political parties are becoming less relevant. More people have more information with which to make up their own minds on an issue.
Whose “truth” are we talking about….the forty-eight million Christian fundamentalists who believe the world will literally end in our lifetime; the scientists who believe we are entering the “Post-human” era as they create a specie “superior” to the human being; the biologist who say we are near the time when the male will no longer be necessary for procreation; the modernist who believes the past has no meaning or lessons for us today; the postmodernist who believes reality is but a social-linguistic construct?
What is change and harangue doing to our children? One effect is that our technologies have sped up the pace of life so much that books are now written for seven-year-old children advising them how to recognize stress in their lives, and what to do about it.
Clearly, parents no longer control the information environment in which their children grow up; and such control has been a prime duty of parenthood for the past three hundred years. Indeed, many researchers of the effects of technology on children say we have now come to the “end of childhood” as a special category of growth, with its unique needs.
Thus we must ask, what is our duty to coming generations? Some scientists are seeking to create certain technologies not to improve the human condition as Einstein urged, but for purposes that appear to be to replace human meaning and significance altogether. Some of the world’s most brilliant scientists are seeking to create what they call the Post-Human Age. Create something they think is better than the human being.
Says Marvin Minsky, cofounder of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory: “Suppose that the robot had all the virtues of people and was smarter and understood things better. Then why would we want to prefer those grubby old people? I don’t see anything wrong with human life being devalued if we have something better.”
MIT’s Sherry Turkel sees the “reconfiguration of machines as psychological objects and the reconfiguration of people as living machines.”
So how are we to view such statements? What are we really dealing with? How is it that a tiny percentage of humanity—a few scientists—takes it upon itself to radically alter what has been known for the last forty thousand years as a “human being?”
This is not science fiction we’ve been talking about; it’s what is happening with some of the best and brightest scientists in the world, and they expect to see the results of their work within the next two or three decades.
It’s clear that in some realms of scientific research, we are no longer concerned with meeting any human need, nor is there any defined ethical framework within which R&D takes place.
Consider what Jaron Lanier says. He coined the term virtual reality and founded the first virtual reality company. Writes Lanier, “Medical science, neuroscience, computer science, genetics, biology—separately and together, seem to be on the verge of abandoning the human realm altogether…it grows harder to imagine human beings remaining at the center of the process of science. Instead, science appears to be in charge of its own process, probing and changing people in order to further its own course, independent of human agency.”
What seems to be driving some scientific research today is a mania for exploring the outer limits of nature, of the “possible,” regardless of the consequences. It is the fascination with power.
Freeman Dyson, one of America’s foremost theoretical physicists, and present at the first test of a nuclear bomb, speaks of how scientific power can inflate the human ego. Dyson describes how some scientific research can result from an illusion of unlimited power. Says Dyson, this quest for unlimited power is a result of “what you might call the technical arrogance that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.”
It would seem that as scientists pursue their vision of technological transcendence, “unconscious factors” are ignored. It’s just these unconscious factors that will eventually disrupt the developmental trajectory so confidently predicted by technologists.
So how is the individual to live in a world that is changing in such basic ways? I would offer a few suggestions.
First, limit my information intake to what I absolutely need to know. This may be difficult when they’re so many interesting blogs, websites and “chat rooms” on the Internet. But the more time I spend on non-essential information, the less time I spend simply in comprehending essential information. In a sense, I diminish my “truth intake.”
Second, study technology and how it has changed people and entire societies throughout history. Technology is not simply a passive tool. It changes us as we use it; it alters our perception of life. For example, the invention of the automobile altered the basic structure and relationships within the American family. Television changed the content and nature of American politics. The Internet is diminishing our sense of both time and place.
So don’t just use technology; study it and how it’s affecting you in both good ways and bad.
Third, study the high points of the last century so that today’s events are understood within the context of the historical, cultural, technological and psychological trends that have shaped contemporary life. For example, we need to understand the 20th century shift of Western culture from a Christian-based culture, to modernism and, more recently, to postmodernism.
For culture is a reflection of what is taking place in a peoples’ inner life. We cannot adequately understand contemporary America unless we have some idea of this historical unfolding.
Fourth, pursue those activities that deepen the inner life. Contemporary culture tends to be very shallow, and if we feed off of it, if that’s our daily diet, we become shallow people. We need to seek depth in our lives in whatever way is natural for each of us. Maybe it’s reconnecting yourself to nature by taking more time walking in the woods or the mountains, or relaxing at the beach. Maybe it’s listening to some of the music of the world’s greatest composers, or reading some of the world’s great literature. Maybe it’s reading about the lives of Jesus or Buddha, or the feeding wisdom of the Psalms.
However it’s done, feeding on depth and greatness is essential in these turbulent times.
Make sure to check out Mr. Wishard’s website at www.worldtrendsresearch.org.
Xlibris will continue with William V. Wishard in Part 3.
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